Clotilda's Political Influence

In addition to the credit Clotilda has garnered for converting her pagan husband to Catholic Christianity, there are other arguments made on behalf of the influence wielded by Clotilda in the political arena. A strong queen could take advantage of the vague definition of her role in the early middle ages. Her presence at the royal court and position as mother to royal heirs gave her access to her husband, his advisers and the royal treasury. At the death of Clovis, Clotilda was probably a very politically influential figure in the kingdom, given the young age of her children and the attachments in court she had no doubt made, including the significant support of the Catholic bishops, such as Remigius.

She would need these contacts and their support, and possibly that of her Burgundian relatives, over the next few years. Clovis left behind four sons, but only three were sons of Clotilda. The eldest son, Theuderic, was much older than his half-brothers and even had a son of his own, Theudebert. He was probably in a politically strong position, with military victories and his own loyal warriors, and was a severe threat to the welfare of Clotilda and her sons. Assuming that a mother would be predisposed to guarantee the welfare of her children, it is plausible to propose that a political compromise was reached between she and Theuderic.

As well as church support, Clotilda may have also called on her relationship with her Burgundian relatives to add muscle to the negotiations. It seems doubtful that Theuderic could be checked solely by the officials of a religion to which he had but recently converted, if he did at all (there is no proof that he followed his father to the baptismal pool).

The bishops and the aristocrats were also probably instrumental in helping Clotilda to define the division of the Frankish kingdom amongst the sons of Clovis. Katharine Scherman (The Birth of France) believed that:

[Clotilda], in an attempt to foster harmony, designated as capitals of the four kingdoms cities in a near arc around Paris....Anticipating the predictable clashes of her hotheaded, only semicivilzed sons, it was likely that she was also the one who persuaded them to respect Paris as neutral territory.

Finally, evidence points to the land division of A.D. 511 between Clotilda’s sons and Theuderic as the first such splitting of inheritance. Ian Wood speculated:

"followed the lines of the old Roman civitas boundaries. The experts here were the bishops and the Gallo-Roman aristocracy. The division is inconceivable without their approval...but it seems plausible to suggest [that the division was a] political compromise [not] tradition.

Wood also argued further that Childebert and Chlothar would later have to make a similar compromise with their nephew Theudebert (son of Theuderic, and perhaps older than his uncles) who had the support of many within the kingdom. This seems to have created a “tradition” of land partition between heirs.

If this is so, what looks to us like Frankish tradition may only have been formed by the political compromises of the first half of the sixth century. One result of such a suggestion must be that in 511 [Clotilda] could not have been certain that her sons, young as they were, would survive.

Regardless of the particulars, it can be inferred that Clotilda's greatest political success was in preserving the birthright, and survival, of her sons.

UP NEXT: Clovis' Role in Stoking the Burgundian Civil War

SOURCES:
Ian Wood, “Kings, Kingdoms and Consent.”
Janet Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: The careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Medieval Women, ed. D. Baker (Oxford, 1978), 31-77, in Elisabeth van Houts, “The State of Research: Women in Medieval History and Literature,” Journal of Medieval History 20
Katharine Scherman, The Birth of France: Warriors, Bishops and Long-Haired Kings (New York: Random House, 1987).

Gallo-Romans and Burgundians - Part 2

The Burgundians were a small tribe and realized that they could not simply overwhelm the traditional inhabitants of any region in which they were settled. In addition, at least one of their traditions claimed they were genealogically related to the Romans. As such, in the case of the Burgundian kingdom, there was no social differentiation made between Gallo-Roman or Burgundian.

Roman senators and Burgundian nobles were considered of a class, and this equality between social strata held true down to the lowest classes of both people. Additionally, the Burgundian kingdom was administered similarly to a traditional Roman province. It was composed of civitates, which were the same as the episcopal dioceses, and was administered by both a Burgundian and a Roman official.

The new Roman aristocratic clergymen sought barbarian patronage. For instance, Pope Hilarus wrote to Leontius of Arles about a complaint concerning Mamertus of Vienne’s ordination of a new bishop, Marcellus, for the city of Die. In a letter dated October 10, 463, Hilarus explained that he heard of this from his “son, the illustrious master of soldiers Gundioc” who also said that Marcellus was named bishop against the wishes of the inhabitants of Die.

