Chamavi

The Chamavi (Χαμαβοί) were a Germanic people of Roman imperial times who lived just north of the Roman border (Limes) along the Rhine river delta in what is now the Netherlands, and perhaps stretching into what is now Germany.

In the Roman records of the third and fourth century, when the tribes began to be categorized as Franks or Saxons, the Chamavi were at different times listed as both, and sometimes distinguished from both. During this period large numbers of Chamavi settled, despite fierce Roman resistance, in the Rhine delta. In the third century many of them were moved far to the south, to help repopulate agricultural areas, and the Roman military.

Their name probably survives in the region called Hamaland, which is in the Gelderland province of the Netherlands, near present day Deventer between the IJssel and Ems rivers. In France, one area where the Romans settled them also continued to be named after them into the Middle Ages.

Etymology

The etymology of the Chamavi name is uncertain, but it is generally believed to come from a Germanic language. Its construction is similar to those of neighbouring peoples, the Batavi and Frisiavi (Frisiavones).

The Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde lists three speculative proposals which have been made for a Germanic etymology:

• The tribal name name may come from the Germanic verb reconstructed as *hammjan ("to press, hinder, hem in"). The meaning might be something like "immobile, powerless," perhaps originating as a nickname.
• It has been proposed that the word might be related to Old English hamm, which possibly comes from the same verb, and meant an "enclosed piece of land". The Chamavi would then be "those who dwell on enclosed pieces of land".
• The tribal name might be related to modern German Hemd, Dutch hemd, both meaning "shirt", reconstructed into Proto-West Germanic as *hamiþi. In this case the name might refer to war garments.

A Germanic name has been reconstructed as *Hamawiz from the name of the Matrones Hamavehae, evidence for whom was found between Jülich and Aachen.

First and second centuries AD

One of the first possible records of the Chamavi is an uncertain one. According to a surviving copy of Velleius Paterculus, in 4 AD Tiberius crossed the Rhine and attacked, “cam ui faciat Tuari Bructeri”. This is often corrected in modern texts to the sequence, "Cananefates, Chattuari, Bructeri". However, it has been argued that the Cananefates (in present day South Holland) were unlikely to be in conflict with the Romans at this point, and that the original text may have referred to the Chamavi instead, implying that they lived near the Rhine, and west of the other two tribes at this time.

Tacitus reports in his Annals that in the time of Nero (apparently 58 AD), the Ampsivarii, having been ejected from their homes further to the north near the river Ems, pleaded with Roman authorities to allow them to live in a military buffer zone on the northern bank of the Rhine, saying that "these fields belonged to the Chamavi; then to the Tubantes; after them to the Usipii". These fields, were on the northern bank of the Rhine between the IJssel and Lippe, to the southeast of modern Hamaland, south of modern Twente where the Tubantes lived, and to the northwest of the Bructeri. This is known because during an earlier campaign against the Germanic tribes in 12 BC, the settlement area of the Usipii which is believed to be the same one mentioned by the Ampsivarii, bordered the Lippe to the south, which is where the country of the Sicambri began at that time. The record indicates that before 12 BC the Chamavi's lands extended to the Rhine, but that they subsequently moved out of that area.

In his descriptive Germania, Tacitus reported that the Chamavi and Angrivarii had moved, apparently recently in his time (around 100 AD), southwards into the lands of the Bructeri, who are described as their neighbours - "the Bructeri having been expelled and utterly destroyed by an alliance of neighboring peoples". Petrokovits suggests that this move might explain why they no longer held the above-mentioned Rhine bank in 12 AD. The Bructeri originally lived in the area between the Lippe and Ems rivers, to the east of modern Hamaland. Tacitus also reports that behind the Chamavi and Angrivarii, further away from the Rhine, lived "the Dulgubini and Chasuarii, and other tribes not equally famous", and in the other direction lay the Frisians. According to Tacitus, the Tencteri and Usipii both lived to the south of the old Bructeri homeland in his time, between the Rhine and the Chatti.

