Hilderich

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the Bishop of Speyer see Hilderich (Speyer) .

Denarius / nummus of Hilderich

Hilderich , also Hildericus , Hilderix , Hildirit , Hildimer (* around 457, † 533 in Carthage ), was a grandson of the Western Roman emperor Valentinian III. and from 523 to 530 King of the Vandals in Africa .

Hilderich was a grandson of Geiserich and son of Hunerich and Eudocia , the daughter of the Western Roman emperor Valentinian III. In it, the Theodosian dynasty , which ruled the Roman Empire from 364 to 455 , was united with the Vandal ruling house.

His parents Hunerich and Eudocia were betrothed as a result of the Roman-Vandal peace treaty (foedus) of 442 in order to secure the Roman-Vandal peace. This engagement and with it the peace treaty of 442 was broken by the Western Roman Emperor Petronius Maximus through the marriage of his son to Hilderich's mother Eudocia. The renewed Roman-Vandal conflict culminated in the sack of Rome (455) . When the Vandals withdrew, Hilderich's grandmother, the widow of the empress Licinia Eudoxia , was brought to Africa with his mother Eudocia and his aunt Placidia , where they were received with all honors. A little later, Eudocia was married to Hunerich in accordance with the 442 agreement.

After the death of his cousin Thrasamund in 523, their son Hilderich was made king according to the rules of the seniorate . He had Thrasamund's fled widow Amalafrida imprisoned and probably murdered in 525. As a result, Hilderic broke with the Ostrogoths .

He ended the persecution of Catholics, turned away from Arianism and approached the Eastern Roman Empire . He did not have his portrait struck on his gold coins, but that of the Roman emperor Justinian , with whom he was on good terms. Before that, the Vandals were the only regimes in the West to ignore this emperor's privilege . Also because of this, an opposing party finally arose, which was convinced of its ineptitude, especially after the king's heavy defeat against the Berbers under Antalas. With their help Gelimer , a great-grandson of Geiserich, seized the throne in August 530 and overthrew Hilderich.

Gelimer initially shied away from having Hilderich killed and instead took him into custody. But when Emperor Justinian did not recognize Gelimer as rex and in 533, after some hesitation, opened the war against the Vandals to have Hilderich reinstated, Gelimer left Hilderich and his nephews in September after the imperial general Belisarius had landed with an expeditionary corps in North Africa Execute Euagees in Carthage by his brother Ammatas to prevent them from regaining the throne in view of the appearance of the Eastern Romans .

literature

• John Robert Martindale: Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (PLRE) Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, 4th ed., Cambridge 2006, pp. 564f. ( online )
• Andy Merrills, Richard Miles: The Vandals . Blackwell, Oxford-Malden / MA 2010, p. 346 (Index, Hilderic ).
• Roland Steinacher: The vandals. The rise and fall of a barbarian empire. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94851-6 , pp. 288ff.

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} PLRE vol. 1, p. 564f.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Martina Hartmann : The Queen in the Early Middle Ages. Stuttgart 2009, p. 7ff.
3. ^ Prokopios of Caesarea , Historien 3, 17.

predecessor	Office	successor
Thrasamund	King of the Vandals 523-530	Gelimer