This amply illustrated that Gundioc was not only the new Burgundian king of Die, but was also a Roman official and sent a report to Hilarus that prompted the Pope’s action. Whether Gundioc directed his report to the Pope because he was the leader of the ecclesiastics and logical choice to address the matter or because Gundioc was a Catholic and naturally deferred to the Pope remains unknown.

Gundioc’s position as both king and Roman official probably complicated the networks of loyalty, patronage, and authority at Die. Nonetheless, this Burgundian king filled the void left by the removal of Gallo-Roman patrons and often heard Gallo-Roman appeals. That Gundioc held the position of both Burgundian king and the Roman office of magister militum per Gallias reveals the degree of assimilation achieved by the Burgundians, something that neither the Visigoths nor Franks had yet accomplished.

Thus, the Burgundian kings held a definite place in the imperial hierarchy and this led to the Gallo-Romans accepting the legitimacy of the Burgundian royal court as the locus of provincial government. This peaceful coexistence resulted in very little direct conflict between Burgundians and the Roman Empire. They only fought once at Lyons in A.D. 458, against Marjorian.

Another account told of the charity of the Gallo-Roman senator Ecdicius during a famine in Burgundy. Ecdicius sent his men with wagons to gather the starving people to his estate and fed and lodged four thousand until the famine was over. He then returned them home. There were other reports of how Ecdicius was a leader and man of action, as indicated by a story of how he repelled a party of Goths with only ten other men.

Another Gallo-Roman, Patiens, Bishop of Lyons, helped people avert starvation in a like manner. These stories show the charity of the Gallo-Romans as well as their ability to maintain their comfortable lifestyle under the “harsh rule” of barbarian kings.

Church officials could also successfully petition barbarian kings for relief. In the 460s, the abbot Lupicinus of St. Claude asked the Burgundian king Chilperic I to free some paupers who claimed that they had been illegally enslaved. The oppressor of these peasants was a Roman “sycophant” according to Sidonius. As a means of defense, the accused Roman official attempted to smear the abbot by charging that Lupicinus had predicted the ruin of the Burgundians ten years prior. Lupicinus accused the King and his tribe of oppressing the poor against the wishes of Rome. The king was affected by the plea of the abbot and offered land and vineyards to the monastery as recompense. This act of impartial justice toward a Catholic abbot by a supposed Arian king stood the Burgundian royalty in good stead among Catholics, especially as compared to other barbarian Arians, such as the Goths.

Records show that Gallo-Roman families continued to be influential, and wealthy, for generations. Some transferred their service from the state to the church, though many became gradually accepted into Burgundian service, serving as Counts, treasurers or in other positions, with some offices designated only for those who were Roman by birth. Their influence upon the administration of the Burgundian kingdom was evident, for instance, the Burgundians continued to use consular years to date administrative documents, still written in Latin.

One major difference between Burgundian and Roman rule was the development of the office of count (comes) into a dual position of both military officer and civil servant. This was antithetical to the standard of separation of powers that had been the imperial policy since Diocletian. These representatives of Roman culture greatly influenced the Burgundians and also benefited from the relationship, as did the Catholic church, which experienced an upsurge in church building under the Arian Burgundians.


UP NEXT: Gallo-Romans and Burgundians - Part 3

SOURCES:

Wolfram, Germanic Peoples.
Hil.Epist. “Qualiter contra sedis” (MGH Epist. 3.28-29) in Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats.
Elton, “Defence in fifth century Gaul,” in Fifth-century Gaul: a Crisis of Identity?, eds. Drinkwater and Elton.
Barnwell, Emperors, Prefects, & Kings.
Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks.
Samual Dill, “Persistence of the Aristocratic Way of Life,” in The Barbarian Invasions: Catalyst of a New Order, ed. Katherine Fischer Drew (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).
Bury, Roman Empire.
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Vulpicini 10 in Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats.
Yitzhak Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul A.D. 481-751 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995).
Louis Halphen, “Germanic Society in the Early Sixth Century,” in The Barbarian Invasions, ed. Drew.
The Burgundian Code, trans. Katherine Fischer Drew with a foreword by Edward Peters, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
King, Roman Gaul.

Burgundians in the Accounts of Ammianus and Orosius

Under Diocletian (A.D. 284-305), the military was restructured, and two types of legions were created. The first, the limitanei, was composed of garrison troops along the heavily defended frontier and was composed mostly of ill-trained and ill-equipped local troops. The comitatenses, a mobile and more skilled field army, was rushed to assist these local border guards when emergency occurred. The limitanei gradually became composed of local soldiers who were the sons of soldiers and the line between barbarian and Roman was blurred. The comitatenses also filled its ranks with barbarian recruits.