Ptolemy in his Geographia, written in the second century, mentions several tribal names which could refer to the Chamavi. But the text is notoriously garbled, having combined older sources with different formats, apparently including an itinerary map similar to the Tabula Peutinger. The clearest mention of the Chamavi in this text calls them the Chaemae (Χαῖμαι), in a section which Schütte interprets as a synthesis of early first century maps (Schütte's prototypes A and Aa), from before the time of Tacitus (the Bructeri are still placed north of the Sicambri), and an itinerary (Schütte's prototype C). These Chaemae were south of the part of the Chauci living on the coast between the Ems and Weser rivers. South of them, between the upper Ems and Weser, were the main part of the Bructeri, with another part to their west on the bank of the Rhine, with Frisians to their north and Sicambri to their south. East of these Chaemae, across the Weser, are the Angrivarii. Surprisingly then, these Chaemae are east of the Ems, and Schütte notes: "Ptolemy places the Frisians too far south, practically at the place of the Chamavi, and so it is possible that they have displaced the latter towards the east".

The Chamavi are in effect also described much further east in the Ptolemy text, where they are called the Camavi (Καμαυοὶ). They are placed with the Cherusci, near the Elbe. Schütte interprets this to result from the use of an itinerary map where Germania between Rhine and Elbe was compressed, as it is in the Tabula Peutinger. Neighbouring them to the south, the Chatti and Tubanti (ὑπὸ δὲ τοὺς Καμαυοὺς Χάτται καὶ Τούβαντοι), and Schütte noted that these tribes "have equally been transplanted from the Rhenish districts to interior Germany".

Third and fourth centuries AD

In about 293 or 294 AD, according to the "8th" Latin Panegyric, made in 297 AD, Constantius Chlorus, had victories in the Scheldt and Rhine delta regions. His opponents were sometimes described as Frankish groups, but important among them were apparently groups of Chamavi and Frisii (or Frisiavones), because the Gaulish author of the text subsequently mentions that as a result of his successes, Chamavus and Frisius now plow his land, and the price of food is lower. Archaeologists note a rapid reduction of population and agriculture in at least some of the delta regions during this period, and it is believed that this may reflect the increased transplantations of delta dwellers to less populated areas of Gaul.

Many defeated and resettled Chamavi also became Roman soldiers after this campaign of Constantius, already in the third century. Although they are not explicitly listed in the Notitia Dignitatum among the Praefecti laetorum or gentilium, they may have been included among the Batavians or Franks. A cohors undecima Chamavorum was attested in the Notitia Dignitatum Orientalis for the fort Peamu. According to Petrokovits this was likely established in the 3rd century, because it was called a cohort.

In the Jura region in present day France, there is district which was traditionally known as Comté d'Amaous, which was originally named during the Roman era after a settlement of Chamavi, the pagus (Ch)amavorum.

In 313, Constantine the Great, the son of Constantius, once again defeated Franks near the Rhine. The Panegyric which survives mentions the Bructeri, Chamavi, Cherusci, Lancionae, Alemanni and Tubantes. The new name "Franks" also started to be used to refer to Salians, Chamavi, and some other tribes, in this period.

The Laterculus Veronensis of about 314, includes a list of barbarians under Roman domination distinguishes the "Camari" and several of their neighbouring tribes including Amsiuari, Angriuari, Bructeri, Cati, Cati, from both the Saxons and the Franks.

On the Peutinger map, which dates to as early as the 4th century, is a brief note written in the space north of the Rhine, generally read as Hamavi qui et Pranci which scholars interpret as The Hamavi, who are Franks (with a spelling error, of "p" in the place of "f").

In the 350s there were many conquests claimed by emperor Julian against Franks on the Rhine. In the winter of 357/358 he defeated plundering Salians and Chamavi on the Maas river, and left the Salians in Roman territory because of their permission to live there, but forced the Chamavi to leave. Unlike the Salii, these Chamavi were expelled from Roman lands, though they clearly lived close by, where their grain was disappointingly unready for Roman use. In an apparent description of the same events, Zosimus does not mention the Chamavi, but a Saxon group known as the "Kouadoi", a Greek spelling of "Quadi", which is considered a misunderstanding for the Chamavi who are named in other reports of these events, including such specific details as the capture of their king's son. According to him, this tribe had pushed into Batavia, displacing the Salians.

