Gépides

The Gépides are a Germanic Peuple branch ostic, near to the Goths, which was installed into low the Vistula, then in the center of the Europe (basin of the Carpates, 269 - 670) during the top Moyen-âge.

Gépides are mentioned for the first time by a Latin source during the year 269. At that time, they threaten the Roman Dacie. They drive out in front of them the Vandales and attack the Visigoths which had preceded them in the area.

In 451, at the time of the Battle of the fields catalaunic (Jordanès, History of Goths ), Gépides, vassal of the Huns, fought under the order of Ardaric: this last had probably been put at the capacity by Attila.

After the death of the king of Huns, in 453, Gépides - which constituted “innumerable” an army (Jordanes, ibid ) - settled in Dacie: their chief Ardaric carries it with the Bataille of Nedao; in 455, they were released definitively from the supervision of Huns while taking part in a coalition which overcame the new king of the latter, Ellak, wire of Attila. They extended then their territories until worms the middle of the 6th century.

In 539, Gépides, which gave their name to Dacie, in the past Gothie (Jordanes, ibid ) carry out the war against the Byzantine Empire and extend in Mésie.

Towards 550, their territory includes/understands the grounds located between Dobroudja and the Tisza of west in is, and between Carpates (of the south and Eastern) and the Danube, of north in the south (Byzantine source posterior, according to Cassiodore).

In 551, Gépides are countered by the Lombards, combined Justinien I {{er}}.

It is finally under the blows of the latter pushed by Byzance from 565 (Gépides are pushed back in the north of the the Danube) then, especially, under the blows of the Avars, that Gépides lose their power before disappearing from the History.

A part of them followed Lombards in Italy at the end of the 6th century; after 567/568, date of the great miserly offensive, a reduced number of survivors could remain in Transylvania, but there does not remain any trace of them after 670.

In art, Gépides left many specimens of one of the most known ornaments of the time of the migrations of people: the loop with head of eagle, often called wrongly “gotic”.

The historian of the Goths Jordanès, was of ascent gépide and the concubine of the king lombard Alboïn, Rosemonde, was a princess gépide, girl of the king Cunimond who had been overcome and killed by Lombards. According to the legend, Rosemonde, forced by Alboïn to drink the wine of the victory in cranium of his/her father, assassinated this last before giving itself death with his/her lover Helmageis (Elméchis).

Bibliography and sources

collective Work (under the direction of Béla Köpeczi), History of Transylvania , Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1992 (ISBN 963-05-5901-3) translation in French available on line to the address http://mek.oszk.hu/02100/02114/html/
Jordanès, “ History of Goths ” (v. 553)

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