Rodelinda (6th-century), was a Lombard

queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...

by marriage to king

Audoin Alduin (Langobardic: ''Aldwin'' or ''Hildwin'', ; also called Auduin or Audoin) was List of kings of the Lombards, king of the Lombards from 547 to 560. Life Audoin was of the Gausian dynasty, Gausi, a prominent Lombard ruling clan, and accordin ...

, and mother of king

Alboin Alboin (530s – 28 June 572) was List of kings of the Lombards, king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migration period, migrations by settling in Kingdom of the Lombards, Italy, the northern ...

Life

She was the first wife of

regent In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been dete ...

for the infant

king of the Lombards The kings of the Lombards or ''reges Langobardorum'' (singular ''rex Langobardorum'') were the monarchs of the Lombard people from the early 6th century until the Lombardic identity became lost in the 9th and 10th centuries. After 774, the kings ...

Walthari from 540 to 546/547 and king in his own right from 546/547 to an uncertain date after 552, and gave him a son, his successor

.Martindale 1992, ''s.v. Audoin'', pp. 152 – 153 When the marriage took place is unclear. The contemporary

Procopius Procopius of Caesarea (; ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; ; – 565) was a prominent Late antiquity, late antique Byzantine Greeks, Greek scholar and historian from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman general Belisarius in Justinian I, Empe ...

speaks of a marriage arrangement between Audoin and an unnamed sister of Amalafrid, a prince of mixed royal

Ostrogothic The Ostrogoths () were a Roman-era Germanic peoples, Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Goths, Gothic kingdoms within the Western Roman Empire, drawing upon the large Gothic populatio ...

and

Thuringian Thuringian is an East Central German dialect group spoken in much of the modern German Free State of Thuringia north of the Rennsteig ridge, southwestern Saxony-Anhalt and adjacent territories of Hesse and Bavaria. It is close to Upper Saxon s ...

stock. The betrothal had been organized by the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

Emperor

Justinian Justinian I (, ; 48214 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized ''renovatio imperii'', or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was ...

at a date spanning from ca. 540 to 552, and this unnamed female may be the Rodelinda named by

Paul the Deacon Paul the Deacon ( 720s 13 April in 796, 797, 798, or 799 AD), also known as ''Paulus Diaconus'', ''Warnefridus'', ''Barnefridus'', or ''Winfridus'', and sometimes suffixed ''Cassinensis'' (''i.e.'' "of Monte Cassino"), was a Benedictine monk, sc ...

; but it has been objected to by the ''

Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire ''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire'' (abbreviated as ''PLRE'') is a work of Roman prosopography published in a set of three volumes collectively describing many of the people attested to have lived in the Roman Empire from AD 260, the date ...

'' that it is not certain that the marriage Procopius speaks of eventually took place. A major difficulty added to this is that in 552 Alboin was already a warrior. The ''PLRE'' believes the marriage between Audoin and Rodelinda took place in the 530s. Other scholars instead tend to accept the identification, observing its importance in linking the Lombard kings with the bloodline of the

Amali The Amali – also called Amals, Amalings or Amalungs – were a leading dynasty of the Goths, a Germanic people who confronted the Roman Empire during the decline of the Western Roman Empire. They eventually became the royal house of the Ostro ...

, the royal house of the Ostrogoths. Such a marriage would have made Audoin a legitimate heir to both the Ostrogothic and Thuringian thrones, the latter in particular as Audoin was already half-brother of the last king of the Thuringians, thus putting him in opposition to 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 had taken over most of the Thuringian lands. Another explanation of Rodelinda's origins is given by István Boná: according to him she was probably a

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

n princess, to be considered distinct from the Thuringian princess Audoin was engaged to later on.Boná 1976, p. 25

References

Citations

Sources

* Amory, Patrick. ''People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489 – 554''.

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Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 2003, . * Boná, István. ''A l'aube du Moyen Age: Gépides et Lombards dans le bassin des Carpates''.

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

: Corvina Press, 1974

976 Year 976 ( CMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * January 10 – Emperor John I Tzimiskes dies at Constantinople, after returning from a second campaign against ...

. * * *Martindale, John R. (ed.), ''Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire - Volume III: A.D. 527 – 641'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, . * Schutz, Herbert. ''Tools, Weapons and Ornaments: Germanic Material Culture in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400 – 750''.

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, 2001, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Rodelinda (6th Century) 6th-century Italian women Thuringian women Queens consort of the Lombards 6th-century Lombard people 6th-century queens consort