The Rhineland or Ripuarian Franks, also often referred to using the
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
plurals ''Ribuarii'', or ''Ripuarii'', were the
Franks
file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty
The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...
who established themselves in and around the formerly Roman city of
Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
, on the
Rhine river
The Rhine ( ) is one of the major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Swiss-Austrian border. From Lake Cons ...
in what is now
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
.
Until the 1950s the Ribuarii were seen as the easternmost of two distinct "sub tribes" of the Franks who ruled two large neighbouring regions in northern
Gaul
Gaul () was a region of Western Europe first clearly described by the Roman people, Romans, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Northern Italy. It covered an area of . Ac ...
after the collapse of the Roman empire in the fifth century AD. According to this tradition, which continues to be influential, the Ribuarii ruled not just the
Rhineland
The Rhineland ( ; ; ; ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly Middle Rhine, its middle section. It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy ...
area near Cologne, but all or most of what would later become the
Austrasia
Austrasia was the northeastern kingdom within the core of the Francia, Frankish Empire during the Early Middle Ages, centring on the Meuse, Middle Rhine and the Moselle rivers. It included the original Frankish-ruled territories within what had ...
n or
Lotharingia
Lotharingia was a historical region and an early medieval polity that existed during the late Carolingian and early Ottonian era, from the middle of the 9th to the middle of the 10th century. It was established in 855 by the Treaty of Prüm, a ...
n region – stretching from present day southern Belgium to the Rhine in present day Germany and the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
. Their western counterparts in this scenario are the , or "
Salian Franks
The Salian Franks, or Salians, sometimes referred to using the Latin word or , were a Frankish people who lived in what was is now the Netherlands in the fourth century. They are only mentioned under this name in historical records relating to ...
", who took control of what is now northern France. This traditional vision of two very large tribes of Franks with large territories is based mainly on two 7th century Frankish legal codes, the and . These laws refer to different geographical jurisdictions, and it was believed that the boundary between them was in the
Ardennes
The Ardennes ( ; ; ; ; ), also known as the Ardennes Forest or Forest of Ardennes, is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, extending into Germany and France.
Geological ...
and
Silva Carbonaria
Silva Carbonaria, the "charcoal forest", was the dense old-growth forest of beech and oak that formed a natural boundary during the Late Iron Age through Roman times into the Early Middle Ages across what is now western Wallonia. The Silva Carbo ...
in what is now southern Belgium.
Since the 1950s the term Ripuarian is no longer seen as having its origins as a tribal name, even if it eventually became the name for a specific population based in Cologne. There has also been ongoing scholarly debate about when and how the term Ripuarian was, if ever, applied to the much larger Austrasian region as opposed to the much smaller region around Cologne. The itself is now seen mainly as a law code of the Cologne Rhineland covering such neighbouring towns as
Bonn
Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...
,
Zülpich,
Jülich and
Neuss
Neuss (; written ''Neuß'' until 1968; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is on the west bank of the Rhine opposite Düsseldorf. Neuss is the largest city within the Rhein-Kreis Neuss district. It is primarily known for its ...
.
History of the term "Ripuarii"
Before the there is a possible mention of the in the 6th-century Byzantine writer
Jordanes
Jordanes (; Greek language, Greek: Ιορδάνης), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, claimed to be of Goths, Gothic descent, who became a historian later in life.
He wrote two works, one on R ...
. In his account of the
Battle of the Catalaunian Plains
The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, Battle of Châlons, Battle of Troyes or the Battle of Maurica, took place on June 20, 451 AD, between a victorious coalition, led by the Roman ...
in 451 AD he referred to the among the units fighting as auxiliaries under the Roman
Aetius, against
Attila
Attila ( or ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in early 453. He was also the leader of an empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Gepids, among others, in Central Europe, C ...
. They are listed together with forces with ethnic designations including Franks,
Sarmatians
The Sarmatians (; ; Latin: ) were a large confederation of Ancient Iranian peoples, ancient Iranian Eurasian nomads, equestrian nomadic peoples who dominated the Pontic–Caspian steppe, Pontic steppe from about the 5th century BCE to the 4t ...
