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Crimean Goths
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Crimean Goths were those Gothic tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the least-powerful, least-known, and paradoxically longest-lasting of the Gothic communities.
According to Herwig Wolfram, following Jordanes, the Ostrogoths had a huge kingdom north of the Black Sea in the fourth century, which the Huns overwhelmed in the time of the Gothic king Ermanaric (or Hermanric; i.e.
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Crimean Goths were those Gothic tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the least-powerful, least-known, and paradoxically longest-lasting of the Gothic communities.
According to Herwig Wolfram, following Jordanes, the Ostrogoths had a huge kingdom north of the Black Sea in the fourth century, which the Huns overwhelmed in the time of the Gothic king Ermanaric (or Hermanric; i.e. "king of noblemen") when the Huns migrated to the Russian steppe. The Ostrogoths became vassals of the Huns until the death of Attila when they revolted and regained independence. Like the Huns, the Goths in the Crimea never regained their lost glory.
According to Peter Heather and Michael Kulikowski, the Ostrogoths did not even exist until the fifth century, having emerged from other Gothic and non-Gothic groups. Other Gothic groups may have settled in the Crimea.
During the late fifth and early sixth century, the Crimean Goths had to fight off hordes of Huns who were migrating back eastward after losing control of their European empire. In the fifth century, Theodoric the Great tried to recruit Crimean Goths for his campaigns in Italy, but few showed interest in joining him.
While initially Arian Christians like other Gothic peoples, the Crimean Goths had fully integrated with the Trinitarian Roman Church by the 500's. Following the split of the Church, these peoples would remain loyal to Constantinople as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the eighth century John of Gothia, an Orthodox bishop, led an unsuccessful revolt against Khazar overlordship.
Many Crimean Goths were Greek speakers and many non-Gothic Byzantine citizens were settled in the region called "Gothia" by the government in Constantinople. A Gothic principality around the stronghold of Doros (modern Mangup), the Principality of Theodoro, continued to exist through various periods of vassalage to the Byzantines, Khazars, Kipchaks, Mongols, Genoese and other empires until 1475, when it was finally incorporated by the Khanate of Crimea and the Ottoman Empire.
The Crimean Goths themselves were assimilated by the Greeks by the 8th century. Several inscriptions from the early 9th century found in the area use the word "Goth" only as a personal name, not ethnonym. Meanwhile, some legends about a Gothic state in Crimea existed in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. In the 16th century, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq reported having had a conversation with two Goths in Constantinople. He also left the Gothic-Latin dictionary with few words that are similar to ancient Gothic language. There are no further sources concerning the Crimean Goths and the survival of their language.
See also
Sources
- Heather, Peter. The Goths. Blackwell, 1998.
- Heather, Peter and John Matthews. Goths in the Fourth Century. Liverpool Univ. Press, 1991.
- Kulikowski, Michael, Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006.
- Vasiliev, Aleksandr A. The Goths in the Crimea. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936.
- Wolfram, Herwig and Thomas J. Dunlap. History of the Goths. Univ. of California Press, 1990.
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