Roughly eighty years after the Burgundian encounter with Probus, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that, in A.D. 359, the Burgundian lands were located next to the Alamanni in a “region called Capillacii or Palas where boundary stones marked the frontiers of the Alamanni and Burgundians.” This placed the Burgundians somewhere east of the Alamanni, between the upper Rhine and Danube, possibly on the other side of the Roman limes that had been deserted in the third century.

Ammianus also wrote that the Burgundians knew that they were descendants of the Romans from ancient times and that he believed they had descended “from the Romans whom Drusus, and later Tiberius, left behind on the Elbe and elsewhere to defend the frontier.” That they did descend from Romans was possible given the aforementioned frontier garrison policies of Diocletian. Additionally, as Patrick Geary observes, although Ammianus’ Burgundians may have formed in the fourth century, they maintained names and traditions linking them to ancient people of an earlier time and transferred this identity through various social formations.

Paulus Orosius, writing around A.D. 417, also mentioned that the Burgundians were in this region along the Rhine during this period. According to Orosius, around the year A.D. 367, the Burgundians, “a new name for a new enemy” numbered 80,000 armed men who had settled on the Rhine (John Bagnall Bury believed that the 80,000 number reflected, at most, the population of the entire tribe, not the number of warriors). Orosius generally confirmed Ammianus’s theory of Burgundian descent, though this may indicate he used Ammianus as a source. Orosius added that these camps were in the interior of Germany and that the Germans had been dispersed to different camps, a possible reference to Vopiscus’s account of Probus’s policy towards the Burgundians.

By A.D. 367, some of these people dispersed by Probus “came together to form a great nation and so even took their names from their work, because their frequent dwelling places” along the limes where they had settled and “assumed possession” were called “burgi.” As has been shown, it is possible that some unknown chief, perhaps with a legitimate ancestral claim to a Burgundian genealogy, had united these people.

In A.D. 369, the Emperor Valentinian I (A.D. 364-375) had recurring problems controlling the Alamanni and he asked for assistance from the Burgundians, “a warlike people, rich in a countless number of strong warriors, and therefore a cause of terror to all their neighbours.” Valentinian sent secret letters that asked them to take part in a coordinated attack against the Alamanni. (Writing in the seventh century, the historian Fredegar said that, under Valentinian I, the Gallo-Romans invited the Burgundians so that they could stop paying taxes. Walter Goffart points out that, while this could be the reason why the Burgundians were in the region at that time, the likelihood of Fredegar’s claim was probably influenced more by contemporary, rather than historical, events). Valentinian's plan called for the Burgundians to proceed with an initial attack and he and his Roman armies would support them by crossing the Rhine to prevent any Alamanni from escaping.

Ammianus indicated that the Burgundians were amenable to these entreaties by the Emperor for two reasons. The first was because the Burgundians and Alamanni were traditional rivals. They frequently fought over important salt pits and the Burgundians saw this opportunity as a way to solidify their control of these valuable assets. The second reason ascribed by Ammianus was an alleged sense of kinship that the Burgundians felt toward the Romans, which recalled Ammianus’ earlier assertions regarding the Burgundian heritage. (Herwig Wolfram observed that Ammianus’ feeling of closeness toward the Burgundians, owing to a shared romanitas, kept him from dismissing the unique Burgundian form of kingship as barbaric and instead elicited a comparison to the "sacral responsibility of Egyptian pharaohs").

The Burgundians sent their best warriors on the campaign and fought the Alamanni to the Rhine before the Romans had even put their forces in the field. The delay was caused by the Emperor’s preoccupation with fortifying the frontier. This presumably distracted him from forming his army in time to support the Burgundians, as he had pledged. The sight of Burgundian war parties opposite the Rhine apparently caused fear among the Roman citizens. According to Ammianus, the Burgundians saw the panic they had caused and halted. They waited on the opposite shore for word from Valentinian.

