Matasuntha

Matasuntha
Spouse Vitiges
Germanus
Issue Germanus
Dynasty Amali
Father Eutharic
Mother Amalasuntha

Matasuentha or Matasuntha (fl. 550) was a daughter of Eutharic and Amalasuntha. She was a sister of Athalaric, King of the Ostrogoths. Their maternal grandparents were Theodoric the Great and Audofleda.[1]

Family

According to the Getica by Jordanes,

"Eutharic, who married Amalasuentha...begat Athalaric and Mathesuentha. Athalaric died in the years of his childhood, and Mathesuentha married Vitiges, to whom she bore no child. Both of them were taken together by Belisarius to Constantinople. When Vitiges passed from human affairs, Germanus the patrician, a cousin of the Emperor Justinian, took Mathesuentha in marriage and made her a Patrician Ordinary. And of her he begat a son, also called Germanus. But upon the death of Germanus, she determined to remain a widow."[2]

Her son Germanus was born following the death of his father (late 550/early 551). Nothing further is known of him with certainty, although he can possibly be identified with the patricius Germanus, a leading senator in the reign of Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602), whose daughter married Maurice's eldest son Theodosius.[3][4] Michael Whitby identifies the younger Germanus with Germanus, a son-in-law of Tiberius II Constantine and Ino Anastasia.[5]

In fiction

Matasuntha appears as a character in the time travel novel Lest Darkness Fall, by L. Sprague de Camp. Mataswintha is also the subject of the one opera by Xaver Scharwenka (composed 1891-92, premiered 1894).

References

  1. ↑ Cawley, Charles, Profile of Theodoric the Great and his family, Medieval Lands database, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy ,
  2. ↑ Jordanes, "The Origin and Deeds of the Goths", Chapter 14. 1915 translation by Charles Christopher Mierow
  3. ↑ Martindale & Morris (1980), pp. 505–506
  4. ↑ Martindale, Jones & Morris (1992), pp. 528, 531–532
  5. ↑ Whitby (1988), p. 7

Sources

  • Martindale, John R.; Morris, John (1980), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire - Volume II, AD 395–527, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-20159-9
  • Martindale, John R.; Jones, A. H. M.; Morris, John (1992), The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire - Volume III, AD 527–641, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-20160-8
  • Whitby, Michael. (1988), The Emperor Maurice and his historian: Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan warfare, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-822945-3
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