Droctulft

Droctulft even Droctulfus or Droctulfo or Drokton , rare Drocdon or Drogdone ( bl. 568-586 / 598) was an East Roman general who suebischer so Alamannic descent ', as Paul the Deacon expresses. According to his Historia Langobardorum , he grew up with the Longobards , with whom he set off for Italy in 568. There he rose to dux , which was later translated as 'Herzog'. Finally he freed himself from captivity (of the Lombards) and switched to the Eastern Roman side. From then on he fought for the emperor against the Lombards, and in the Balkans also against the Slavs and Avars . It probably came to Carthage around 598 or earlier , when the "Droctulfò" mentioned in a papal letter is identical with Droctulft.

Ascent to the Dux, fight against Lombards on the Eastern Roman side

Italy around 590

After Faroald I of Spoleto , the Lombard duke who had conquered the port of Ravenna , Droctulft managed to recapture the port of Classis around 575/76. For a short time, however, Droctulft fell into "captivitas", as Paul puts it, in captivity, but he was released again. Around 584 he was elevated to the status of the Eastern Roman Dux of Brescello ( Reggio Emilia ), where a bridge over the Po had to be guarded to cover the Port of Classis. This represented the most important sea connection from Ravenna to Constantinople , and thus between Italy and the imperial capital. Between 584 and 590 he fought King Authari , who however forced him to retreat to Ravenna and to transfer his duchy. The Lombard king had the walls of Brescello torn down. Authari made a three-year peace with the exarch Smaragdus .

The only source that reports on the events besides Paulus Diaconus is the epitaph in verse , which was set up for Droctulft in San Vitale in Ravenna. It tells how the East Romans supported him and how he fought for Ravenna, which was seen as his hometown, but also how he recaptured Brescello - his first military success on the side of East Romans. Then he set up a fleet of small ships with which he sailed down the Po and wrested the port of Classe from Faroald. According to what is known about Faroald, the first dux of Spoleto , this reconquest must have taken place between 575 and 576. This in turn had rebelled against Ostrom and created his own domain. Now the Longobards under Authari conquered Brescello. Soon, however, Classe fell back to Ostrom, which gives the epitaph additional credibility.

Dismissed for the fight against Avars, burial in Ravenna

Then Droctulft was called to the Balkan provinces of the empire to fight there against the Slavs and Avars who besieged Adrianople in 586 . This is what Theophylaktos Simokates reports , the Droctulft, whom he calls “Drokton”, more precisely Δρὀκτον, referred to as the “Lombards”. During the defense he was subordinate to the Magister militum per Orientem Johannes Mystakon as a sub-strategist (hypostrátegos) . Droctulft achieved victory through a trick. He faked to flee, but then turned back and in turn forced the Avars to abandon the siege.

Droctulft was buried in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, where Paul still encountered the corresponding epitaph , which has otherwise been handed down in two copies. This epigram in 32 verses tells of Droctulft's death in the distance, and that a priest John thus complied with Droctulft's wish expressed on his deathbed: "per il pio amore del quale tornò in queste terre".

Possible mention in a letter from Pope Gregory I (598)

It is uncertain whether the mention of a "Droctulfus" in a letter from Pope Gregory the Great to the Eastern Roman exarch of Carthage , Gennadius , refers to Droctulft. In this letter from September – October 598, Pope recommends Droctulfò, the bearer of the letter that has returned from the enemy (“de hostibus ad rempublicam veniens”). It is fitting that the epitaph in question reports that he often returned to San Vitale after his victories. The trip to Africa remains uncertain, however. Since this name only appears once among the Lombards, there are a few arguments in favor of this, perhaps last, trip.

reception

As the epitaph says, Droctulft was a "vastator gentis suae". The best connoisseur of his biography was probably Giampiero Bognetti. Droctulft saw Droctulft as a typical foederatus of the empire, whose life cycle best illuminates the period between 575/76 and 589/90. After him, Droctulft had followed Alboin's murderers , Helmichis and Rosamunde , on the run from Cleph , the elected successor to the first Lombard king in Italy in 572. Yet this claim is without any source evidence. The fact that Droculft had to leave his "cari genitori" to do so indicates a very young age for Bognetti. For him, the conquest of Brescellos is part of a great attempt at reconquest by the east. The defeat and the withdrawal of numerous Lombards for the fight in Syria would have further weakened the Eastern Roman position in Italy. Those left behind had the choice of reconciling with the Lombards or continuing to fight them. But on the one hand it is difficult to explain how the 572, still very young, Droctulft is said to have led an Eastern Roman contingent of importance three or four years later, and that in a key position in the Lombard-Eastern Roman war. On the other hand, according to Stefano Gasparri, not everything that Paulus Diaconus reports and that does not agree with the epitaph can be relegated to the realm of fantasy. This applies, for example, to the captivity of the Lombards - whereby the Suebian origin is claimed in both sources. This probably goes back to the temporary neighborhood between the Longobards and the Suebi in Bohemia and Moravia , when there was an armed conflict under King Wacho in the first half of the 6th century . Suebi also joined Alboin's train to Italy. Is less likely that the prisoner goes back to the struggles in Italy between Lombards and Sueben on one side and Franks and Alemanni transpired on the other side. How the title of a Longobard Dux , which could also be of Eastern Roman origin, got Droctulft is also unclear.

Benedetto Croce , remembering the lost epitaph, said that poetry was found where it was least expected ( La poesia , Bari 1942, p. 278). He was particularly fascinated by the change in loyalty from his tribe and relatives to Ravenna. In Jorge Louis Borges ' Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva , Buenos Aires 1952, he appears less as a historical personality than as a symbol, as a warrior figure, as an expression of storytelling; as an expression of a fictitious juxtaposition of barbarism and (Roman) civilization, which has long since ceased to exist.

swell

• Paulus Deacon , Liber III, 18 f.
• Theophylaktos Simokates , 8 books, II, 17 ( Historiae (digitized))
• Ludo Moritz Hartmann (Ed.): Gregorii papae I Registrum epistolarum , Monumenta Germaniae Historica , Epistolae, II, Berlin 1899, IX, 10, p. 46 f. ( Digitized version )

literature

• Stefano Gasparri:  Droctulfo (Drocton, Droctulfus). In: Fiorella Bartoccini (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 41:  Donaggio – Dugnani. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1992.
• Giampiero Bognetti: Tradizione longobarda e politica bizantina nelle origini del Ducato di Spoleto , in: Ders. (Ed.): L'età longobarda , III, Milan 1967, pp. 461-469
• Jörg Jarnut : Prosopographical and socio-historical studies on the Longobard Empire in Italy (568-774) , Bonn 1972, p. 349.
• Stefano Gasparri: I duchi longobardi , Rome 1978, p. 54 f.

Remarks

1. ↑ "Iste ex Suavorum hoc est Alamannorum gente oriundus inter Langobardos creverat ...".
2. ↑ Parisinus 528 (10th century) and Palatinus 833 (9th – 10th century).
3. ↑ So he quotes: "contempsit caros, dum nos amata individuelle, parentes / hanc patriam reputans esse, Ravenna suam".
4. ↑ Alessandro Iannucci: Poesia, storia e narrazioni esemplari: Droctulf da Croce a Borges , in: Byzantinistica XIII (2011) 239-254 ( academia.edu ).