When neither Valentinian nor his forces appeared to be readying for war, the
Burgundians believed, rightly, that he had reneged on his bargain. They decided to return to their homelands, but first sent envoys to him to demand that he, at the very least, protect their retreat against the Alamanni still in the region. Apparently, Valentinian refused to address these envoys “and when they perceived that by subterfuges and delays their request was practically denied, they went off from there in sorrow and indignation.” The Burgundian kings were informed by their envoys of Valentinian’s disrespectful treatment and were greatly enraged. They proceeded to kill all of the Alamanni prisoners they had captured and returned to their lands. Ammianus further explained that the Burgundians had weakened the Alamanni to such an extent that, the following year, Theodosius, commander of the cavalry in Gaul, seeing that the Alamanni had scattered in fear of the Burgundians, attacked them, killed many and sent the prisoners to Italy.

Ammianus also offered a description of the Burgundian leadership:

In their country a king is called by the general name Hendinos, and, according to an ancient custom, lays down his power and is deposed, if under him the fortune of war has wavered, or the earth has denied sufficient crops; just as the Egyptians commonly blame their rulers for such occurrences. On the other hand the chief priest among the Burgundians is called Sisistus, holds his power for life, and is exposed to no such dangers as threaten the kings.

According to Ammianus, then, the dualistic Germanic leadership structure was in evidence among the Burgundians in the late fourth century. However, it seems that the hendinos was clearly in charge of military matters and seemed to have been held responsible for the general welfare of the tribe. The sisistus (or sinistus) appeared to be a holy man who could probably trace his ancestry back to the tribe’s founders. His position was more ceremonial. He had been a “king by noble birth” (rex ex nobilitate) and had been the leader of a smaller, essentially ethnically homogeneous society. The hendinos had earned his position by his action and led a more diverse, and presumably larger, army.

Those from the royal line of the sisistus were not necessarily excluded from becoming a hendinos. Should a line fail by being surpassed in deeds by one from another family, it was often the case that a new royal family, and often a tribe with new ethnic elements, would co-opt the ancient origin of an established people. This was probably how such tribal names as the Burgundians were kept alive. As the ancient tribal kingship model was replaced by the warrior king of migrating armies, the latter was forced to assume many of the political, or official, duties formally assigned to the sisistus. However, with greater power came greater responsibility, and the reverse, such that the sisustus was relatively secure in his position while the hendinos was often held directly accountable for the welfare of the tribe, regardless of his culpability. Thus, it seems apparent that, according to Ammianus’ observations, by this time the Burgundian dux, the hendinos, had gained the preeminent position of authority among the Burgundians.

All that being said, a cautionary note. Ian Wood has explained that Ammianus Marcellinus’:

...famous description of sacral kingship among the Burgundians…demands cautious treatment. Ammianus compares the Burgundian system with that in use in Egypt. But Egypt did not have sacral kingship in the late fourth century A.D. This suggests that Ammianus is quoting a much earlier source. Whatever the source was, the evidence cannot be used at face value for a study of Burgundian kingship just before the migrations.

UP NEXT: The First Burgundian Kingdom

SOURCES:

Geary, The Myth of Nations.
Ammianus, The History.
Heather, in “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” The English Historical Review .
Geary, Before France and Germany.
Paulus Orosius, The Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, vol. 50, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1964).
J.B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1958).
Fredegar, Chronicles, 2.46 (MGH Script. Rer. Merov., vol 2).
Goffart, Barbarians and Romans.
Wolfram, Germanic Peoples.
Ian Wood, “Kings, Kingdoms and Consent,” in Early Medieval Kingship, eds. P.H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood (University of Leeds, 1977).

Germanic Contact with the Roman Empire - Conflict and Commerce

The Roman trade policy did gradually establish a certain, albeit inconsistent, cultural equivalency between the Empire and the barbarians. However, it also caused conflict within individual tribes as both competition for favors from Rome and between pro- and anti-Roman factions splintered old tribes and formed new ones based on relationships to Rome. These factions resorted to violence to press their case, some at the behest of Rome, which had the money so desirable to barbarian leaders. These leaders held, or desired, political power that was acquired and reinforced through their ability to control trade in their region. As C.R. Whitaker surmised, "It is reasonable to conclude that soldiers, particularly officers, on active service became increasingly powerful locally through their attachment to the land in the regions where they served."

Thus, the result of Roman and barbarian interaction along the limes was a destabilization. Rome, with her money and political power, enabled some chiefs to gain riches previously unimagined. More importantly, these chiefs were trained in the politics and economics of Rome and were able apply these principles successfully among their tribes. At the same time, those barbarian groups not embraced by Rome often grouped into large confederations and wreaked havoc along the borderlands. These new groups formed and re-formed continually, some around a strong, Romanized barbarian and others around a particular leader at the head of a barbarian confederation. These new “tribes” often associated themselves with much older traditions for the sake of unity and continuity.

