Respendial

Respendial was a king of the Alans at the beginning of the 5th century.

Very little is known about Respendial. However, as part of his historical work , Bishop Gregory of Tours , who wrote at the end of the 6th century, reports on an event in which Respendial was involved, where Gregory was able to rely on the now lost work of the late antique historian Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus . Frigeridus (in excerpt from Gregory of Tours) reports that the Vandals were attacked by Franks , who probably acted as Roman federates . The vandal king Godigisel fell in battle and the vandals threatened to be completely wiped out when Respendial - who initially acted together with the Alan king Goar , but who then defected to the Romans - came to their aid with his Alans. The timing of this battle is problematic. Gregory reports it in connection with the conquest of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths . In modern research, however, the battle is set shortly before the Rhine crossing in 406 , when at the turn of the year 406/7 several barbaric tribes ( Vandals , Suebi and Alans) crossed the Rhine - probably near Mogontiacum - and invaded Gaul. This seems plausible insofar as Frigeridus mentioned the Rhine and the Franks, which would fit the events leading up to the crossing of the Rhine.

Phillip Wynn contradicted this communis opinio a few years ago. In his opinion, the battle did not take place east of the Rhine and in the year 406 (or 405, if one follows Michael Kulikowski's thesis), but in the year 410, i.e. in the year of the conquest and sacking of Rome by Alaric I , namely in Spain , where the barbaric invaders had moved on after crossing the Rhine. Wynn also believes that, based on the writing in some of the manuscripts of the Historiae Gregors, it was not Alans who came to the aid of the Vandals, but Alemanni . However, Wynn's reinterpretation is very controversial and is often rejected by research (also because of other problems arising from the chronology).

In any case, after the successful crossing of the Rhine, Respendial seems to have acted as king - at least in part - of the Alans for some time before he died at an unknown time (perhaps in Hispania).

literature

Helmut Castritius : The Vandals. Stages of a search for traces (= Urban Pocket Books 605). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-018870-9 .
Guy Halsall: Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-43543-7 .
Peter J. Heather : Why Did the Barbarian Cross the Rhine? In: Journal of Late Antiquity . Volume 2, 2009, pp. 3-29.
Michael Kulikowski: Barbarians in Gaul, Usurpers in Britain. In: Britannia . Volume 31, 2000, pp. 325-345.
Phillip Wynn: Frigeridus, the British tyrants and the early fifth century barbarian invasions of Gaul and Spain . In: Athenaeum. Vol. 85, 1997, ISSN 0004-6566 , pp. 69-117.

Remarks

^ Gregory of Tours, Historiae II 9.
↑ Current overviews in Castritius (2007), p. 46ff. and Halsall (2007), pp. 210ff. Especially on the Rhine crossing cf. Heather (2009), with a discussion of the background and research problems; Kulikowski (2000) argues that the crossing of the Rhine should be dated to the turn of the year 405/6, but this thesis is very controversial.
↑ See especially Wynn (1997), p. 81ff.
↑ Cf. for example: Walter A. Goffart : Barbarian tides. The migration age and the later Roman Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 2006, ISBN 0-8122-3939-3 , pp. 301f., Note 95. See also: Guido M. Berndt : Gallia - Hispania - Africa: On the migrations of the Vandals on their way to North Africa . In: Guido M. Berndt, Roland Steinachser (Hrsg.): Das Reich der Vandalen und seine (previous) stories (= Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Memoranda. Vol. 366 = Research on the history of the Middle Ages. Vol . 13). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-7001-3822-8 , pp. 131ff. On the other hand, Castritius (2007), p. 52, among others, agrees, but does not adopt Wynn's “Alemannic theory”.

personal data
SURNAME	Respendial
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	King of the Alans
DATE OF BIRTH	4th century
DATE OF DEATH	5th century

[1] Gregory of Tours, Historiae II 9.

[2] Current overviews in Castritius (2007), p. 46ff. and Halsall (2007), pp. 210ff. Especially on the Rhine crossing cf. Heather (2009), with a discussion of the background and research problems; Kulikowski (2000) argues that the crossing of the Rhine should be dated to the turn of the year 405/6, but this thesis is very controversial.

[3] See especially Wynn (1997), p. 81ff.

[4] Cf. for example: Walter A. Goffart : Barbarian tides. The migration age and the later Roman Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 2006, ISBN 0-8122-3939-3 , pp. 301f., Note 95. See also: Guido M. Berndt : Gallia - Hispania - Africa: On the migrations of the Vandals on their way to North Africa . In: Guido M. Berndt, Roland Steinachser (Hrsg.): Das Reich der Vandalen und seine (previous) stories (= Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class. Memoranda. Vol. 366 = Research on the history of the Middle Ages. Vol . 13). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-7001-3822-8 , pp. 131ff. On the other hand, Castritius (2007), p. 52, among others, agrees, but does not adopt Wynn's “Alemannic theory”.