,
Armoricans,
Burgundians
The Burgundians were an early Germanic peoples, Germanic tribe or group of tribes. They appeared east in the middle Rhine region in the third century AD, and were later moved west into the Roman Empire, in Roman Gaul, Gaul. In the first and seco ...
,
Saxons
The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...
.
Eugen Ewig argued that these are not from Cologne, but rather a military unit mentioned in the , who based on the
Rhône river in what is now southern France. Springer however argues against this interpretation, noting that at least three of those four units were naval units, the , the , and the .
The legal code itself is generally seen as having been made in the 7th century, although it has been argued for example by Springer that it may have been made as late as the early 8th century. It was probably made in the context of the establishment of an Austrasian sub-kingdom by the Merovingians in 623 or 633 AD, possibly as part of a reorganization of the border defence of this kingdom on the Rhine. The Ribuarian area was referred to in Latin using different terms, , , and and it included the areas around Cologne, Bonn, the
Eifel
The Eifel (; , ) is a low mountain range in western Germany, eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Com ...
, Zülpich, Jülich, and Neuss. It has been argued that the legal code reveals a deliberate process of "ethnic engineering", aiming to create a Romano-Frankish mixed civilization. According to Springer only the younger manuscripts of the Ribuarian Law Book refer to it as , named after a people, instead of , named after a country.
Apart from the 7th-century legal code, the earliest narrative source definitely containing a form of the word for the people of Cologne is the ''
Liber Historiae Francorum'', which was completed about 726/27 AD. The author uses the term to describe the land () around Cologne which were devastated in 612 AD by the Merovingian king
Theuderic II
Theuderic II (also spelled Theuderich, Theoderic or Theodoric; in French, ''Thierry'') ( 587–613), king of Burgundy (595–613) and Austrasia (612–613), was the second son of Childebert II. At his father's death in 595, he received Guntram's ...
, who defeated his brother
Theudebert II
Theudebert II () (c.585–612), King of Austrasia (595–612 AD), was the son and heir of Childebert II. He received the kingdom of Austrasia plus the cities (''civitates'') of Poitiers, Tours, Le Puy-en-Velay, Bordeaux, and Châteaudun, as ...
at Zülpich and then pursued him to Cologne. After his victory there the author says that the king claimed that one of the "Ribuarians" () in Cologne shot at him. The word was therefore pronounced with a b-like sound at this time and used both as an adjective and a noun, referring to both the region of Cologne, and its inhabitants.
Since the 1950s it has been widely accepted that the plural or , referring to Franks from the Cologne region, did not originate as the name of any Germanic tribe who moved in the so-called
Migration period
The Migration Period ( 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories ...
before the 7th century. Instead the name seems to have been connected to the region they moved to. A traditional explanation for the first part of the word comes from Latin meaning a seashore or riverbank, which is believed to refer in this case to the river Rhine, which runs past Cologne. This explanation remains popular although there is ongoing debate among scholars, both about whether the name is purely derived from Latin, and about whether the name was really intended to refer to the Rhine riverbank.
Latin formations such as , , and would all be possible Latin-derived words describing a person of the riverbank, but purely Latin explanations of the word are generally avoided among scholars, because the second part of the name seems to be the same as the suffix found in several other Germanic tribal names such as the
Ampsivarii,
Chasuarii
The Chasuarii were an ancient Germanic peoples, Germanic tribe known from the reports of authors writing in the time of the Roman Empire. They lived somewhere to the east and north of the Rhine, near the modern river Hase, which feeds into the Ems ...
, and
Angrivarii
The Angrivarii (or ''Angrivari'') were a Germanic people of the early Roman Empire, who lived in what is now northwest Germany near the middle of the Weser river. They were mentioned by the Roman authors Tacitus and Ptolemy.
They were part of t ...
. This suffix is normally believed to come not originally from Latin, but from a
Germanic word meaning inhabitants. A version of this suffix is for example found in
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, in words like , meaning inhabitants of
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
.
Another reason to doubt direct borrowing from Latin is that the earliest spelling of the word uses a b instead of the p, which would be expected in classical Latin. Furthermore, later spellings show that the word was being pronounced by Germanic speakers with a w-like sound. Springer argued that this is evidence that the word came from
Gallo-Romance Gallo-Romance can refer to:
* Old Gallo-Romance, the Romance language spoken from around 600 to 900 AD.
