Thiota

According to the Fulda Annals ( MGH SS rer. Germ. 7), Thiota was an Alemannic seer and heretic who appeared in 847 and proclaimed revelations that were supposedly received from God. In terms of religious studies, Thiota is compared with the group of Germanic seers .

Thiota ( "mulier Alamanorum" ) appeared in the diocese of Bishop Solomon of Constance and prophesied the near end of the world and "other things" as a false prophetess ( "pseudoprophetissa" ). In the Christian context, through her appeal to divine revelation ( “divinitus sibi revelatia” ), she achieved great effects both among the simple classes of the population and among members of the Catholic clergy ( “sacri ordinis viri” ). The ecclesiastical authorities thereupon opened proceedings ( synod ) against Thiota in Mainz and they were questioned in the church of Sankt Alban . Under the psychological pressure of the questioning, she confessed that the revelations came from the authorship of a further unknown presbyter and that she was acting personally out of profit-seeking. The synod condemned Thiota to be whipped with rods, after which she did not appear again.

The chronological context of the entry in the annals is the appointment of Rabanus Maurus as Archbishop of Mainz by Ludwig the German and the raids of the Vikings in the Lower Rhine area. The raids by the Vikings in the so-called Viking Age led to a boom in biblically derived end-time prophecies by clergymen and in reflection on the level of popular piety among the frightened population. In particular, certain Old Testament prophecies from the book of Ezekiel were applied to the "Northmen" as a danger from the north, or they were identified as the New Testament Antichrist .

Anders Hultgård concludes from the circumstances that the effect of the thiota cannot be explained without the pagan tradition of the "old Germanic" seerines anchored in the population. In the context of the meaning of the name of the Albruna and the Christian priestess Guiliaruna , Hermann Reichert points out that such traditions are a stable phenomenon among relatively young Christianized Germanic peoples.

literature

swell

• Annales Fuldenses sive Annales regni Francorum Orientalis Short (MGH SS rer. Germ. 7), published by Friedrich short, Ndr. Hannover 1978 [1891]
• Sources on the Carolingian Empire history. Part 3: Yearbooks of Fulda, Regino Chronik, Notker Taten Karls edit. by Reinhold Rau, 4th, compared to the 3rd by one night. Ed., Darmstadt 2002, pp. 19–177.

Secondary literature

• Anders Hultgård: seers . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , vol. 28. Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer (eds.). De Gruyter, Berlin - New York 2005. ISBN 3-11-018207-6 . Pp. 113-121. Here: p. 115f.
• Rudolf Much: Die Germania des Tacitus , 3rd edition (Ed.) Wolfgang Lange with the collaboration of Herbert Jankuhn and Hans Fromm. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 1967. pp. 169–170. Here: p. 170

Web links

• dMGH Annales Fuldenses p. 36f. Here p. 37 picture nos. 50, 51

Remarks

1. ^ AE 1958, 290
2. ^ Hermann Reichert: Language and names of the vandals in Africa. In: Albrecht Greule, Matthias Springer (Ed.): Names of the early Middle Ages as linguistic evidence and as historical sources. (= Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Volume 66). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-020815-3 , pp. 43–120, here p. 73.