Ingund

Ingund ( Ingunde , Inguthis ) (* probably 567; † 585 in Carthage ) was the wife of the Visigoth heir to the throne Hermenegild . She was a daughter of the Frankish King Sigibert I of Austrasia and Brunichild , who was the daughter of the Visigoth king Athanagild .

Life

After Ingund's father Sigibert I was murdered at the end of 575 after his victorious war against his hostile half-brother Chilperich I , King of Neustria , Chilperich Sigibert's wife Brunichild banished to Rouen and had her daughters Ingund and Chlodoswinth arrested in Meaux .

The Visigoth king Leovigild married his older son Hermenegild to Ingund in 579. The marriage may have been mediated by Ingund's grandmother Goswintha (Goiswintha), who after the death of her husband Athanagild married his successor Leovigild. The conclusion of this marriage triggered a religious conflict, because Ingund, like all Franks, was of the Catholic faith, whereas the Visigoth royal family clung to Arianism , although the Catholics made up the greater part of the imperial population.

Ingund, according to Gregory of Tours, was unwilling to convert to Arianism, despite Queen Goswintha's urgent requests. Rather, she is said to have influenced her husband Hermenegild to convert to the Catholic faith. To ease these tensions, Leovigild sent his son and daughter-in-law to Seville . From there, Hermenegild, who had been co-king since 573, was to administer a southern part of the Visigothic Empire.

Ingund found support from the Catholic Bishop Leander of Seville . The joint influence of Leander and Ingund caused Hermenegild to publicly convert to the Catholic faith. He also started a revolt against his father in 579. Research has disputed which of these two events happened first and whether one of them was the cause of the other or whether there was no causal relationship between them. Since Ingund was still very young at the time, her religious and political influence on her husband may be overestimated. The Hermenegild uprising was supported by the Suebi and the Byzantines , who ruled a small part of southern Spain. Leovigild initially tried in vain to find a peaceful solution. From 582 he went against his son with a superior force and put down the rebellion. At the beginning of 584 Hermenegild capitulated. Ingund and her little son Athanagild remained under the control of the Byzantines, who wanted to bring them to Constantinople as hostages . The reason for this was that Ingund's brother Childebert II had prematurely broken off a Frankish campaign financed by Emperor Maurikios against the Lombards in 584; and with the kidnapping of Ingund and her son he intended to put pressure on Childebert. Ingund died en route in 585 in Byzantine North Africa at the age of only about 18, Athanagild was taken to Constantinople.

Hermenegild remained in custody. In 585 he was assassinated, allegedly because he refused to return to Arianism. The background to the crime remains unclear and it is uncertain whether his father gave the order to kill.

literature

• Ingundis 2 , in: Arnold Hugh Martin Jones , John Robert Martindale, John Morris (eds.): The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire , Vol. III A (1992), pp. 620 f.

Web links

• Ingunde of Austrasia

Remarks

1. ^ Gregory of Tours , Ten Books, Stories 5, 1; see. Sebastian Scholz : The Merovingians , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-17-022507-7 , p. 133.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Martina Hartmann : The Queen in the Early Middle Ages , Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-17-018473-2 , p. 21.
3. ^ Gregory of Tours, Ten Books, Stories 5, 38.
4. ↑ Céline Martin: Ingonde (verse 565-verse 585) , in: Dictionnaire des femmes de l'ancienne France , Société Internationale pour l'Etude des Femmes de l'Ancien Régime (SIEFAR), 2006.
5. ^ Gregor von Tours, Ten Books, Stories 6, 42 f. and 8, 28; on this Sebastian Scholz: The Merovingians , p. 149 f. and Martina Hartmann: The Queen in the Early Middle Ages , p. 21.