* Gallo-Romance languages, a branch of the Romance language family, which includes in the narrowest sense the ''langues d'oïl'' and Franco-Prov ...
, the Latin-derived language from which modern French derives, where such changes from p to b were normal in this period. According to this account, Germanic speakers in the Cologne area pronounced the b as a w-like
voiced bilabial fricative
The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The official symbol is the ...
, β. Frank, in contrast, notes that the move from p to b could also be explained as a typical sound change which happened among Germanic speakers in this time, but accepts that the word could have had a Gallo-Romance origin.
Springer also questioned whether the word derived directly from the word from a river bank, noting that in various parts of the late Roman empire the word was used to refer to people with military or policing functions. Although the term is presumed to have derived originally from the word for a riverbank, because of the connection of these people to border regions, Springer and others note that well before the end of the Roman Empire it became a word for certain policing units, perhaps connected to toll collection, and the word was no longer always connected to rivers. Springer proposes therefore that the people of Cologne owed their special name to a unit of Roman border police who had been posted there before the Franks took over.
An example of the terms being used to refer to a larger area is known from the 9th century. The ''
Annals of Xanten'' referred to
King Lothar II (855-869) as king of the Ripuarians, or of Ripuaria ( and ). His short-lived kingdom was a new construction similar to Austrasia, is today normally known as
Lotharingia
Lotharingia was a historical region and an early medieval polity that existed during the late Carolingian and early Ottonian era, from the middle of the 9th to the middle of the 10th century. It was established in 855 by the Treaty of Prüm, a ...
. Similarly, in the 11th century, when the term was becoming more unusual,
Wipo of Burgundy called the Lower Lotharingians and their duke .
Kingdom of Cologne
The Frankish kingdom of Cologne lost its independence almost as soon as it entered the historical record, being subsumed in the Frankish core province of
Austrasia
Austrasia was the northeastern kingdom within the core of the Francia, Frankish Empire during the Early Middle Ages, centring on the Meuse, Middle Rhine and the Moselle rivers. It included the original Frankish-ruled territories within what had ...
. Apart from Roman military lists and mention by
Jordanes
Jordanes (; Greek language, Greek: Ιορδάνης), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, claimed to be of Goths, Gothic descent, who became a historian later in life.
He wrote two works, one on R ...
in ''
Getica
''De origine actibusque Getarum'' (''The Origin and Deeds of the Getae''), commonly abbreviated ''Getica'' (), written in Late Latin by Jordanes in or shortly after 551 AD, claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the ori ...
'' of some unknown Ripuarii who fought as auxiliaries of
Flavius Aetius
Flavius Aetius (also spelled Aëtius; ; 390 – 21 September 454) was a Roman Empire, Roman general and statesman of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, closing period of the Western Roman Empire. He was a military commander and the most inf ...
in the
Battle of Chalons
The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, Battle of Châlons, Battle of Troyes or the Battle of Maurica, took place on June 20, 451 AD, between a victorious coalition, led by the Wester ...
in 451, the first mention of the Cologne kingdom comes from
Gregory of Tours
Gregory of Tours (born ; 30 November – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours during the Merovingian period and is known as the "father of French history". He was a prelate in the Merovingian kingdom, encom ...
, in ''Historia Francorum''. He says that the Salian Frank
Clovis, first king of all the Franks and first king to convert to Christianity, subjected the previously Franks from the Cologne region.
Without naming the people as Ripuarian, but referring to Cologne and its vicinity,
Gregory of Tours
Gregory of Tours (born ; 30 November – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours during the Merovingian period and is known as the "father of French history". He was a prelate in the Merovingian kingdom, encom ...
explains how they voluntarily gave up their sovereignty to Clovis. The region of Cologne was under the rule of
Sigobert the Lame, an old campaigner who had fought side by side with Clovis in the wars against the
Alamanni
The Alemanni or Alamanni were a confederation of Germanic tribes
*
*
*
on the Upper Rhine River during the first millennium. First mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Roman emperor Caracalla of 213 CE, the Alemanni c ...