The incessant barbarian conflicts that occurred during the latter part of the second century increased the importance of the military leaders in the tribes. As Patrick Geary observed, these reiks often attributed their military prowess as “a sign of the gods’ favor,” which enabled them to “add a religious aura to their position.”

The god Tiwaz was a war god (his rune is to the left), influential on the battlefield, but was also more importantly the god of law and order and was associated with the Germanic Thing, the essential governing body of a traditional tribe. As the tribe began to identify itself less with its land of origin, it also de-emphasized the role of the god Tiwaz, and the thiudans, and identified itself more with the new, successful war leader and the corresponding god of war, Woden.

According to Geary, “[v]ictories created new traditions,” and, according to Malcolm Todd, regardless of race, language, or political origin, if an individual fought along side a certain war leader, he was a member of that war leader’s tribe. Geary also believes that the Marcomannic Wars were evidence of “a radical restructuring of the Germanic world” and “the last decades of the second century were the most vital period of ethnogenesis in Germanic history.”

Barbarians had been used by Rome for her armies almost from their first exposure to the Empire. Caesar used Germanic troops during his Gaul campaign. Initially serving as separate, tribe-based auxiliary forces, they were eventually merged into the general Roman auxiliary forces. Some were picked to be special body guards for the emperor, which formed an important political counterweight to the Praetorian Guard. Most important were the German leaders who learned the Roman way of war and brought their knowledge back to their tribes. Barbarian war-leaders also identified themselves as both members of barbarian society and Roman officers and often used one position to advance the other. Some, such as Arbogast, used their position as Roman generals to marshal the necessary forces to attack their barbarian rivals, as Arbogast did by attacking Marcomer and Sunno across the Rhine. However, most often, accepting a high position in the Roman army usually meant forfeiting tribal political power.

Roman money was important, especially to the barbarian leader, because victory alone could not maintain a king’s prestige against other leaders in the tribe. Money equaled power, and Rome had a seemingly endless supply of the former. In exchange for money, barbarian kings provided Rome with military manpower. They used Roman money and booty acquired while pursuing Roman military ventures to satisfy their supporters and attract more warriors to their tribe. As such, military leaders did not rely solely on strict tribal bonds to attract warriors. Warrior bands, called comitatus, were based on personal loyalty to a leader rather than tribal bonds, and these became prevalent and added to the confusion among tribal society.

Often, individual members of these bands participated in raids against tribes with whom their ancestral tribe was ostensibly at peace. This in turn caused more widespread conflict. Also, when a tribe moved, and inevitably encountered and fought other tribes, a natural upward social mobility occurred within its ranks as warriors proved themselves on the battlefield. Skill was prime, not ethnic or social background, and those that distinctly exhibited these characteristics emerged as leaders. This near-constant state of warfare resulted in the splintering and reformation of tribes, often with a war leader and his comitatus serving as the nucleus for a new tribe. The war leaders of these new or reformed tribes called upon their own tribal heritage to provide an identity for their new tribe, often recycling remembered and revered tribal names to add an air of authenticity and respect. While probable that the mixed ethnicity of a comitatus could cause problems for a leader, being able to overcome such internal unrest would bolster his reputation. Further, according to Lucien Musset, perhaps the solutions reached by such successful leaders eventually led them "to modify their institutions, and thus pav[ed] the way for an eventual reconciliation with the Romans.”

The Romans did not recruit barbarians for only military purposes. They also settled them on their lands to provide a needed workforce in regions that had been ravaged of their former population by war or famine. These barbarian were usually those who themselves had been defeated in war and were either held by the Romans or had asked the emperor for permission to settle on Roman lands. In exchange, these groups paid tribute and lived under Roman law, though they were not considered to be freemen and were subject to the emperor’s whim. “Privileges could not be accorded to those whose origin lay beyond the boundaries of the Roman state.” Thus, barbarian workers in the Roman Empire helped to convert uncultivated land into cultivated and taxable land and provided manpower for other endeavors, such as mining.

This constant state of societal flux as tribes formed, splintered, and re-formed both within and outside of lands under imperial control has revealed that tribes “were more processes than stable structures.” In essence, the tribes were similar to modern political parties. Each exalted a founding father, or concept, and included people and families of different ethnic stock, but shared cultural values. Additionally, given the inability of the Germans to act in concert at the tribal level, the traditional belief that they had acted in concert to raid the Roman Empire en masse has been shown as incorrect.

