Burgundians

This article is about the Germanic tribe that lived during the Roman era. For the royal dynasty, see House of Burgundy. For the political group during the Hundred Years War, see Burgundian (party).
The Roman Empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–138 AD), showing a possible location of the Burgundiones Germanic group, inhabiting the region between the Viadua (Oder) and Visula (Vistula) rivers (Poland)

The Burgundians[1] were an early Germanic tribe or group of tribes. They appeared east in the middle Rhine region in the third century AD, and were later moved west into the Roman Empire, in Gaul. In the first and second centuries AD they, or a people with the same name, were mentioned by Roman writers living west of the Vistula river in the region of Germania which is now part of Poland.

The Burgundians were first mentioned near the Rhine regions together with the Alamanni as early as the 11th panegyric to emperor Maximian given in Trier in 291 AD, referring to events that must have happened between 248 and 291, and these two peoples apparently remained neighbours for centuries.[2]

By 411 AD Burgundians had established control over Roman cities on the Rhine, between Franks and Alamanni, including Worms, Speyer, and Strasbourg. In 436 AD, Aëtius defeated the Burgundians on the Rhine with the help of Hunnish forces, and then in 443, he re-settled the Burgundians within the empire, in eastern Gaul. This Gaulish domain became the Kingdom of the Burgundians, which much later became a component of the Frankish Empire. The name of this kingdom survives in the regional appellation, Burgundy, which is a region in modern France, although the modern Burgundy represents only a part of that kingdom.

Another part of the Burgundians formed a contingent in Attila's Hunnic army by 451 AD.[3][4]

Before clear documentary evidence begins, the Burgundians may have originally emigrated from the Baltic island of Bornholm to the Vistula region.[5]

  1. ^ (Latin: Burgundes, Burgundiōnes, Burgundī; Old Norse: Burgundar; Old English: Burgendas; ‹See Tfd›Greek: Βούργουνδοι)
  2. ^ Nixon; Saylor Rodgers, eds. (January 1994), In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, University of California Press, pp. 100–101, ISBN 9780520083264
  3. ^ Sidonnius Appolinarius, Carmina, 7, 322
  4. ^ Luebe, Die Burgunder, in Krüger II, p. 373 n. 21, in Herbert Schutz, Tools, weapons and ornaments: Germanic material culture in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400–750, BRILL, 2001, p.36
  5. ^ "Burgundy: History". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved January 17, 2015.