Thuringii

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Turingi
)
Fibula found in Mühlhausen, 4th/5th century AD
Ancient Germanic bone comb, Thuringia

The Thuringii, Toringi or Teuriochaimai

Bundesländer
).

First appearances

Image from "Battle of Hermunduri and Chatti", 1717

The Thuringians do not appear in classical Roman texts under that name, but some have suggested that they were the remnants of the

Rhaetia
.

East Germanic tribe, rather than Suebian.) These two tribes are among Germanic groups known to have been found north of the Danube in this period. Procopius in his Gothic Wars describes the land of the Varini as being south of the Danes, but north of the Slavs, who were in turn north of the uncultivated lands which lay north of the Danube. Procopius describes a marriage alliance between the Angles of Britain and the Varni in the sixth century.[4]

The name of the Thuringians appears to be first mentioned in the veterinary treatise of Vegetius, written early in the fifth century.[5]

They appear in some lists of the peoples involved in

Fredegar record that the Frankish King married the runaway wife of the King of the Thuringians, but the story may be distorted. (For example, the area of Tongeren, now in Belgium, may have been intended.[7]
)

More clearly, correspondence is recorded with a kingdom of Thuringians by Procopius and

Theoderic the Great (454–526) and Clovis I (approx. 466–511), after the downfall of Attila and Odoacer. [citation needed
]

Political history

See also:
Rulers of Thuringia
Europe at the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.

The Thuringii established an empire in the late fifth century. It reached its territorial peak in the first half of the sixth before it was conquered by the

Ostrogothic and Lombard women.[citation needed] Under the leadership of Alboin, a large group of Thuringii joined the Lombards on their migration into Italy.[9] The Lombard king Agilulf
(590–616) was of Thuringian descent.

After their conquest, the Thuringii were placed under Frankish dukes, but they rebelled and had regained their independence by the late seventh century under

Saxon
rule.

By the time of Charles Martel and Saint Boniface, they were again subject to the Franks and ruled by Frankish dukes, with their seat at Würzburg in the south. Under Martel, the Thuringian dukes' authority was extended over a part of Austrasia and the Bavarian plateau. The valleys of the Lahn, Main, and Neckar rivers were included. The Naab formed the south-eastern border of Thuringia at the time. The Werra and Fulda valleys were within it also and it reached as far as the Saxon plain in the north. Its central location in Germania, beyond the Rhine, was the reason it became the point d'appui of Boniface's mission work.

The Thuringii had a separate identity as late as 785–786, when one of their leading men,

King of Germany
.

Ecclesiastical history

Christianity had reached the Thuringii in the fifth century, but their exposure to it was limited. Their real

Christianisation took place, alongside the ecclesiastical organisation of their territory, during the early and mid eighth century under Boniface, who felled their "sacred oak" at Geismar
in 724, abolishing the vestiges of their paganism.

In the 1020s,

Aribo, Archbishop of Mainz, began the minting of coins at Erfurt
, the oldest market town in Thuringia with a history going back to the Merovingian period. The economy, especially trade (such as with the Slavs), greatly increased after that.

Social history

The Thuringian nobility, which had an admixture of Frankish, Thuringian, and Saxon blood, was not as

Boniface
came. There was a small number of artisans and merchants, mostly trading with the Slavs to the east. The town of Erfurt was the easternmost trading post in Frankish territory at the time.

Historiography

The history of the Thuringii is best known from the writings concerning their conquerors, the Franks.

Gallo-Roman, includes the nearest account in time of the fall of the Thuringian Empire. Widukind of Corvey, writing in tenth-century Saxony
, inundates his similar account with various legends.

The Thuringii make brief appearances in contemporary Italian sources when their activities affect the land south of the

Fisud, as a contemporary of Theudebert I
.

Sources

  • Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056. New York: Longman, 1991.
  • Thompson, James Westfall. Feudal Germany. 2 vol. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1928.
  • Schutz, Herbert. The Germanic Realms in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400–750. American University Studies, Series IX: History, Vol. 196. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.

See also

  • List of Germanic peoples
  • Barbarian invasions
  • Turcilingi

Notes

  1. ISBN 9783110065138
  2. ISBN 9780191744457
    . Retrieved January 26, 2020. Thuringians... A Germanic people in central Germania...
  3. ^ Schutz, 402.
  4. ^ H. B., Dewing (1962). Procopius. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 255.
  5. ^ Guy Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568, p.39, citing B. Schmidt.
  6. ISBN 9780812239393
    . p.216
  7. ^ Halsall p.392
  8. ^ Schutz, 411.
  9. ^ Peters, Edward (2003). History of the Lombards: Translated by William Dudley Foulke. University of Pennsylvania Press.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thuringii&oldid=1176677508"