Thuringii

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Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

Kingdom of the Burgundians in around 500

Thuringii (थुरिंगी), Toringi or Teuriochaimai,[1] were an early Germanic people[2] that appeared during the late Migration Period in the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thuringia.

Variants

Jat clans

History

This people was called Thervingi in the third and fourth centuries, and became known as Thuringii around the early fifth century. It became a kingdom, which came into conflict with the Merovingian Franks, and it later came under their influence and Frankish control. The name is still used for one of modern Germany's federal states (Bundesländer).

The Thuringians do not appear in classical Roman texts under that name, but some have suggested that they were the remnants of the Suebic Hermanduri, the last part of whose name (-duri) could represent the same sound as (-thuri) and the Germanic suffix -ing, suggests a meaning of "descendants of (the [Herman]duri)".[3] This people were living near the Marcomanni. Tacitus in his "Germania", describes their homeland as being where the Elbe starts, but also having colonies at the Danube and even within the Roman province of Rhaetia.

Claudius Ptolemy mentions neither the Hermunduri nor the Thuringians in his geography but instead the Teuriochaemae (Turones, see list of ancient Germanic peoples and tribes), living in just north of the Sudetes mountains, thought to be the Erzgebirge. These may also be connected to later Thuringians. ("Chaemae" may represent a version of the Germanic word for "home". Ptolemy also mentions a people called the Bainochaimai to the west of the Elbe. He also apparently spells the name of the Chamavi in a similar way.) The formation of this people may have had also been influenced by two longer-known tribes more associated with the eastern bank of the lower Elbe river, northeast of Thuringia, because the Carolingian law code written for them was called the "law of the Angles and Varini that is the Thuringians". Much earlier, Tacitus in his "Germania", for example, had grouped these two tribes among the more distant Suebic tribes, living beyond the Elbe, and near a sea where they worshiped Herthus. (Pliny the Elder had listed the Varini as a Vandalic, or 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 Attila's invasion of Gaul.[6] Walter Pohl has also proposed that they may be the same as the Turcilingi (or Torcolingi) who were one of the tribes near the middle Danube after the collapse of the empire of Attila, to whom they had apparently all been subject. They are specifically associated with Odoacer, who later became King of Italy, and are sometimes thought to have formed a part of the Sciri. Other tribes in this region at the time included the Rugii and the Heruls. Sidonius Apollinaris, in his seventh poem, explicitly lists them among the allies who fought under Attila when he entered Gaul in 451. During the reign of Childeric I, Gregory of Tours and 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 Cassiodorus during the reigns of Theoderic the Great (454–526) and Clovis I (approx. 466–511), after the downfall of Attila and Odoacer.

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 Franks in 531–532. Examination of Thuringian grave sites reveal cranial features which suggest the strong presence of Hunnic women or slaves, perhaps indicating that many Thuringians took Hunnic wives or Hunnic slaves following the collapse of the Hunnic Empire.[8] There is also evidence from jewellery found in graves that the Thuringians sought marriages with Ostrogothic and Lombard women. 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 duces (dukes), but they rebelled and had regained their independence by the late seventh century under Radulf. Towards the end of this century, parts of Thuringia came under Saxon rule.

Thuringia State

Thuringia is a state of Germany. Located in central Germany. Erfurt is the state capital and largest city. Other cities are Jena, Gera and Weimar. Thuringia is bordered by Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. Most of Thuringia is in the Saale drainage basin, a left-bank tributary of the Elbe.

Named after the Thuringii Germanic tribe who occupied it around AD 300, Thuringia came under Frankish domination in the 6th century.

Thuringia became a landgraviate in 1130 AD. After the extinction of the reigning Ludowingian line of counts and landgraves in 1247 and the War of the Thuringian Succession (1247–1264), the western half became independent under the name of "Hesse", never to become a part of Thuringia again. Most of the remaining Thuringia came under the rule of the Wettin dynasty of the nearby Margraviate of Meissen, the nucleus of the later Electorate and Kingdom of Saxony. With the division of the house of Wettin in 1485, Thuringia went to the senior Ernestine branch of the family, which subsequently subdivided the area into a number of smaller states, according to the Saxon tradition of dividing inheritance amongst male heirs. These were the "Saxon duchies", consisting, among others, of the states of Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Eisenach, Saxe-Jena, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg, and Saxe-Gotha.

Thuringia generally accepted the Protestant Reformation, and Roman Catholicism was suppressed as early as 1520; priests who remained loyal to it were driven away and churches and monasteries were largely destroyed, especially during the German Peasants' War of 1525. In Mühlhausen and elsewhere, the Anabaptists found many adherents. Thomas Müntzer, a leader of some non-peaceful groups of this sect, was active in this city. Within the borders of modern Thuringia the Roman Catholic faith only survived in the Eichsfeld district, which was ruled by the Archbishop of Mainz, and to a small degree in Erfurt and its immediate vicinity.

In Jat History

Mangal Sen Jindal[10] writes...."Moreover, considerable finds of Roman coins and other objects attest the extension of Roman trade relations; e.g., into Hanover, up the Main Valley, to the islands of the Netherlands and even to those of the Baltic, where in the island of Gothland alone over 4,000 Roman coins have been found. A much frequented trade route occupied the depressed zone from Thuringia southwards through Hesse to the lower Main and middle Rhine, and the spread of Roman coins extends as far as east as the Vistula, which it may be added, was the limit to 'Germania' given by Ptolemy. Such tokens of trade activity suggest the presence of trading settlements at fixed points


History of Origin of Some Clans in India:End of p.27


Moreover the Gau organization of the German People involved. within each Gau a number of settlements or 'Vici' whichplayt ed a definitely regional role as centres of military defence, -O worship, of Government of communications and trade." [11]

External links

References

  1. Hoops, Johannes (1981), "Thuringii p.512", Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 4, ISBN 9783110065138
  2. Buchberger, Erica (2018). "Thuringians". In Nicholson, Oliver (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191744457.
  3. 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. p.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. Goffart, Walter (2006). Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press. 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.
  10. History of Origin of Some Clans in India/Jat From Jutland/The Migration of Jats,pp. 27-28
  11. And Historical Geography of Europe, page 127.