The Turcilingi (also spelled Torcilingi or Thorcilingi) were an obscure
barbarian people, or possibly a clan or dynasty, who appear in historical sources relating to
Middle Danubian peoples who were present in
Italy during the reign of
Romulus Augustulus
Romulus Augustus ( 465 – after 511), nicknamed Augustulus, was Roman emperor of the West from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. Romulus was placed on the imperial throne by his father, the ''magister militum'' Orestes, and, at that tim ...
(475–76). Their only known leader was
Odoacer (Odovacar), but he was described as a ruler of several ethnic groups.
Although various origins have been proposed including Hunnic, recent research favors the idea that the Turcilingi might be identical to the
Thuringii
The Thuringii, Toringi or Teuriochaimai, were an early Germanic people that appeared during the late Migration Period in the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thuringia. It became a kingdom, which came into c ...
, who are first mentioned in association with a type of horse, known to the Romans but became politically important only after the fall of Odoacar.
Primary sources
The Turcilingi are mentioned in only one independent source: they appear three times in the works of
Jordanes, twice in his ''
Getica'' and once in his ''
Romana''. They are also mentioned once in the ''Historia Langobardorum'' of
Paul the Deacon in a passage that is a derivative of Jordanes and once in the ''Historia Miscella'' of
Landolfus Sagax
Landolfus Sagax or Landolfo Sagace (''sagax'' meaning "expert" or "scholar") was a Langobard historian who wrote a ''Historia Romana'' in the Beneventan Duchy (last quarter of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh).
When his ''Historia'' ...
in a passage derived from Paul.
Johann Kaspar Zeuss, followed by
Karl Müllenhoff, believed that the 'Ρουτίχλειοι (Routikleioi) mentioned in the ''
Geographia'' of
Ptolemy (II.11.7) were the Turcilingi, but this thesis requires a complex etymology. Landulf Sagax lists them together with the
Sciri
The Sciri, or Scirians, were a Germanic people. They are believed to have spoken an East Germanic language. Their name probably means "the pure ones".
The Sciri were mentioned already in the late 3rd century BC as participants in a raid on the ...
among the nations which participated on the side of
Attila
Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in March 453. He was also the leader of a tribal empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Bulgars, among others, in Central and E ...
and the
Huns at the
Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, Battle of Châlons, Battle of Troyes or the Battle of Maurica, took place on June 20, 451 AD, between a coalition – led by the Roman general ...
.
Jordanes speaks of the Turcilingi, though he makes no mention of them at Châlons. The Turcilingi were joined with several other barbarian tribes, like the Sciri,
Rugii, and
Heruli
The Heruli (or Herules) were an early Germanic people. Possibly originating in Scandinavia, the Heruli are first mentioned by Roman authors as one of several "Scythian" groups raiding Roman provinces in the Balkans and the Aegean Sea, attacking b ...
, under Odoacer as ''
foederati'' of the
Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus
Romulus Augustus ( 465 – after 511), nicknamed Augustulus, was Roman emperor of the West from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. Romulus was placed on the imperial throne by his father, the ''magister militum'' Orestes, and, at that tim ...
, who was a puppet of his father,
Flavius Orestes
OrestesNo other names are known, according to J.R. Martindale ''The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' vol. II pp. 811–812. Cambridge University Press, 1980 (died 28 August 476) was a Roman general and politician of Pannonian ancestr ...
. The barbarians demanded from Orestes in return for their military service some Italian land on which to settle. They were denied. According to Jordanes:
When
Theodoric the Great was looking for a pretext to invade Italy in 493, he petitioned the
Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno
Zeno ( grc, Ζήνων) may refer to:
People
* Zeno (name), including a list of people and characters with the name
Philosophers
* Zeno of Elea (), philosopher, follower of Parmenides, known for his paradoxes
* Zeno of Citium (333 – 264 BC), ...
by reminding him of the "tyranny" (unlawful rule) of the city of
Rome by Turcilingi and Rugii. According to Jordanes, Theodoric gave the following justification:
Reynolds and Lopez note that Jordanes consistently writes the word often translated as "Rugii", the name of a Middle Danubian Germanic people, with an "o" and not a "u" when referring to Odoacer. They compare the third mention, in the ''Romana'' (344) which describes him as "''genere Rogus''" which could be read as "offspring of a person named Rogus". Reynolds and Lopez connect this to the fact that Rogus was recorded as the name of an uncle of Attila, and point out that "regis Torcilingorum Rogorumque", though it looks like it refers to two tribes, is notable for not referring to any of the better-known peoples Odoacer is normally associated with ruling, such as the Sciri or Heruli, and propose that Odoacer is being described by Jordanes as a "Torcilingi-king, of the stock of Rogus, with Sciri and Herul followers".
Fredegar
The ''Chronicle of Fredegar'' is the conventional title used for a 7th-century Frankish chronicle that was probably written in Burgundy. The author is unknown and the attribution to Fredegar dates only from the 16th century.
The chronicle begin ...
, writing in the middle of the 7th century, cites the ''Torci'' as living in eastern Europe.
