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TheBaiuvarii,Baiovari orearly Bavarians were aGermanic people who are first mentioned in contemporary records starting in the 6th century, soon after the end of theWestern Roman Empire,
The Baiuvarii originally lived in what had been the Roman provinceRaetia, south of theDanube, in what is now southernBavaria. They became astem duchy within theFrankish empire, the medievalDuchy of Bavaria, which expanded and eventually stretched to include present dayAustria.
TheBavarian language developed among the Baiuvarii. It is aWest Germanic language closely related toStandard German. Modern dialects of Bavarian are still spoken byBavarians,Austrians andSouth Tyroleans.
Early evidence of the language of the Baiuvarii is limited to personal names and a fewRunic inscriptions. However, by the 8th century AD, theAustro-Bavarian language was already well-established.[1][2]
The language of the Baiuvarii wasWest Germanic, like its descendants medievalOld High German, and the modernBavarian language. It was so similar to the contemporary languages of the neighbouringAlamanni,Thuringi, andLangobards, that it is difficult to tell them apart.[3][4][5] This southern group of languages or dialects which are precursors to Old High German are sometimes distinguished from closely related northern dialects, such as those spoken by theFranks, as "Elbe Germanic". However, the model used to define this term is now considered obsolete, in favour of the idea that all or most of continental West Germanic languages were in one dialect continuum after theMigration period.[3][6][7]
A peculiarity of Bavarian compared to its neighbours is that it appears to have loaned words fromEast Germanic languages, such asGothic.[8][6][3]
The name of the Baiuvarii had many written variants, but these differences reflect different spelling conventions which were used. For example, the use of the letters "b", "v", "u", "uu" and "o" was common when representing the same w-like sound in words from Germanic languages. Similarly, versions with a letter "g" such asBogari, Baguvarii, are using that letter to represent apalatal glide, or y-like sound. Versions with an initial p such asPagoarii, Paioarii, Peigiro reflect the normalUpper German version of theHigh German consonant shift, which still distinguishes southern dialects of German today, and so this represents a real variation in pronunciations.[3]
Modern scholars reconstruct the original Germanic pronunciation before the first written forms as*Baiwari, and singular*Bai(a)warjōz.[9] According to Rübekiel, the standard modern terms such as GermanBaj-u-waren and EnglishBai-u-varii are based on a misunderstanding of early medieval spellings such asBaiuuari, where "uu" really represented a single w-like consonant, and not an "uw" syllable.[3]
Different etymologies have been proposed, but modern scholars normally understand the name as a compound of two elements:*Baia-/Baijo- which is believed to be a Germanic evolution from the pre-imperialCeltic tribal nameBoii; and-warjōz which is a common Germanic suffix used to create the names of peoples, by associating them with nouns such as regional names.
RomanNoricum, now inAustria, was under the military control of theRugii in the north, andOstrogoths in the south.[10] The earliest attestations are the following, starting in the 6th century, when the term seems to have been new.
Notably however, biography ofSeverinus of Noricum in the late 5th century, written by his contemporaryEugippius, does not mention them at all. Instead, it describes the still Romanized region aroundPassau andKünzing in present day eastern Bavaria, and RomanRaetia, as coming under attack fromAlemanni,Thuringians andHeruli.
In 534 the Baiuavarii are also notably absent from the letter of the Frankish kingTheudebert I to the eastern emperorJustinian, although Theudebert was claiming to control the area. Similarly the contemporary 6th century historianGregory of Tours mentioned the first known Duke of Bavaria,Garilbald, because he married the widow of Theudebert, but his whole history never mentions Bavaria. Hardt for example therefore suggests that the Baiuvarii "only visibly started to develop an identity as a people" after "the appointment by the Frankish king of a dux, who actively endeavoured to organize the various Germanic and Roman groups and units living in the former province of Rhaetia".[12]
The Baiuvarii probably didn't exist under that name before the 5th century. However, the Boii, who seem to be the basis of the first element of the Baiuvarii name, almost disappeared from the written record around the time when the Roman empire began, centuries earlier. The form of the name is Germanic, both because of the conversion of the o-sound to an a-sound, and also the -varii suffix. This has led scholars to propose different ways in which the Baiuvarii name can be indirectly derived from the much older name of the Boii tribe. By explaining this, scholars also hope to get indications about how the Baiuvarii came into existence.
