My Family History
Tree: Suebia
| Tree Name | Suebia | |
| Description | Hermeric was the founder of the Kingdom of the Suebi in 406 CE, leading a migration of the Suebi people from their homeland above the Rhine into the Iberian Peninsula. He was the first king of the Gallaecian Suebi, a Germanic people who established a kingdom that lasted until 585 CE. Who: Hermeric, the first King of the Gallaecian Suebi. What: He founded the Kingdom of the Suebi by leading a migration from Germania into the Roman province of Gallaecia (modern-day Spain and Portugal). When: Around 406 CE. Why: The migration was part of a larger Germanic movement into the Roman Empire during the late antique period. The Suebi (also spelled Suevi or Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples first reported by Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC. In different contexts over several centuries, peoples within this umbrella category were sometimes simply called the Suebi, although all or most Suebian peoples had their own names as well. They originated near the Elbe River in what is now Eastern Germany. From there, Suebian groups spread across Central Europe, and in the 5th and 6th centuries some took over parts of Spain, Portugal and Italy. Archaeologically, the forerunners of the Suebi before contact with Rome are associated with the Jastorf culture. After the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the Suebi, Romans and other peoples of the Middle Danube were unsettled by the large-scale arrival of Huns, Goths, Alans, and other newcomers from eastern Europe. Around 406, many Middle Danubians, including many Quadi, moved far to the west, entering Roman Gaul, and disrupting it badly. A large group of "Suebi", probably including many Quadi and other Middle Danubians, entered Roman Hispania by 409, where a civil war was in progress. There they established the Kingdom of the Suebi in Gallaecia (north-west Iberia), which lasted from 409 to 585. This was eventually absorbed by the Visigoths, but its legacy survives in local place-names. While there is uncertainty about the languages of the first tribes identified by Romans as Germani, the Suebi are generally agreed to have spoken one or more Germanic languages within the West Germanic group. Modern languages which have evolved at least partly from Suebian languages include standard German itself, and also Alemannic German, including Swabian, Alsatian and Swiss German, and Bavarian and Austrian German. West Germanic was spoken not only by peoples known to have Suebian roots, such as the Langobards and Alemanni, but also by Franks, Saxons, Frisians, Anglo-Saxons, and Thuringians who were never called Suebi. After the resignation of the co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian in 305 AD, and the death of Maximian's replacement as western emperor Constantius Chlorus in 306 AD, Constantine I, the son of Constantius, was proclaimed emperor by his army while based at York in Britain. Many Suebi from the Danubian region were assimilated into the Langobards (Lombards), who had themselves long ago been counted among the Suebian peoples in first and second century Roman ethnography. In the 6th century, the Langobards were no longer referred to as Suebi, but they apparently absorbed Suebi during their time in the Middle Danubian, including some from the southern Suavian part of Pannonia. When the Lombards entered Italy after 568, Suebi were among the groups who joined them, and formed part of their realm in Italy. Despite all these changes, there are indications that at least one group of Suebi, the so-called "northern Suebi", seem to have survived near their Elbe homelands into the Middle Ages. The Frankish king Theudebert I (534–547) wrote to the Byzantine emperor Justinian boasting that at the start of his reign in 534 the Frankish kingdom extended "from the Danube and the frontiers of Pannonia to the northern Ocean". The subjects peoples living north of the Danube were listed as the Thuringians, North Swabians (Norsavi), Saxons, and the Eucii, who were perhaps identical with the Jutes. The Agilolfings were a noble family that ruled the Duchy of Bavaria on behalf of their Merovingian suzerains from about 550 until 788. A cadet branch of the Agilolfings also ruled the Kingdom of the Lombards intermittently from 616 to 712. They are mentioned as the leading dynasty in the Lex Baiuvariorum (c. 743). Their Bavarian residence was at Regensburg. The dynasty's eponymous ancestor is Agilulf, a semi-legendary prince of the Suebi and descendant of Hermeric, the 5th-century Suevic king of Galicia, possibly identical with one Agilulf, a steward of the Visigothic king Theoderic II, who was executed in 457. | |
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