Menia (fl. c. 500) was the queen of theThuringians by marriage and the earliest named ancestor of theGausian dynasty of theLombards. She became a legendary figure after her death, strongly associated with gold and wealth.

Only one other person is known by the name Menia, from a 9th-centurypolyptych of theAbbey of Saint-Remi. In origin it is probably aGermanic name, signifying collar, ring or necklace, and by extension treasure.^[1]

Menia's marriage is recorded only in theHistoria Langobardorum codicis Gothani. According to that source, she was the wife of King Pissa, usually identified asBisinus, king of the Thuringians.^[1][2] The same source and the other Lombard chronicles make Bisinus the father ofRaicunda, first wife ofWacho, king of the Lombards. She may have been the daughter of Menia.Frankish sources, such asVenantius Fortunatus, make Bisinus the father of the three brothers who ruled Thuringia in the 520s:Hermanafrid,Bertachar (father of SaintRadegund) andBaderic. They are sometimes considered as sons of Menia,^[3] or else as sons ofBasina, who is called a wife of Bisinus by the Frankish historianGregory of Tours.^[4] Many scholars, however, reject Bisinus' marriage to Basina as ahistorical, leaving Menia as his only known wife.^[5]

By a relationship with an unnamed man of the Gausian family—aGausus, perhaps aGeat, according to theHistoria Langobardorum—she was the mother ofAudoin, king of the Lombards from 546.^[1] She also had a daughter from whom the laterdukes of Friuli were descended.^[6] Audoin was in turn the father ofAlboin, who led the Lombards into Italy.

As an ancestor of Lombard royalty, Menia seems to have entered theoral tradition and from there various Germanic epic traditions, such as the IcelandicPoetic Edda. She is a gold-grinding giantess inGrottasöngr and inSigurðarkviða hin skamma her name is part of akenning (Meni góð, "Menia's goods") meaning gold.^[1] She is also featured in theByzantine tradition. In the GreekLife of Saint Pankratios of Taormina, she is the wife of the Lombard Rhemaldos who kills the mother of Tauros and then marries him. She learnsalchemy and turns base metals into gold. The entire legend is used to explain how the city ofTaormina (Tauromenia) got its name.^[7]

• Wolfram Brandes: Thüringer/Thüringerinnen in byzantinischen Quellen. In: Helmut Castritius u. a. (Hrsg.): Die Frühzeit der Thüringer (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Ergänzungsband 63). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009,ISBN 978-3-11-021454-3, S. 316–319.
• Jörg Jarnut: Thüringer und Langobarden im 6. und beginnenden 7. Jahrhundert. In: Helmut Castritius u. a. (Hrsg.): Die Frühzeit der Thüringer (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. Ergänzungsband 63). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York 2009,ISBN 978-3-11-021454-3, S. 279–290.
• Wilhelm Heizmann, Matthias Springer, Claudia Theune-Vogt, Jürgen Udolph: Thüringer. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2. Auflage. Band 30, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005,ISBN 3-11-018385-4, S. 519–544.
• Jörg Jarnut: Gausus. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2. Auflage. Band 10, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998,ISBN 3-11-015102-2, S. 484–485.
• Aleksandr Nikolaeviҫ Veselovskij: Iz istorija romana i povesti, II. Epizod o Tavr i Menii v apokruficekoj jitii sv. Pankratija. In: Sbornik otdelenija russkago jazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk. Band 40. Sankt Petersburg 1886, S. 65–80 (archive.org).

• Gausian dynasty
• Lombard women
• Queens consort of Thuringia
• 5th-century queens consort
• 6th-century queens consort

• CS1 French-language sources (fr)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Year of birth unknown
• Year of death unknown