Thuringii

Tacitus, in his Germania, describes their homeland as being where the Elbe starts, but also having colonies at the Danube, and even within the Roman province of Rhaetia.

)[clarification needed] The name of the Thuringians appears to be first mentioned in the veterinary treatise of Vegetius, written early in the fifth century.

Much earlier, in his Germania for example, Tacitus had grouped the Anglii and Varini among the more distant Suebic tribes, living beyond the Elbe, and near a sea where they worshipped a goddess called Nerthus.

[5] Walter Pohl has also proposed that they may be the same as the Turcilingi (or Torcolingi) who were one of the tribes near the middle Danube after the collapse of the empire of Attila, to whom they had apparently all been subject.

Sidonius Apollinaris, in his seventh poem, explicitly lists them among the allies who fought under Attila when he entered Gaul in 451.

[6]) More clearly, correspondence is recorded with a kingdom of Thuringians by Procopius and Cassiodorus during the reigns of Theoderic the Great (454–526) and Clovis I (approx.

After their conquest, the Thuringii were placed under Frankish dukes, but they rebelled and had regained their independence by the late seventh century under Radulf.

By the time of Charles Martel and Saint Boniface, they were again subject to the Franks and ruled by Frankish dukes, with their seat at Würzburg in the south.

The Carolingians codified the Thuringian legal customs (but perhaps did not use them extensively) as the Lex Thuringorum and continued to exact a tribute of pigs, presumably a Merovingian imposition, from the province.

Their real Christianisation took place, alongside the ecclesiastical organisation of their territory, during the early and mid eighth century under Boniface, who felled their "sacred oak" at Geismar in 724, abolishing the vestiges of their paganism.

In the 1020s, Aribo, Archbishop of Mainz, began the minting of coins at Erfurt, the oldest market town in Thuringia with a history going back to the Merovingian period.