Theudis

Theudis († June 548 in Seville ) was King of the Visigoths from December 531 to June 548 .

Theudis was the successor of Amalaric, who was killed in Narbonne by the Franks under Childebert I in 531 during a campaign . Theudis himself was of Ostrogothic origin. He continued the campaign without any further details being known. He was married to a rich Roman woman and took on the gentile name Flavius, which was reserved for high dignitaries in late antiquity , in order to enhance his own position in relation to the Eastern Roman Empire.

Meanwhile, the northern neighbors of the Visigothic Empire, the Franks, gained dangerously in power through the annexation of Burgundy in 534. In 541 the Frankish kings Childebert I and Chlothar I undertook another campaign against the Visigoths, during which they besieged Saragossa , but Theudis succeeded in driving them out. Hardly any less dangerous were the efforts of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinians to conquer the western Mediterranean and thus restore the old Roman Empire. In his wars with the Ostrogoths and the Vandal Empire , which went under in 534, Theudis remained neutral, but to be on the safe side he moved a garrison to Ceuta to be prepared against attacks. However, with this he could not prevent this city from being lost to Ostrom in 547.

In 548 Theudis was murdered by opposing Visigoths, who made Theudigisel his successor. However, this could keep only one year and was of Agila I. replaced.

literature

• Edward A. Thompson : The Goths in Spain . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1969, pp. 13-16

Web links

• genealogie-mittelalter.de

Remarks

1. ↑ On the circumstances of his death see Konrad Bund: Falling from the throne and deposition of rulers in the early Middle Ages , Bonn 1979, pp. 555f.

predecessor	Office	successor
Amalaric	King of the Visigoths 531–548	Theudigisel