. He was called "the lame" because of a wound he had received at the
Battle of Tolbiac
The Battle of Tolbiac was fought between the Franks, who were fighting under Clovis I, and the Alamanni, whose leader is not known. The date of the battle has traditionally been given as 496, though other accounts suggest it may either have been ...
, 496, the same year as Clovis' conversion to Catholicism. Clovis believed he had won by calling on the name of Christ and now had a mandate from God to Christianize all
Neustria
Neustria was the western part of the Kingdom of the Franks during the Early Middle Ages, in contrast to the eastern Frankish kingdom, Austrasia. It initially included land between the Loire and the Silva Carbonaria, in the north of present-day ...
. This was a long process not free from resistance.
In 509 he sent a messenger to
Chloderic to state that if his father, Sigobert, were to die, he, Clovis, would ally himself to Chloderic. Whatever Clovis may have meant, as Sigobert was sleeping at noon in his tent in the forest across the Rhine from Cologne after a walk, Chloderic's hired assassins killed him. Chloderic sent to Clovis offering some of Sigobert's treasury as enticement. Clovis sent messengers refusing the treasure but asked to see it. Complying with their request to sink his arms into it so that they could see how deep it was, Chloderic was dispatched by the blow of an axe, unable to defend himself.
Arriving in person Clovis assembled the citizens of Cologne, denied the murders, saying "It is not for me to shed the blood of one of my fellow kings, for that is a crime …" He advised them to place themselves under his protection, after which he was shouted into office by a voice vote and raised up on their shields in a ceremony of installation. Thus the independent kingdom of the Cologne Franks was voted out of existence by the people at a single assembly in 509.
Language
There are no direct attestations of the early Frankish language. Of some 1,400 Latin inscriptions in Roman
Germania Inferior
''Germania Inferior'' ("Lower Germania") was a Roman province from AD 85 until the province was renamed ''Germania Secunda'' in the 4th century AD, on the west bank of the Rhine bordering the North Sea. The capital of the province was Colonia Cl ...
a little over 100 are from the rural lands of the Germanic
Ubii
350px, The Ubii around AD 30
The Ubii were a Germanic tribe first encountered dwelling on the east bank of the Rhine in the time of Julius Caesar, who formed an alliance with them in 55 BC in order to launch attacks across the river. They were ...
, into whose lands the Ripuarii would move. The inscriptions are most frequent in the 3rd century. Most are from the major cities of Germania Inferior. The right bank of the Rhine, where the Ripuarii originated, does not have such a wealth of Latin inscriptions. The
High German consonant shift
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic languages, West Germanic dialect continuum. The ...
occurred south of an east-west zone called the
Benrath Line
In German linguistics, the Benrath line () is the isogloss: dialects north of the line have the original in (to make), while those to the south have the innovative (). The line runs from Aachen in the west via Benrath (south of Düsseldorf) ...
. The Rhine crosses it in the vicinity of
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...
. The section of the Rhine including Cologne forms the so-called "
Rhenish Fan
The subdivision of West Central German into a series of dialects, according to the differing extent of the High German consonant shift, is particularly pronounced. It is known as the Rhenish fan (, ) because on the map of dialect boundaries, the li ...
", where dialects are found which form intermediate stages between
Dutch and
High German
The High German languages (, i.e. ''High German dialects''), or simply High German ( ) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Ben ...
.
Ripuarian laws
In the first half of the 7th century the Ripuarians received the Ripuarian law (
Lex Ripuaria), a law code applying only to them, from the dominating Salian Franks. The Salians, following the custom of the Romans before them, were mainly re-authorizing laws already in use by the Ripuarians, so that the latter could retain their local constitution.
[Rivers 1986:_?.]
See also
*
Franks
file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty
The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...
*
Salian Franks
The Salian Franks, or Salians, sometimes referred to using the Latin word or , were a Frankish people who lived in what was is now the Netherlands in the fourth century. They are only mentioned under this name in historical records relating to ...
*
List of Germanic tribes
A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
Footnotes
References
* (updated online version of older print article)
*
* Rivers, Theodore John. (1986) ''Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks.'' New York: AMS Press, 1986.
*
*
*
External links
*
*
{{Lorraine topics
Early Germanic peoples
Frankish people
Franks
file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty
The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...
History of the Rhineland