Rodelinda (6th-century), was a
Lombard queen
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
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* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
by marriage to king
Audoin
Alduin ( Langobardic: ''Aldwin'' or ''Hildwin'', ; also called Auduin or Audoin) was king of the Lombards from 547 to 560.
Life
Audoin was of the Gausi, a prominent Lombard ruling clan, and according to the ''Historia Langobardorum'', the so ...
, and mother of king
Alboin
Alboin (530s – 28 June 572) was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effe ...
.
Life
She was the first wife of
Audoin
Alduin ( Langobardic: ''Aldwin'' or ''Hildwin'', ; also called Auduin or Audoin) was king of the Lombards from 547 to 560.
Life
Audoin was of the Gausi, a prominent Lombard ruling clan, and according to the ''Historia Langobardorum'', the so ...
,
regent
A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
for the infant
king of the Lombards
The Kings of the Lombards or ''reges Langobardorum'' (singular ''rex Langobardorum'') were the monarchs of the Lombard people from the early 6th century until the Lombardic identity became lost in the 9th and 10th centuries. After 568, the Lombar ...
Walthari
Walthari (also Waltheri, ) son of Wacho from his third wife Silinga, was a king of the Lombards from 539 to 546. He was an infant king, and rulership of the kingdom was administered by Audoin. Audoin probably killed Waltari before he reached manho ...
from 540 to 546/547 and king in his own right from 546/547 to an uncertain date after 552, and gave him a son, his successor
Alboin
Alboin (530s – 28 June 572) was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effe ...
.
[Martindale 1992, ''s.v. Audoin'', pp. 152 – 153]
When the marriage took place is unclear. The contemporary
Procopius
Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman gen ...
speaks of a marriage arrangement between Audoin and an unnamed sister of
Amalafrid Amalafrid ( la, Amalafridas, el, 'Αμαλαφρίδας Martindale, Jones & Morris (1992), p. 50) was the son of the last Thuringian king Hermanafrid and his wife Amalaberga, daughter of Amalafrida and niece of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the ...
, a prince of mixed royal
Ostrogothic
The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who ...
and
Thuringian
Thuringian is an East Central German dialect group spoken in much of the modern German Free State of Thuringia north of the Rennsteig ridge, southwestern Saxony-Anhalt and adjacent territories of Hesse and Bavaria. It is close to Upper Saxon sp ...
stock. The betrothal had been organized by the
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
Emperor
Justinian
Justinian I (; la, Iustinianus, ; grc-gre, Ἰουστινιανός ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565.
His reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovat ...
at a date spanning from ca. 540 to 552, and this unnamed female may be the Rodelinda named by
Paul the Deacon; but it has been objected to by the ''
Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire
''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' (abbreviated as ''PLRE'') is a work of Roman prosopography published in a set of three volumes collectively describing many of the people attested to have lived in the Roman Empire from AD 260, the date ...
'' that it is not certain that the marriage Procopius speaks of eventually took place. A major difficulty added to this is that in 552 Alboin was already a warrior. The ''PLRE'' believes the marriage between Audoin and Rodelinda took place in the 530s.
Other scholars instead tend to accept the identification, observing its importance in linking the Lombard kings with the bloodline of the
Amali, the royal house of the Ostrogoths. Such a marriage would have made Audoin a legitimate heir to both the Ostrogothic and Thuringian thrones, the latter in particular as Audoin was already half-brother of the last king of the Thuringians, thus putting him in opposition to the
Franks
The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools, ...
who had taken over most of the Thuringian lands.
Another explanation of Rodelinda's origins is given by István Boná: according to him she was probably a
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
n princess, to be considered distinct from the Thuringian princess Audoin was engaged to later on.
[Boná 1976, p. 25]
Notes
References
*
Amory, Patrick. ''People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489 – 554''.
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
:
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
, 2003, .
* Boná, István. ''A l'aube du Moyen Age: Gépides et Lombards dans le bassin des Carpates''.
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
: Corvina Press, 1974
976
Year 976 ( CMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place Byzantine Empire
* January 10 – Emperor John I Tzimiskes dies at Constantinople, after re ...
.
*
* Jarnut, Jörg. ''Storia dei Longobardi''.
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...
: Einaudi, 1982
995
Year 995 ( CMXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Japan
* 17 May - Fujiwara no Michitaka (imperial regent) dies.
* 3 June: Fujiwara no Michikane gain ...
.
*Martindale, John R. (ed.), ''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire - Volume III: A.D. 527 – 641'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, .
*
Schutz, Herbert. ''Tools, Weapons and Ornaments: Germanic Material Culture in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400 – 750''.
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wi ...
:
Brill
Brill may refer to:
Places
* Brielle (sometimes "Den Briel"), a town in the western Netherlands
* Brill, Buckinghamshire, a village in England
* Brill, Cornwall, a small village to the west of Constantine, Cornwall, UK
* Brill, Wisconsin, an un ...
, 2001, .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodelinda (6th Century)
6th-century Italian women
Thuringian women
Lombardic queens consort
6th-century Lombard people