Thrasamund

Denarius of Thrasamund.

Thrasamund († 523 ) was king of the Vandal Empire in North Africa from 496 to 523.

Life

Thrasamund was the third son Gentos , the fourth son of Genseric , the founder of the Vandal kingdom in North Africa. His mother is unknown. In his youth he is said to have received a classical education in Carthage ; the few available sources describe him as an educated ruler who was also interested in theological questions. When his brother Gunthamund died, he ascended the throne in 496.

In terms of domestic and foreign policy, Thrasamund was confronted with a number of problems. Opposite Ostrom sought Thrasamund compensation, while he also is an approach to Theodoric tried Ostrogothic in Italy; Theodoric, in turn, was interested in including the vandals in his alliance policy. Part of this rapprochement was the marriage of Thrasamund to Theodoric's sister Amalafrida in the year 500. Theoderic ceded the north-west of Sicily to the Vandals, but the alliance did not bring the Goths the hoped-for success, as the Vandals did not intervene when Eastern Roman ships attacked southern Italy in 508. Large areas of today's north of Algeria were lost to the Berbers during the rule of Gunthamund and Thrasamund , who were a constant threat to the Vandals. The vandal area of ​​influence, although the vandal presence in the west of the former Roman areas of North Africa was only weak anyway, shrank steadily. At the end of his rule, Vandal troops suffered a severe defeat against the camel nomads of King Kabaon. Apparently, the vandal military presence was not enough to effectively secure the border areas. However, this was made more difficult by internal disputes in the Vandal Empire, as the local Catholics were often rather hostile to them due to disputes with the Arian Vandal kings.

Thrasamund does not seem to have explicitly promoted art and culture in his realm, but it did. In any case, the culture in the Vandal Empire flourished during this time. Several eulogies are written on Thrasamund and the Latin poet Blossius Aemilius Dracontius worked in his reign. Thrasamund ended the long-standing persecution of Catholics in the Vandal Empire, but tensions between the Roman Catholic majority and the Arian Vandals apparently persisted. Catholic priests were still barred from working in certain areas, and there were numerous exiles. Thrasamund himself showed an interest in theological questions, wrote related theses and allowed religious discussions in Carthage, in which Fulgentius von Ruspe also took part (who was exiled a second time shortly afterwards), but which did not bring a decision. A building inscription in awkward letters naming the king is in the Museum of Sbeitla ( Sufetula ) in Tunisia .

When Thrasamund died after a long reign in 523, Hilderic succeeded him .

literature

• Helmut Castritius : The Vandals. Stages of a search for clues . Stuttgart u. a. 2007.
• Andy Merrills, Richard Miles: The Vandals . Oxford-Malden / MA 2010.
• Roland Steinacher: The vandals. The rise and fall of a barbarian empire. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94851-6 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Gunthamund	King of the Vandals 496-523	Hilderich