Gundoin

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Gundoin , also Gundoinus or Gondoin (* around 600 , † October 30, 656 ) was a Frankish nobleman and the first known duke in Alsace under the rule of the Merovingians .

Life

Gundoin came from a noble family in northern Burgundy , which was particularly wealthy in the Bassigny area ; the first part of the name Gund-oin indicates a Burgundian or Franco-Burgundian reference to the family. The Vita Sadalbergae , the life story of his daughter Salaberga , which was created around thirty years after Gundoin's death , mentions the Villa Mosa as the seat of the family , which can be located in Val-de-Meuse on the upper reaches of the Moselle .

After the submission of the Alemanni by the Franks as a result of the Battle of Strasbourg (506) Alsace was removed from the autonomous Duchy of Alemannia and Austrasian integrated part kingdom of the Franks. The elimination of the Pagus Ultraioranus in the extreme northeast of Burgundy by Chlothar II made a political and ecclesiastical reorganization of the border area between Burgundy and the Austrasian heartland necessary. For this reason, his son and successor, Dagobert I , created a new duchy at the end of his reign in Alsace and appointed Gundoin as its first duke , probably in 639 .

Due to the predicate Vir illustris , which monk Bobolenus gives the Duke in his contemporary Vita of St. Germanus of Granfelden , it can be assumed that Gundoin already held higher royal offices before his appointment. The common practice in the late phase of the Merovingian rule of uniting the leadership of several large pagi or ducats under one office holder has been shown to apply to the person of Gundoin and the area around the Bernese Jura , possibly also to his native Pagus Bassianensis .

Research largely agrees that Gundoin's reign concentrated mainly on the southern area of ​​the Alsace ducat - ducal activities beyond the Sundgau are only attested under Gundoin's successor in the office of the duke, Boniface.

Gundoin also played an important role in founding the Münstergranfeld monastery . At the request of Waldebert , the third abbot of the Luxeuil monastery , the duke donated extensive property around Moutier in the Birs valley , where the only direct affiliation of the influential Burgundian abbey was probably established before 640 . In addition to the Christianization in the outskirts of the Franconian Empire, the foundation of the monastery also had the task of maintaining the old and decaying Roman road as a Jura transversal to Biel .

Gundoin died on October 30, 656 - he was succeeded by Boniface as Duke of Alsace.

Identification with Duke Gunzo

Hagen Keller in particular has spoken out in favor of equating Gundoin with the Duke of Überlingen due to a simultaneous mention of a Duke Gunzo in the Vita of St. Gallus . On the other hand, there is the express reference in the Vita sancti Galli that Gunzo had his daughter Fridiburga to marry Sigibert III. "As far as the Rhine (... usque ad Rhenum) ", where the Alemannic Duke's domain obviously ended. Gundoin's Duchy, on the other hand, was demonstrably oriented to the left of the Rhine and extended as far as the Bernese Oberland, which is why modern research contradicts Keller's view. Moreover, a person witnessed the same name on November 22, 632 , along with another subscriber Chramnelenus the Charter of Bishop Eligius of Noyon for the monastery Solignac - so Gundoin likely to be the father of holy Salaberga and the Duce in the immediate environment Chramnelenus and its brother Amalgar from the influential Franco-Burgundian family of whale tricks .

Marriage and offspring

According to the Vita Sadalbergae, Gundoin was married to Saretrud and had five children with her, including the aforementioned daughter Salaberga and the sons Fulculfus Bodo and Leudinus Bodo , who later became the bishop of Toul .

Through this marital relationship, Gundoin became the progenitor of the Gundoines as the founding clan of the Weissenburg Monastery with family ties to the Agilolfingers and Burgundofarones .

literature

  • Eugen Ewig : The Merovingians and the Franconian Empire. 4th supplemented edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-017044-9 , pp. 130, 133.
  • Horst Ebeling: Prosopography of the officials of the Merovingian Empire from Chlotar II (613) to Karl Martell (741) in: Beihefte der Francia, Volume 2, Munich 1974, pp. 166-167.
  • Dieter Geuenich : History of the Alemanni (= Kohlhammer Urban pocket books. 575). 2nd, revised edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-018227-7 , p. 98.
  • Yaniv Fox: Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul: Columbanian Monasticism and the Formation of the Frankish Aristocracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-58764-9 , pp. 47, 82, 87, 142-143.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Suzanne Martinet (Head of the Laon City Library , President of the Société historique de Haute-Picardie), L'abbaye Notre-Dame la Profonde et les deux premières abbesses , p. 6
  2. ↑ Eugen Ewig: The naming of the oldest Franconian kings and the Merovingian royal house , in: Francia 18/1. Paris 1991, pp. 21-69
  3. ↑ Hans Josef Hummer: The Merovingian origin of the Vita Sadalbergae , in: German archive for research into the Middle Ages. Cologne 2003, Vol. 59 pp. 459-493
  4. ↑ Hagen Keller: Franconian rule and Alemannic duchy in the 6th and 7th centuries , in: ZGO 124 (1976), p. 27
  5. ^ Karl Weber: The formation of Alsace in the Regnum Francorum , in: Archeology and History, Volume 19. Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7995-7369-6 , pp. 83-85
personal data
SURNAME Gundoin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gundoinus; Gondoin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Duke in Alsace
DATE OF BIRTH around 600
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 656