Matronae Gratichae
The Matronae Gratichae are matrons that are only attested by an inscription on a lost votive stone from Euskirchen from the Roman Empire , probably from the core time of the Rhenish matron worship of the 2nd to 3rd centuries.
"Matronis Gratich () C (aius) Firmin (ius) / Amandus [p] ro s (e) a (nimo) l (ibente) v (otum) s (olvit)"
The votive stone was found in Euskirchen in 1663, along with two other votive stones donated to the matrons Ratheiheis and Caimineis . All three stones were lost after they were found. Hermann Crombach recorded the find in his "History of the City of Cologne and the Surrounding Area".
According to Günter Neumann, the traditional sequence of the nickname Gratich is presumably a nominal stem Germanic * grat- with a tectal suffix extension to ahi or -ihi . He compares or puts the reconstructed root of the word to the Old High German and Middle High German evidence graz = "Sprouts, saplings, young branches of coniferous wood". Furthermore, Neumann adds the evidence of the Middle High German neuter grazzach = "young shoot of coniferous wood". To this end, he cites numerous ahd. And mhd. Nouns that have these suffixes and denote, for example, plants such as ahd. Brāmahi = "blackberry thicket" or dornahi, farnahi = "scrub" and names of places or places such as ahd. Steinahi = "stony land" , bruohhahi "swamp water "; Formations that continue into today's field or place names ( Rispach , Stockach , Viechtach ). Neumann therefore derives the nickname from a field name that means "place where young conifers are".
See also
literature
- Wilhelm Brambach : Corpus inscriptionum Rhenanarum. Friderichs, Elberfeld 1867, No. 561-563, p. 126.
- Siegfried Gutenbrunner : The Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions. Max Niemeyer, Halle / S. 1936, pp. 172, 216.
- Günter Neumann : The Germanic matron names. In: Matronen und related deities (= supplements to the Bonner Jahrbücher 44). Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne / Habelt, Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-7927-0934-1 , pp. 103-132 = Astrid van Nahl, Heiko Hettrich (eds.): Günter Neumann: Name studies on Old Germanic (= supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanic Antiquity, Vol. 59). de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020100-0 , pp. 253-289; here 275f. ( Fee Germanic Altertumskunde Online at de Gruyter ).
- Rudolf Simek : Lexicon of Germanic Mythology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 368). 3rd, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-520-36803-X , pp. 149, 266-271.
- Theo Vennemann : Morphology of the Lower Rhine matron names . In: Edith Marold , Christiane Zimmermann (Hrsg.): Nordwestgermanisch (= supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde ). tape 13 . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1995, ISBN 978-3-11-014818-3 , pp. 272-291; here 288 ( fee-based Germanic antiquity online at de Gruyter).