Geary has argued that the Romans applied a faulty template to the Germanic tribes in an attempt to put a familiar societal structure over the chaotic Germanic tribal world, which strengthened the perception that Germans were both similar and even united in action. Further, Walter Goffart has concluded that this faulty theory of united Germanic action led to the belief that Germanic tribes consciously set out to set up kingdoms on Roman soil and these mistaken assumptions contributed to the flawed motif of Barbarian Invasions. It also implied that a single, united German entity opposed the Roman Empire and that both entities were conscious of being on opposing sides. Conversely, Peter Heather asserts that, while the independent Germanic tribes didn’t act in concert to attack the Roman Empire, the widespread displacement caused by the Huns effectively produced this effect. Finally, Malcolm Todd observes that while:

...the history of the Germanic peoples in the fourth and fifth centuries, particularly in western Europe, is inextricably bound up with that of the declining Roman provinces… the tale is by no means always one of destruction and waste. Barbarians were by this time better equipped for life inside the empire than most ancient writers believed.

UP NEXT: Evolution of Barbarian Arms and Tactics

SOURCES:
Geary, Before France and Germany.
Goffart, Barbarians and Romans.
Ralph Whitney Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Todd, The Northern Barbarians.
Musset, Germanic Invasions.
Miroslava Mirkovic, “The Later Roman Colonate and Freedom,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 87, no.2 (1997).
Peter Heather, in “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” The English Historical Review 110, no.435 (1995).

Early Germanic Society - Social Groups

The largest portion of the population of a Germanic "community" was comprised of the free men. The number of cattle or swine they held determined their status in the community and they exhibited their freedom by joining in warfare. Generally, it was a patriarchal society and households combined into a larger group, or clan. The unifying factors of the clan were twofold, internal and external. Internally, the clan provided a basic form of law that kept the peace among its members. Externally, the members united into greater groups, the largest called tribes, to participate in feuds with other groups.

Families composed villages, led by a group of free men led by a headman, or chief, who may have been determined based on a variety of attributes, including, but not limited to, wealth, ancestry, family connections or influence in the larger group of kindred, “the people” or gentes, of which his village was a part. As explained by Patrick Geary, the villages that made up these gentes “were bound together by a combination of religious, legal, and political traditions that imparted a strong, if unstable, sense of unity.” Ancestry myths were based on the lives and exploits of heroes, who were seen as divine founders of a gentes. The tales of revenge, war, blood feud and kinship helped groups of Germans to unite because of a sense of shared ancestry to a specific individual.

According to Geary (The Myth of Nations), some historians believe that the royal families were those primarily associated with the particular myths of a group. It is also possible that different families had other traditions and stories and attempted to impose these as preeminent over those of other families. Such stories and traditions were also probably more dispersed throughout a society than being seen as the sole property of one family. If this is so, then Geary asserted that, during the fourth and fifth centuries, when certain individuals emerged as tribal leaders, they and their families became associated, or they claimed for themselves, the traditional myths and stories of the tribe. Later, we will see how this may be the case with how the Burgundians came to associated themselves with the Gibichungs (or Niebelungs).

The Germanic tribes were led by two sorts of kings, one religious and the other military. These men ruled the tribe by a complicated mixture of single or joint rule, dependent upon the particular situation in which the tribe found itself. The first type of chief, identified as being more religious in nature, was the thiudans. He belonged to a traditional royal family that was associated with the mythic, historical and cultural origins of the tribe and was a symbol of tribal stability. In time of war, military authority was given to the martial, usually non-royal leader, called a dux (or general) by Tacitus. These leaders presided over the Germanic council of free warriors, called a Thing. The organization of a Thing varied, but in general, it gathered to judge its members, discuss war, and to formulate tribal policy. The Thing was the core of the fundamental idea of kindred, or gentes, which was the basis of Germanic society. Yet, tribes were constantly in flux as every disruption of internal or external peace could result in a splintered clan and new clans reformed along different lines. This natural state of tribal ebb and flow was exacerbated by contact with the Roman Empire, which intensified both kinds of disruption.

UP NEXT: Characteristics of Early Germanic Migrations

SOURCES:

Patrick Geary, Before France and Germany.
Patrick Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).