Menia

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Menia († after 510) was a Longobard , probably from the royal family. She is mentioned by Venantius Fortunatus (around 600) and was married to the Thuringian king Bisin in her first marriage until about 500-510 and after his death with a Lombards from the Gausen family who were not known by name . Alboin , the founder of the Italian Longobard Empire, was her grandson.

Life

Longobard settlement area on the middle Danube

Menia was the wife of the first Thuringian king known by name, Bisin (or Basin). With him she had three sons known by name, Herminafried , Berthachar and Baderich , who divided up the empire among themselves after the death of their father, as well as a daughter, Raicunda , who married the Lethingian Longobard king Wacho around 510 , but died soon after and remained childless. Menia went, probably after Bisin's death, together with her daughter to Wacho's Longobard Empire on the middle Danube and married a Longobard from Gausus' family there around 510 in their second marriage. From this marriage arose Audoin , who later became king of the Pannonian Longobard Empire on the lower Danube. Under Audoin's son Alboin, the Longobards invaded Italy in 568 and founded the Italian Longobard Empire.

reception

As the mother and grandmother of these legendary Longobard kings, Menia probably stayed in the cultural memory for a long time. According to the report of Paulus Diaconus in the Historia Langobardorum , her grandson Alboin was praised not only by the Longobards, but also by the Bavarians , Saxons and other Germanic peoples in heroic songs; even the Anglo-Saxon Widsið (Widsithlied) in the Exeter Book from the late 10th century reports about Alboin.

Wolfram Brandes points to a trace of Queen Menia in Byzantine hagiographic literature (particularly Sicily) and in Old Norse literature . He states that a menia also occurs in Norse literature . The figure of Menia in the Grottasǫngr from the ( Edda ) shows similarities with the heroine of the same name in a Greek saint's life in Sicily. It cannot be a coincidence, says Brandes, that both bear the very rare and unusually educated (Germanic) name Menia, can bring forth gold and wealth, one is a giantess in the Grottasǫngr , the other is the wife of a descendant of the "Vita" Giant Hunter ” Nimrod from the Old Testament and both are able to“ see the future ”. The Vita of St. Pankratios of Taormina , written in the second half of the 8th century, apparently conveyed elements of Lombard heroic sagas into the Norse grotto song , according to Brandes . This vita was widespread in the Greek Sicily and from around 800 also in the rest of the Byzantine Empire and above all in Constantinople . It is possible that news of the main opponents of the Byzantines in Italy and their leaders reached the remaining Byzantine territories, the intermediaries of which were most likely Varäger , who was in the Greek service . Brandes led the Norwegian king Haraldr Sigurðarson harðráði († 1066), who served in a Byzantine army in 1039/1040 that fought the Saracens in Sicily. Haraldr and his followers very likely even came to Taormina, where the cult of the mythical town- founder Menia was cultivated and the memoria of Menia was present through the Vita des Pankratios and its liturgical use.

It is these elements of Byzantine liturgical memoria, concludes Brandes, that were apparently heard by Scandinavians on a Byzantine campaign against the Sazarens in Sicily and brought to the Scandinavian north, where they brought Queen Menia a long afterlife in the Old Norse Edda.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cf. Historia Langobardorum codicis Gothani 5, 13. In: Ludwig Bethmann, Georg Waitz (ed.): Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI-IX. Hannover 1878, p. 9 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ). There it says in Latin: Mater autem Audoin nomine Menia uxor fuit Pissae regis.
  2. ↑ a b c d Cf. Jörg Jarnut : Thuringians and Longobards in the 6th and early 7th centuries. In: The early days of the Thuringians (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Supplementary volume 63). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021454-3 , pp. 279-290.
  3. ↑ See Historia Langobardorum codicis Gothani 5, 13 f. In: Ludwig Bethmann, Georg Waitz (eds.): Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI-IX. Hannover 1878, p. 9 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ). There it goes on to say: Audoin ex genere fuit Gausus.
  4. ↑ Cf. Paulus Diaconus, Historia Langobardorum 1, 27. In: Ludwig Bethmann, Georg Waitz (ed.): Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI-IX. Hannover 1878, p. 70 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version ). Paulus Diaconus writes: Alboin vero ita praeclarum longe lateque nomen percrebuit, ut hactenus etiam tam aput Baioariorum gentem quamque et Saxonum, sed et alios eiusdem linguae homines eius liberalitas et gloria bellorumque felicitas et virtus in eorum carminibus celebret. Arma quoque praecipua sub eo fabricata fuisse, a multis hususque narratur.
  5. ↑ See Widsið (70–74). In: The Exeter book riddles. Translated and introduced by Kevin Crossley-Holland. Revised edition. Enitharmon Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-904634-46-1 ( Wikisource ). See also Francis B. Gummeres' English translation while maintaining the Anglo-Saxon meter: The Oldest English Epic. Beowulf, Finnsburg, Waldere, Deor, Widsith, and the German Hildebrand. Translated in the Original Metres with Introduction and Notes. Macmillan, New York 1923, pp. 188-200 ( Wikisource ).
  6. ↑ Cf. Wolfram Brandes: Thüringer / Thüringerinnen in Byzantine sources. In: Helmut Castritius et al. (Ed.): The early days of the Thuringians (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Supplementary volume 63). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021454-3 , p. 318. Menia, according to Brandes, is an extremely rare name "for which no meaningful Greek etymology can be found".
  7. ↑ Protagonists in Edda Grottasǫngr's song of the gods (Song of the Grotti Mill) are the giant maidservants Fenja and Menia. See Grottasǫngr. In: Klaus von See et al. (Ed.): Commentary on the songs of the Edda. Volume 3. Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-8253-1136-8 , pp. 837-964. See also Karl Simrock (ed.): The Edda, the older and younger, together with the mythical stories of the Skalda. 6th edition. Stuttgart 1876, p. 313 ( Wikisource ).
  8. ↑ Cf. Aleksandr Nikolaevi? Veselovskij: Iz istorija romana i povesti. In: Sbornik otdelenija russkago jazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk. Volume 40, Saint Petersburg 1886, p. 116 ( archive.org ).
  9. ↑ Cf. Gen 10,8-12  LUT and 1 Chr 1,10  LUT .
  10. ↑ a b c Wolfram Brandes: The gold of Menia. An example of transcultural knowledge transfer. In: Millennium. Volume 2, 2005, pp. 175-226.
  11. ^ Pancras. 1410 . In: Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca . Brussels 1909, p. 196 ( archive.org ).
  12. ↑ Cf. Wolfram Brandes: Thüringer / Thüringerinnen in Byzantine sources. In: Helmut Castritius et al. (Ed.): The early days of the Thuringians (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, supplementary volume 63). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021454-3 , p. 318.
  13. ↑ Vera von Falkenhausen : The cities in Byzantine Italy. In: Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modern. Volume 101, No. 2, 1989, pp. 401-464 ( online ). See also Iz istorija romana i povesti, II. Epizod o Tavr i Menii v apokruficekoj jitii sv. Pankratija . In: Aleksandr Nikolaeviҫ Veselovskij (ed.): Sbornik otdelenija russkago jazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk . tape 40 . Saint Petersburg 1886, p. 79–80 ( archive.org ; episode of Taurus and Menia from the Vita of St. Pankratios of Taormina. Greek. Ed. By AN Veselovskij).

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literature

personal data
SURNAME Menia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Langobardin, grandmother of King Alboin and wife of the Thuringian king Bisinus
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century
DATE OF DEATH after 510