Bisinus King of Thuringia

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Bisinus OF THURINGIA, king of the Thuringii Franks

Bisinus, Basinus, Besinus, was the king of the Thuringii, born c 440 (fl. c. 460 \endash 506/510).

According to Gregory of Tours, Bisinus gave refuge to Childeric I, the Frankish king who was exiled by his people. After eight years under Bisinus' protection, Childeric returned to Tournai. Bisinus's wife Basina left him and joined Childeric.

The historical Bisinus bears some resemblance to the Bisinus described by Gregory of Tours, but the details are different: The Bisinus described by Gregory was the leader of a Thuringian confederation on the Rhine and his wife was a Lombard named Menia. He and Menia left three sons, Baderic, Herminafred and Berthachar, who inherited the throne from him. Daughter Radegund married the Lombard king Wacho.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisinus

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BASINUS, son of --- (-after 464). King of Thuringia. m as her first husband, BASINA, daughter of ---. Gregory of Tours names Basina as wife of Basinus King of Thuringia.

Childerich King of the Franks found refuge with Basinus King of Thuringia after being deposed[6], dated to [456/57]. She married secondly (c464/65) Childerich I King of the Franks. The marriage date is estimated on the basis of how long Childerich was allegedly in exile (about 8 years), assuming that the date of his deposition is accurate, and it appears to be consistent with the estimated dates of birth of the couple's descendants.

Gregory of Tours, writing in the last quarter of the 6th century, says that when the Franks rebelled against their king, Childeric I, who was accused of seducing their daughters, he went into exile at the court of Basinus in Thuringia for eight years. In his absence, the Franks elected the Roman commander Aegidius as their king. Childeric's exile corresponds to the period between Aegidius' appointment as magister militum for Gaul in 456 or 457 and his death in 465. When Childeric returned from exile, Basinus' wife Basina abandoned her husband to go with him. She became his wife and the mother of Clovis I. Gregory does not describe Basinus as king of the Thuringians or even as a Thuringian himself, but as king "in Thuringia". Gregory's account was used by the authors of the 7th-century Chronicle of Fredegar and the 8th-century Book of the History of the Franks.

Basinus was the first husband of Menia, a fact attested only in the 9th-century Historia Langobardorum codicis Gothani. He had a daughter, Raicunda, who became the first wife of the Lombard king Wacho (c. 510\endash 540), a fact attested in all three of the main Lombard chronicles (two of which specify that he was king of the Thuringians). Menia later married a man (unnamed in the sources) of the Gausus family (a prominent Lombardic family) and became the mother of Audoin, who in 540 became the regent of Wacho's son by his third wife, Walthari, and then succeeded him to the throne in 546.

Bisinus was also the father of the three brothers who ruled Thuringia in the 520s and 530s: Hermanafrid, Bertachar and Baderich. Bertachar had a daughter, Radegund, who founded Holy Cross Abbey in Poitiers and was recognised as a saint. She died in 587. Two hagiographies of her were produced by her friends Baudovinia and Venantius Fortunatus. Fortunatus specifies that she was "from the Thuringian region", a daughter of King Bertachar and granddaughter of King Bisinus.

While most scholars accept that the Thuringian kings called Bisinus in the Frankish sources and Pissa (Pitzia) in the Lombard ones are one and the same, Martina Hartmann rejects the identification and points out that the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire makes no such identification either.

Count Pitzia was of the Lombardic Gausian dynasty and a military commander under Theodoric the Ostrogothic King of Italy. Theodoric's niece, Amalaberga, married the son of Basinus and Menia, Hermenafrid of Thuringia which may account for the association of Count Pitzia and Menia of the Lombards.

Bisinus married Menia. (Menia was born in 455 in , , Moravian-Silesian, Czechia and died in 510 in , , Moravian-Silesian, Czechia.)