Burgundians
In the first and second centuries AD, they or a people with the same name were mentioned by Roman writers living west of the Vistula river, in the region of Germania, which is now part of Poland.
The Burgundians were first mentioned near the Rhine regions together with the Alamanni as early as the 11th panegyric to Emperor Maximian given in Trier in 291 AD, referring to events that must have happened between 248 and 291, and these two peoples apparently remained neighbours for centuries.
[2] By 411 AD, Burgundians had established control over Roman cities on the Rhine, between Franks and Alamanni, including Worms, Speyer and Strasbourg.
[3][4] Before clear documentary evidence begins, the Burgundians may have originally emigrated from the Baltic island of Bornholm to the Vistula region.
[5] The ethnonym Burgundians is commonly used in English to refer to the Burgundi (Burgundionei, Burgundiones or Burgunds) who settled in eastern Gaul and the western Alps during the 5th century AD.
In modern usage, however, "Burgundians" can sometimes refer to later inhabitants of the geographical Bourgogne or Borgogne (Burgundy), named after the old kingdom, but not corresponding to the original boundaries of it.
But in the context of the Middle Ages the term Burgundian (or similar spellings) can refer even to the powerful political entity the Dukes controlled which included not only Burgundy itself but had actually expanded to have a strong association with areas now in modern Belgium and Southern Netherlands.
[7] The 19th century poet and mythologist Viktor Rydberg asserted from an early medieval source, Vita Sigismundi, that they themselves retained oral traditions about their Scandinavian origin.
[8][9][10][11] Southwards migrations are believed to have triggered the Marcomannic Wars, which resulted in widespread destruction and the first invasion of Italy in the Roman Empire period.
These two peoples had moved into the Agri Decumates on the eastern side of the Rhine, an area still referred to today as Swabia, at times attacking Roman Gaul together and sometimes fighting each other.
Following Stilicho's withdrawal of troops to fight Alaric I the Visigoth in 406–408 AD, a large group of peoples from central Europe north of the Danube came west and crossed the Rhine, entering the Empire near the lands of the Burgundians who had moved much earlier.
With the authority of the Gallic emperor that he controlled, Gundahar settled on the left (Roman) bank of the Rhine, between the river Lauter and the Nahe, seizing Worms, Speyer, and Strassburg.
Apparently as part of a truce, the Emperor Honorius later officially "granted" them the land,[13] with its capital at the old Celtic Roman settlement of Borbetomagus (present Worms).
For reasons not cited in the sources, the Burgundians were granted foederati status a second time, and in 443 were resettled by Aëtius in Sapaudia[n 1], part of the Gallo-Roman province of Maxima Sequanorum.
[18] The historian Pline[citation needed] tells us that Gunderic ruled the areas of Saône, Dauphiny, Savoie and a part of Provence.
The alliance between Burgundians and Visigoths seems to have been strong, as Gundioc and his brother Chilperic I accompanied Theodoric II to Spain to fight the Sueves in 455.
[19] Also in 455, an ambiguous reference infidoque tibi Burdundio ductu[20] implicates an unnamed treacherous Burgundian leader in the murder of the emperor Petronius Maximus in the chaos preceding the sack of Rome by the Vandals.
Glycerius was deposed in favor of Julius Nepos, and Gundobad returned to Burgundy, presumably at the death of his father Gundioc.
[27] Gundobad was temporarily holed up in Avignon, but was able to re-muster his army and sacked Vienne, where Godegisel and many of his followers were put to death.
The 5th century Gallo-Roman poet and landowner Sidonius, who at one point lived with the Burgundians, described them as a long-haired people of immense physical size: Why... do you [an obscure senator by the name of Catullinus] bid me compose a song dedicated to Venus... placed as I am among long-haired hordes, having to endure Germanic speech, praising often with a wry face the song of the gluttonous Burgundian who spreads rancid butter on his hair?
... You don't have a reek of garlic and foul onions discharged upon you at early morn from ten breakfasts, and you are not invaded before dawn... by a crowd of giants.
Moreover, Gundobad's son and successor, Sigismund, was himself a Catholic, and there is evidence that many of the Burgundian people had converted by this time as well, including several female members of the ruling family.
