Gundo Forest

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Gundowald , also Gundobald, Gundovald or Gondovald ( French Gombaud ; † 585 ) was king of Aquitaine around 584 or 585 as a usurper ; he was captured and killed in Comminges in 585 by King Guntram I of the Merovingian family .

Family history

Gundowald claimed to be the illegitimate son of King Chlothar I , the last king of the entire empire who died in 561, which he and his mother tried to prove through witnesses. Denied by Chlothar during his lifetime and publicly deprived of his claim to king by cutting his hair, he fled via Italy to Constantinople, where the Eastern Roman emperor granted him asylum.

Revolt against Guntram

In 581 internal turmoil broke out in the Frankish empire, so that a group of nobles asked Emperor Tiberios to send Gundowald . With financial support from his successor Maurikios , who hoped to regain influence in the former provinces of Gaul in this way , Gundowald returned to Guntram as a pretender in 582/83 . Gundowald took with his army some cities in southern Gaul and was finally raised to king. But in the meantime internal changes had occurred, and most of the nobles refused to support the usurper. Guntram, as the legitimate son of Clothar, King of Burgundy , now moved against Gundowald, whom he denigrated as the alleged miller's son "Ballomer" in order to emphasize that the pretender was in fact not a real Merovingian. Gundowald fled to Comminges , where his remaining supporters handed him over in the face of the superior strength of the Guntram army. Gundowald was executed, Guntram had successfully defended his royal dignity, and the last documented attempt of the Eastern Roman emperor to exert influence in Gaul had failed.

literature

  • Bernard S. Bachrach: The Anatomy of a Little War. A Diplomatic and Military History of the Gundovald Affair (568-586). Westview Press, Boulder CO et al. 1994, ISBN 0-8133-1492-5 .
  • Walter Goffart : Byzantine Policy in the West under Tiberius II and Maurice: The Pretenders Hermenegild and Gundovald (579-585). In: Traditio. Vol. 13, 1957, pp. 73-118, ( ISTOR ).
  • Martina Hartmann : Departure into the Middle Ages. The time of the Merovingians. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-484-6 .
  • Marc Widdowson: Merovingian Partitions. A "Genealogical Charter"? In: Early Medieval Europe . Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009, pp. 1-22, doi : 10.1111 / j.1468-0254.2009.00242.x .
  • Constantin Zuckerman: Qui a rappelé en Gaule le Ballomer Gundovald? In: Francia . Vol. 25, No. 1, 1998, pp. 1-18 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Gregory of Tours: Historiae. VII, pp. 14, 26-28, 30-38.
  2. ↑ Cf. generally Franz-Reiner Erkens (ed.): The early medieval monarchy. Idea and religious foundations (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . Supplementary volumes. Vol. 49). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2005, ISBN 3-11-018886-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Gundo Forest
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gundoald; Gundovald; Gondovald; Gombaud (French)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French nobleman, King of Aquitaine
DATE OF BIRTH 6th century
DATE OF DEATH 585