Claude Cahen
Claude Cahen (26 February 1909 – 18 November 1991) was a 20th-century French Marxist orientalist and historian. He specialized in the studies of the Islamic Middle Ages, Muslim sources about the Crusades, and social history of the medieval Is ...
argued that these were a remnant of the Turcilingi.
Paul the Deacon, in his opening chapter, names several peoples (
Vandals, Rugii, Heruli, Turcilingi) who have come, he says, from ''
Germania'' to Italy. He goes on to name the
Lombards as latecomers from the same region. This passage is clearly based on Jordanes, but its reference to Germany is unique. Nonetheless, Paul does not say that the Turcilingi are Germans, but only where they came from: "The Goths indeed, and the Wandals, the Rugii, Heroli, and Turcilingi, and also other fierce and barbarous nations have come from Germany."
Identification
From the sources it is not possible to infer the origin of Turcilingi.
The Turcilingi are generally considered to have been a
Germanic tribe.
[ ... "the problem of the Turcilingi should be mentioned; this is a tribal group found along with Germanic groups, apparently always East-Germanic ones, which is usually considered to be itself Germanic."] By one 19th century account, the Turcilingi appear to have originated in Germany, perhaps near the
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain.
The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...
, and thence moved with the Huns into Gaul and finally to the
Danube, possibly
Noricum, before entering Italy with Odoacer. It was often assumed that they were an
Eastern Germanic people related to the Sciri, or at least connected to the Sciri by special affinity. Nineteenth-century German scholarship thus supposed that the Turcilingi were neighbours of (or the same people as) the Sciri in the first century, or that they were the royal clan of the Sciri
or the Huns. The more enthusiastic invented a homeland for them straddling the
Oder
The Oder ( , ; Czech, Lower Sorbian and ; ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river in total length and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows th ...
, with the Sciri to the east, the Vandals to the west, and the Rugii to the north. These scholars placed them in the
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
''
mouvance''.
More recently,
Herwig Wolfram
Herwig Wolfram (born 14 February 1934) is an Austrian historian who is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History at the University of Vienna and the former Director of the . He is a leading member of the Vienna Scho ...
has continued to classify the Turcilingi as a Germanic tribe, and supports the notion that they were the royal clan of the Sciri.
Still more recently, they have been identified with the
Thuringii
The Thuringii, Toringi or Teuriochaimai, were an early Germanic people that appeared during the late Migration Period in the Harz Mountains of central Germania, a region still known today as Thuringia. It became a kingdom, which came into c ...
by Wolfram Brandes and
Helmut Castritius, and this conclusion has begun to gain more acceptance, including
Walter Pohl
Walter Pohl (born 27 December 1953, in Vienna) is an Austrian historian who is Professor of Auxiliary Sciences of History and Medieval History at the University of Vienna. He is a leading member of the Vienna School of History.
Biography
Walter ...
and
Peter Heather. The reasoning is based on upon the facts that the ''
Suda'' describes Odoacer's brother
Onoulphus Onoulphus, also Onoulf, Unulf and Hunulf (died 493) was a general of the late fifth century of Scirian origin. He served as ''magister militum per Illyricum'' from 477 to 479 as a general of the Eastern Roman Empire, then afterwards was a general fo ...
as a Thuringian on his father's side and Scirian on his mother's. The Thuringian identity of Odoacer's father is denied in 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 ...
''.
Hyun Jin Kim
Hyun Jin Kim (born 1982) is an Australian academic, scholar and author.
He was born in Seoul and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. Kim got his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford. He started learning Latin, German, and ...
thinks the ''Suda'' contains a hypercorrection by a scribe who did not recognise the Turcilingi. Jordanes refers to both peoples.
Kim argues that they were "a Turkic-speaking tribe under Hunnic rule ... probably of mixed origin ... with possibly a Germanic and Turkic (Hunnic) mixture." Cahen, too, argued they were Turkic-speaking Huns.
Etymology
The problem of identification is related to the problem of
etymology. Both are related to the question whether the Turcilingi were Germanic or not. The root ''Turci-'' has led some scholars to suggest that they were a
Turkic-speaking tribe. The ''-ling'' suffix is
Germanic, denoting members of a line, usually one descended from a common ancestor.
Kim believes the name is a Germanization of Turkic name.
References
Sources
*
Cahen, Claude (1973). "Frédegaire et les Turcs". In ''Économies et sociétés au Moyen Âge: mélanges offerts à Édouard Perroy''. Paris, pp. 24–27.
*
Goffart, Walter A. (1980). ''Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
.
*
Jordanes''The Origins and Deeds of the Goths''. Charles C. Mierow, trans. Last modified 22 April 1997.
*
*
*
*McBain, Bruce (1983). "Odovacer the Hun?" ''Classical Philology'', 78:4 (Oct.), pp. 323–327.
*MacGeorge, Penny (2002). ''Late Roman Warlords''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
.
*
*
*
Paul the Deacon (1907)
''Historia Langobardorum''IV.xliiWilliam Dudley Foulke, trans.
*
*
*
*
*
{{refend
Ancient peoples of Europe
Iron Age peoples of Europe
Migration Period