In 392 AD, according to a citation by Gregory of Tours, Sulpicius Alexander reported that Arbogast crossed the Rhine to punish the "Franks" for incursions into Gaul. He first devastated the territory of the Bricteri, near the bank of the Rhine at Cologne, then the Chamavi, apparently their neighbours to the north. Neither tribe confronted him, but their allies the Ampsivarii and the Chatti were under the military leadership of the Frankish princes Marcomer and Sunno, and they appeared "on the ridges of distant hills". At this time the Bructeri apparently lived near Cologne. Note that the Chamavi and the Ampsivarii are the two peoples that Tacitus had long before noted as having conquered the Bructeri from their north.

Early medieval Hamaland

Main article: Hamaland

In the early Middle Ages a Frankish gau existed called Hamaland, which scholars believe to be a name derived from the Chamavi. It was in a region similar to the Chamavi, between the IJssel and the Rhine rivers, and it included the modern Dutch cities of Deventer, Doesburg, Zutphen, and Elten.

Lex Chamavorum Francorum

Main article: Ewa ad Amorem

The Lex Chamavorum Francorum (law of the Chamavi Franks) is a modern name invented for a Frankish legal code which describes itself as the Ewa ad Amorem. It is known from several copies but is generally accepted to be one of the several legal codes made around the time of Charlemagne in the 9th century, including the Lex Salica (Salic Law), and Lex Ribuaria. It is not clear whether it was really intended to refer to Chamavi. Gaupp, the 1855 editor, proposed to name it this way based on his belief that the word "Amor" is connected to the Chamavi. Modern scholars do however continue to believe that the law applied somewhere in the area of the Rhine delta.

See also

• List of ancient Germanic peoples

Bibliography

• Faulkner, Thomas (2016), Law and Authority in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/CBO9781316027097.002
• Haubrichs, Wolfgang (2017), "Les Chamaves et les autres : une enquête linguistique sur les traces des Chamaves, Hattuaires, Varasques, Scotinges et Burgondes au nord de la Bourgogne", Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre, BUCEMA [Online], 21 (2), doi:10.4000/cem.14779
• Gaupp (1855), "Recherches sur la Lex Francorum Chamavorum", Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 1: 417–443
• Lanting; van der Plicht (2010), "De ¹⁴C-chronologie van de Nederlandse Pre- en Protohistorie VI: Romeinse tijd en Merovingische periode, deel A: historische bronnen en chronologische schema's", Palaeohistoria, 51/52: 27–168, ISBN 9789077922736
• Liccardo, Salvatore (2023), Old Names, New Peoples: Listing Ethnonyms in Late Antiquity, Brill, doi:10.1163/9789004686601, ISBN 978-90-04-68660-1
• Neumann, Gerhard (1981), "Chamaver §1. Der Name", in Johannes Hoops; Heinrich Beck (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 4 (2 ed.), p. 368, ISBN 9783110065138
• Nixon, C. E. V.; Rodgers, Barbara Saylor (1994-01-01). In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-08326-4.
• Nonn, Ulrich (2010). Die Franken. Kohlhammer.
• Petrokovits, Harald (1981), "Chamaver §2. Historisches", in Johannes Hoops; Heinrich Beck (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 4 (2 ed.), pp. 368–370, ISBN 9783110065138
• Roymans, Nico; Heeren, Stijn (2021), "Romano-Frankish interaction in the Lower Rhine frontier zone from the late 3rd to the 5th century – Some key archaeological trends explored", Germania, 99: 133–156, doi:10.11588/ger.2021.92212
• Schütte, Gudmund (1917), Ptolemy's maps of northern Europe, a reconstruction of the prototypes

Primary sources

• Tacitus, Germania.XXXIV
• Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae
• Zosimus, New History
• Latini Panegyrici
• Velleius Paterculus