Gundioch

Gundioch (also Gundowech and Gondioc ; † around 473) was king of the Burgundians in the years after the destruction of the Burgundian empire on the Rhine by the Huns . He was probably a son of King Gundahar († 436) and is described by Gregory of Tours as a descendant of the Visigoth king Athanaric († 381).

In 406 the Burgundians crossed the Rhine under their King Gundahar (Gundihar, Guntiar) near Mainz (see Rhine crossing from 406 ) and then settled on the Rhine with the permission of the Roman Emperor Honorius .

Gundahar's violent attempts to expand his empire westward ( Belgica I ) brought the Burgundians into conflict with the Romans 30 years later. In 435, a Burgundian army was defeated by Hunnic auxiliaries under the Roman army master Aëtius and finally destroyed. This event is considered to be the historical core of the Nibelungen epic .

Gundahar was killed in the process, as were reportedly most of his tribe. Some of the survivors submitted to Attila and were settled in Pannonia , but the majority joined the Romans as auxiliary troops under their new King Gundioch .

Aëtius settled them in 443 as federates in western Switzerland and the Sapaudia (today's Savoy ) as a buffer against the strengthening Alemanni , with which the new kingdom of the Burgundians with the capital Geneva was born. Gundioch fought in 451 in the battle of the Catalaunian fields against the Huns of Attila and in 456 on the orders of the emperor Avitus with the Visigoth king Theodoric II against the Suebi under Rechiar in Spain.

In 457 he was called by the rebellious residents of Lyons (in the same year his brother Chilperich I is also named as king). In breaking the federation relationship, he took over the city, was driven out by Emperor Majorian and subjugated. After his assassination in 461, he resumed his policy of conquest - from today's regions of Savoy, Southern Switzerland and Franche-Comté. In 461 he made Lyon his new capital, he seized the provinces Lugdunensis I (today Burgundy) and Viennensis (Rhônetal, 463). Domestically, he ruled his enlarged empire by observing a strict separation between Burgundians (military administration) and locals (civil administration).

The increase in power led to the fact that after Aëtius' death (454) the new ruler Ricimer married his sister to Gundioch in order to achieve a balance of power in Gaul. Ricimer made him his Magister militum Galliarum in 463 , Burgundian associations were stationed by the Romans in Avignon and Embrun .

Gundioch's son Gundobad was his successor after Ricimer's death in 472 (a further indication of the growing strategic importance of the Burgundy), but gave up this position again when his father died around 473, although the surviving Chilperic I now assumed sole royal power. After Chilperich's death around 480, according to older research, there was a division of the Burgundian empire among Gundioch's four sons Gundobad, Chilperich II , Godomar I and Godegisel . In recent research this is strongly doubted because there is a lack of reliable evidence; the exact dates of the death of Gundioch's sons are also unclear. It is now assumed that both Godomar and Chilperich II had already died in 476/77 and only Godegisel and Gundobad shared rule.

literature

• Reinhold Kaiser : The Burgundy (= Urban pocket books. Vol. 586). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-17-016205-5 , p. 48 ff.

Remarks

1. ↑ Reinhold Kaiser: The Burgundy. Stuttgart 2004, p. 115 f.

predecessor	Office	successor
Gundahar	King of the Burgundies 436–473	Chilperich I.