A common and old proposal is that the Baiuvarii name somehow evolved from the classical version of the geographical term "Bohemia" which was already used by Latin and Greek writers in the first century AD.Strabo called itBuiaimon,Velleius Paterculus called itBoiohaemum, and Tacitus called itBoiemum.[13] Modern scholars see this as a Germanic word, coined by theSuebi who settled there underMaroboduus, long after the Boii departed. The second component is Germanic*haim-, the source of modern English "home" and modern German "Heim".[3][14] One of the last classical reports of this name is the 2nd century mention of a people called theBainochaemae.Claudius Ptolemy described them in hisGeography as living near theElbe, east of theMelibokus mountains, and north of theAsciburgius mountains.[15] According to this proposal, the Baivari migrated south or east from the original Bohemia, which is believed to have been somewhere in the present-dayCzech Republic. However, the "haim" part of the placename, which would have made the evidence for this specific etymology clear, does not appear in the name of Bavarians, leaving only the name of the Boii.[14]
There are proposals that the name does not come from Bohemia at all, but directly from the Boii name itself, which was preserved in more areas to the east of Raetia (which would become the core of Bavaria), and not just in Bohemia. Examples which have been proposed include the following:
There are also several proposals about the ethnic background of the population who brought the Baiuvarii name with them to Raetia, and made it the name of the mixed community. However, most of the proposals involve theSuebian Germanic peoples to the east of Raetia such as the Marcomanni and Quadi, who disappeared from contemporary records during the time of Hun rule in the area.[18]
A third proposal is that the name of the Boii still survived in Raetia itself, making no migration necessary. In other words, people who still identified themselves as dwellers upon old lands of the pre-imperial Celtic Boii were still living in the Norican–Raetian region, and were the name-giving element in the mixed population that remained there after Rome abandoned Raetia.[18] According toKarl Bosl in 1971, Bavarian migration to present-day Bavaria is a legend, andWalter Goffart more recently agreed that there is no reason to assume any single large immigration in order to explain the 5th century origins of the Baiuvarii.[10]
The Baiuvarii emerged about 500 afterOdoacer (died 493) destroyed theRugian kingdom just to the east of Bavaria in 487. He and his successor as king of Italy,Theoderic the Great (died 526), both had their roots in the Middle Danubian area and led large numbers of people from there to Italy.[19][10] The Rugian kings ruled the countryside on the Danube west of Vienna, in what had been the Roman province ofNoricum, and the Boii civitas of the Roman province ofPannonia .
The Rugian territory was soon taken over in this same period byLangobards, who had moved from the Lower Elbe, and filled the power vacuum in the Middle Elbe. However, after they migrated with many warriors to Italy in 568, the region east of the Bavarians was dominated by thePannonian Avars, andSlavic languages became an important language of that region.
The Baiuvarii are believed to have incorporated elements from severalGermanic peoples who lived longer in the regions surrounding Raetia, including theRugii,Sciri,Marcomanni,Heruli,Quadi,Alemanni,Naristi,Thuringi and Langobards. They might also have included non-GermanicRomance people (romanizedCeltic people).[19]
It has been proposed that the Baiuvarii came into being as a distinct territory, distinct from the similar Alemanni and Langobards, under the influence of greater powers interested in the area. First Theodoric the Great in Italy, and later the Frankish kingsTheuderic I and his sonTheudebert I (died 548), seem to have controlled from a distance.[18]
Theudebert claimed in a letter to the Byzantine emperorJustinian that he controlled the area from the North Sea toPannonia, which would include Bavaria. After his death, his uncleChlothar I appointedGaribald I asdux of Bavaria.[10] Garibald established theAgilolfing dynasty with his power base at Augsburg orRegensburg.[19]
In the 20th century the early Baiuvarii were associated withFriedenhain-Přešťovice [de] ceramics, but this is no longer accepted by scholars.[19]
The funerary traditions of the Baiuvarii are similar to those of the Alemanni, but quite different from those of the Thuringi.[20]
The Baiuvarii are distinguished by the presence of individuals withartificially deformed craniums in their cemeteries. These individuals were predominantly female; there is no undisputed evidence of males with artificially deformed skulls inBavaria.[21] Genetic and archeological evidence shows that these women were migrants from eastern cultures, who married Bavarii males, suggesting the importance of exogamy within the Bavarii culture.[22] The migrant women were fully integrated in to Bavarii culture.[23]
The genetic study published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America in 2018 examined the remains of 41 individuals buried at a Bavarian cemetery ca. 500 AD. Of these, 11 whole genomes were generated. The males were found to be genetically homogeneous and ofnorth-central European origin. The females were less homogeneous and were largely ofSouthern European origin, some of whom carried significantEast Asian ancestry.[24] The presence of these women among the Bavarii people indicates that men from the Bavarii culture practiced exogamy, preferentially marrying women from eastern populations.[25][26]
There were significant gender differences in skin, hair and eye pigmentation in the studied sample. Of the local males, with normal or intermediate skulls, the majority (~80%) were likely to haveblond hair andblue eyes. In contrast, the women with artificially deformed skulls (likely immigrants), generally had brown eyes (80%) and either brown (60%) or blonde (40%) hair. The study also notes that these immigrant women would have stood out from the local population due to their enlarged crania and their distinct eye, hair, and possibly skin pigmentation.[27][28]
No significant admixture with Roman populations from territories further south of the area was detected.[29] Among modern populations, the surveyed male individuals did not have modified skulls and were found to be most closely related to modern-dayGermans.[30]
A medieval origin story exists for the Baiuvarii, theAnnolied written in the 11th century, says that the Bavarian tribe came long ago fromArmenia, "whereNoah came out ofthe ark". The leaders of the Bavarian army are said to have been Duke Boimunt and his brother Ingram. The story was also reflected in theSong of Roland, which mentions a Bavarian duke Naimes. Also the epicKarl written by "Der Stricker" says that Naymes, the Bavarian duke, was born in "Ormenîe".[14]
These origin-legends stem from learned medieval conceptions.[14]
A collection of Bavarian tribal laws was compiled in the 8th century. This document is known asLex Baiuvariorum. Elements of it possibly date back to the 6th century.[19] It is very similar toLex Thuringorum, which was the legal code of theThuringi, with whom the Baiuvarii had close relations.[20]
By the 8th century, many Baiuvarii had converted to Christianity.[31]
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