| Rosamund | |
|---|---|
 Rosamund forced to drink from the skull of her father by Pietro della Vecchia | |
| Queen consort of the Lombards | |
| Tenure | 567 - 28 June 572/573 |
| Born | 540 |
| Died | 572 or 573 Ravenna |
| Spouse | Alboin Helmichis |
| Father | Cunimund |
Rosamund (fl. 572) was a Lombard queen. She was the daughter of Cunimund, king of the Gepids, and wife of Alboin, king of the Lombards.
Rosamund was born into a kingdom in crisis, as the Gepid people had been fighting a losing battle against the Lombards since 546, firstly within the context of a Lombardic-East Roman alliance, and later against the Lombards and the Avar nomads. These wars had taken the lives of not only her grandfather king Thurisind, but also her uncle, Thurismund, both of which served to establish a long-standing hatred of the Lombards in her father, Cunimund, which he passed down to her.
This hatred was what spawned the final war of the Gepids, as Cunimund attempted to win back lost lands against the Lombards. The war, however, quickly turned, and in 567, the Gepid Kingdom would be completely subdued by a mixture of Lombard and Avar forces, her father was decapitated and she, along with many other Gepids, was taken as a prisoner of the Lombards (see Lombard–Gepid War (567)). However, in an attempt to secure a male heir and following the death of his first wife Clotsuinda of Frankia, Alboin took her as his wife. Alboin was noted for his cruelty towards her; his most famous act of cruelty was reported by Paulus Diaconus, who states that at a royal banquet in Verona, Alboin forced her to drink from the skull of her dead father (which he carried around his belt), inviting her "to drink merrily with her father". [1]
After this, she began plotting to have her husband assassinated. Thus, Rosamund met with the king's arms bearer and her lover, Helmichis, who suggested using Peredeo, [2] "a very strong man", [1] to accomplish the assassination. Peredeo refused to help, and that night mistakenly had intercourse with Rosamund, who was disguised as a servant. After learning that he had committed adultery with his king's wife, Peredeo agreed to take part in an assassination attempt in fear of the king's retribution. After the great feast, Alboin went to bed inebriated, at which point Rosamund ordered the king's sword bound to his bedpost, so that should he wake in the middle of the assassination attempt, he would be defenseless. Alboin did wake, only to find himself unarmed. He fended off his attackers temporarily with a footstool, but was killed. Due in part to the work of Paulus Diaconus, there seems to be some confusion about who actually killed Alboin, with both Helmichis and Peredeo assigned as sole murderer. [3]
Immediately afterwards, Helmichis planned to marry Rosamund and usurp the throne by claiming kingship. However, this plan gained little support from the various duchies of the Lombard kingdom, so Rosamund, Helmichis, and Albsuinda, Alboin's daughter by his first wife, fled together to the East Roman stronghold of Ravenna with a large proportion of Alboin's private treasures. Rosamund and Helmichis married in Ravenna, but were soon divided when Rosamund, in an attempt to curry favour, took as a lover Longinus, the exarch, who had helped them plan the murder of Alboin. [4] At the urging of Longinus, who promised to marry her, she attempted to murder her former lover Helmichis by poisoning, handing him the drink after he had washed; however, she was instead murdered by Helmichis, who forced her to drink the poison before committing suicide by the same means.
Rosamund would inspire many later tragedies, based on her life, particularly in Italy, where the folk song "Donna Lumbarda" was passed down orally through the generations, inspiring later renditions of the tale.
She's a heroine of Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium (book 8).
Medieval folk tales and legends developed. [5] The first true tragedy, Giovanni Rucellai's Rosmunda, was first performed in 1525 and would serve as the basis for many later tellings of the story in the Italian language, such as Vittorio Alfieri's 1783 work of the same name and a Sam Benelli play of 1911. The conspiracy to murder Alboin also inspired the 1961/2 film Rosmunda e Alboino , aka Sword of the Conqueror etc., by Carlo Campogalliani.
In 1665 Urban Hjärne wrote a comedy in Swedish on the same matter, Rosimunda. It is the first original play in that language known to have actually been staged, as entertainment for the young Charles XI while he studied at Uppsala university.
In the English language, the story would also be considered a tragedy, albeit more often neglected than in the Italian tradition, but it was the subject of Robert Burton Rodney's mid 19th C. poem Alboin and Rosamond, and would be treated by the pre-Raphaelite poet Algernon Charles Swinburne in his 1899 work Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards.
In Meg Cabot's young adult novel series The Princess Diaries published from 2000 on, Rosimunda is renamed 'Rosagunde'. While the story of her marriage to Alboin is the same, in Cabot's re-telling she is granted Genovia by the king of Italy as a reward for killing Alboin, making her the first princess of Genovia and an ancestor to the series' protagonist Mia Thermopolis.
Media related to Rosamund at Wikimedia Commons| International | |
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Alboin was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effect on Italy and the Pannonian Basin; in the former, his invasion marked the beginning of centuries of Lombard rule, and in the latter, his defeat of the Gepids and his departure from Pannonia ended the dominance there of the Germanic peoples.
