Texandri (also Texuandri; later Toxandri, Toxiandri, Taxandri) were a Germanic people living between the Scheldt and Rhine rivers in the 1st century AD. They are associated with a region mentioned in the late 4th century as Texandria (also Toxiandria; later Toxandria, Taxandria), a name which survived into the 8th–12th centuries.
Name and Etymology
The only inscription that convincingly mentions the tribe is dated 100–225 AD and gives the form Texand(ri), found on an altar at Brocolitia (Carrowburgh Fort) near Hadrian's Wall. They are also mentioned as Texuandri by Pliny the Elder (1st century AD). The ethnonym is generally reconstructed in early West Germanic dialects as *tehswandrōz, derived from the Proto-Germanic stem *tehswō(n)- ('right [hand], south') attached to the contrasting suffix **-dra-*, thus meaning "those who live south/on the right bank [of the Meuse or Rhine river]." The region of Texandria is interpreted as the "land of the southerners."
Geography
The Texandri dwelled in a territory situated between the Scheldt and Rhine rivers, alongside other contemporary tribes like the Tungri. Scholars generally assume that their territory mostly corresponded to the region of Texandria later mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus around 390 AD. In sources from 709–795, the pagus Texandrie appears concentrated around the basin of the river Dommel and its tributaries, between the towns of Alphen, Waalre, and Overpelt—an area currently known as Campine (Kempen in Dutch), spanning the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium.
History
In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder reported that the Texandri consisted of several smaller tribes. From military records found across the Roman Empire, the Texandri appear to have formed at least one administrative district (pagus) that contributed troops to Roman armies, associated with both the Civitas Tungrorum and the civitas of the Nervii.
In the middle of the 4th century, the area became heavily depopulated and exposed to constant raiding. Around 358 AD, Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate allowed the Salian Franks to settle as foederati (allies) "at a place in Toxandria" (apud Toxiandriam locum). Texandria later became the name of a Frankish county in early medieval Lower Lotharingia and is mentioned as a large county in the 870 Treaty of Meersen. The name also persisted as a designation for a large diocese of the Catholic Church under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Liège during the Middle Ages.