The Lombards or Longobards were a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774.
Paul the Deacon, also known as Paulus Diaconus, Warnefridus, Barnefridus, or Winfridus, and sometimes suffixed Cassinensis, was a Benedictine monk, scribe, and historian of the Lombards.
The 560s decade ran from January 1, 560, to December 31, 569.
Year 565 (DLXV) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 565 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
566 (DLXVI) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 566 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Year 572 (DLXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 572 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
The Gepids were an East Germanic tribe who lived in the area of modern Romania, Hungary and Serbia, roughly between the Tisza, Sava and Carpathian Mountains. They were said to share the religion and language of the Goths and Vandals.
Bayan I reigned as the first khagan of the Avar Khaganate between 562 and 602.
Perctarit was the first Catholic king of the Lombards who lead a religiously divided kingdom during the 7th Century. He ruled from 661 to 662 the first time and later from 671 to 688. He is significant for making Catholicism the official religion, sparing the life of an invading leader, and building projects around the capital.
The Origo Gentis Langobardorum is a short, 7th-century AD Latin account offering a founding myth of the Longobard people. The first part describes the origin and naming of the Lombards, the following text more resembles a king-list, up until the rule of Perctarit (672–688).
The Kingdom of the Lombards, also known as the Lombard Kingdom and later as the Kingdom of all Italy, was an early medieval state established by the Lombards, a Germanic people, on the Italian Peninsula in the latter part of the 6th century. The king was traditionally elected by the very highest-ranking aristocrats, the dukes, as several attempts to establish a hereditary dynasty failed. The kingdom was subdivided into a varying number of duchies, ruled by semi-autonomous dukes, which were in turn subdivided into gastaldates at the municipal level. The capital of the kingdom and the center of its political life was Pavia in the modern northern Italian region of Lombardy.
Cunimund was the last king of the Gepids, falling in the Lombard–Gepid War (567) against the Lombards and Pannonian Avars.
The settlement of the Eastern Alps region by early Slavs took place during the 6th to 8th centuries. It is part of the southward expansion of the early Slavs which would result in the characterization of the South Slavic group, and would ultimately result in the ethnogenesis of present-day Slovenes. The Eastern Alpine territories concerned comprise modern-day Slovenia, Eastern Friuli, in modern-day Northeast Italy, and large parts of modern-day Austria.
Albsuinda was the only child of Alboin, King of the Lombards in Pannonia, and his first wife Chlothsind, daughter of the Merovingian king of the Franks Chlothar. While still young Albsuinda had lost her mother shortly before the final clash in 567 with the people of the Gepids in Pannonia, in which the Gepids were completely destroyed. After the victory her father had promptly remarried, taking as second wife Rosamund, daughter of the Gepid king Cunimund that Alboin had personally killed on the battlefield.
Helmichis was a Lombard noble who killed his king, Alboin, in 572 and unsuccessfully attempted to usurp his throne. Alboin's queen, Rosamund, supported or at least did not oppose Helmichis' plan to remove the king, and after the assassination Helmichis married her. The assassination was assisted by Peredeo, the king's chamber-guard, who in some sources becomes the material executer of the murder. Helmichis is first mentioned by the contemporary chronicler Marius of Avenches, but the most detailed account of his endeavours derives from Paul the Deacon's late 8th-century Historia Langobardorum.
Thurisind was king of the Gepids, an East Germanic Gothic people, from c. 548 to 560. He was the penultimate Gepid king, and succeeded King Elemund by staging a coup d'état and forcing the king's son into exile. Thurisind's kingdom, known as Gepidia, was located in Central Europe and had its centre in Sirmium, a former Roman city on the Sava River.
Turismod was a son of the king of the Gepids Thurisind. He was killed in 551 or 552 on the battlefield by Alboin, son of the king of the Lombards Audoin.
Sword of the Conqueror is a 1961 Italian adventure film written and directed by Carlo Campogalliani and starring Jack Palance and Eleonora Rossi Drago.
In 566, Lombard king Alboin concluded a treaty with the Pannonian Avars, to whom he promised the Gepids' land if they defeated them. The Gepids were destroyed by the Avars and the Lombards in 567. Gepid King Cunimund was killed by Alboin himself. The Avars subsequently occupied "Gepidia", forming the Avar Khaganate. The Byzantine Emperor intervened and took control of Sirmium, also giving refuge to Gepid leader Usdibad, although the rest of Gepidia was taken by the Avars. Gepid military strength was significantly reduced; according to H. Schutz (2001) many of them joined Lombard ranks, while the rest took to Constantinople. According to R. Collins (2010) the remnants were absorbed either by the Avars or Lombards. Although later Lombard sources claim they had a central role in this war, it is clear from contemporary Byzantine sources that the Avars had the principal role. The Gepids disappeared and the Avars took their place as a Byzantine threat. The Lombards disliked their new neighbours and decided to leave for Italy, forming the Kingdom of the Lombards.
