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The Chamavi first appear under that name in the 1st century AD Germania of Tacitus as a Germanic tribe that, for most of their history, existed along the north bank of the lower Rhine in the region today called Hamaland after them. Hamaland is the land of the Hamavi. It is in the Overijssel province of the Netherlands. Tacitus (op. cit. 34) locates them to the west of the Frisians.
Origin of the Chamavi
Tacitus says (35) that the Chamavi had moved into the lands of the Bructeri. As to why the Bructeri were no longer there, the Latin is phrased in such a way as not to reveal the details:
- pulsis Bructeris ac penitus excisis vicinarum consensu nationum...
- the Bructeri having been expelled and nearly destroyed by an alliance of neighboring peoples...
As these same neighbors became the later Salian Franks, the "consensus" mentioned is the first known agreement among them.
These passages in Tacitus raise the question, if Hamaland is the former territory of the Bructeri, where were the Chamavi before then? One answer is that they occupied the coastal plain to the north (Germans moved almost invariably from north to south). Many settlements are named Hamm, including possibly a modern city, Hamburg. The name may have come from the Germanic equivalent of Chamavi.
The best etymology derives Ham- from common Germanic *haimaz, "home", from Indo-European *tkei-, "settle", from which the High German place-name suffix, -heim. The ham- form, "settlement", seems to have come from Low Saxon-Low Franconian, as we acquired it through Dutch and French. The -avi, an adjectival ending, later resulted in -au in other place names, but was dropped in this one. Chamavi in this derivation would mean "men of the settlements" or "settlers." When and in what sense they were so is lost in prehistory.
Movement Up the Rhine
The Annales of Tacitus tells an apparently contradictory story (13.55). To keep the Roman soldiers of Lower Germany occupied, their commanders sent them over the Rhine and into vacant lands to work on a canal. Due to a dispute with the Roman commanders of Belgium, the soldiers were withdrawn, but the Frisians sent men to occupy the land. The Romans expelled them. The Ampsivarii took up the cause. They claimed the land had been occupied by the Chamavi, followed by the Tubantes and the Usipetes. Why had the lands of the Chamavi become vacant? We know they were there later as Franks.
Ptolemy gives us the answer indirectly. In Geography (2.10), he tells us that the Kamauoi (Latinized to Camavi) were next to the Chaerusci, who in Tacitus are in Lower Saxony near Hanover, or perhaps Thuringia and Anhalt. Apparently, some Chamavi abandoned their lands to move upriver. The reasons are not known. The Romans retained military control of those lands, but the Germanics claimed a right over them.
Two other peoples of Ptolemy wear the *haimaz name: the Chaemae and the Banochaemae. These polities were in what became the High German range. There is no reason to assume they were the Chamavi, although the identification cannot be ruled out either. Ptolemy treats them as distinct peoples.
With the Salian Franks
When next the Chamavi appear, history finds them keeping Salian company. At some time after Ptolemy the lowlands around and in what was once the Zuider Zee, in a region now occupied by the Dutch (whose ancestors perhaps they are), became occupied by a people called the Salii ("salt-water people"), no doubt by a simple change of name, either their own or someone else's. There were probably elements of both Frisians and Chamavi, with a sprinkling of Batavian pirates. They became a distinct ethnic polity and immediately began to unsettle the region, becoming troublesome to the Romans. They are almost always found in association with Chamavi.
The name of the Franks was assigned to the Salians right from their first debut on the stage of history. The Panegyrici Latini, a series of twelve speeches given in praise of Roman emperors, describe the efforts of Constantius Chlorus, father of Constantine the Great, to pacify the Franks, who are kept distinct from the Chamavi. These Panegyrici are often attributed to Eumenius, magister memoriae (private secretary) to Constantius, resulting in the compromise name of pseudo-Eumenius.
Conflict With the Last Emperors of a Single Rome
In the late 3rd century Constantius, as described by the Panegyrici, found it necessary to remove the Franks from Belgium again and again, and yet he drew back from annihilistic solutions. Leaving the peaceful Franks in place, he deported the captured soldiers and their dependents, who were called laeti, to vacant lands in Burgundy, where they worked the land and served in the Roman army. We know the Chamavi were among them because there was a settlement (Ch)amavorum. These Franks later rose to the high ranks, coming to dominate the Roman army on the Rhine.
Some Romans at least did consider the Chamavi to be 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,
- Hamavi qui et Franci
- The Hamavi, who are also Franks
The Chamavi also appear in the 5th century Notitia Dignitatum as a Roman military unit. Long before then, however, we hear of them in a letter of Flavius Claudius Julianus (Julian the Apostate, because he reverted from Christianity to paganism) to the Athenians. He says that he forced the Salii to sue for peace and drove the Chamavi out of Gaul.
The full story is told in Ammianus Marcellinus (17.8-9). The two tribes knew they were where they were not supposed to be, but apparently were hoping not to have to fight. When Julian approached with a business-like force, they sent envoys begging for peace in exchange for returning home and promising to stay there. Julian dismissed them with assurances but with no definite answer and then secretly trailed the envoys to the locations of their armies, which he attacked with the element of surprise. Some of the Chamavi were killed, others put in chains, and the rest fled to their homes, to send envoys later petitioning Julian from a supine position. This time peace was accepted. The Chamavi were to make payments of grain, but none were probably ever made, due to further Roman troubles.
Fading Into History
Life for the Chamavi thus went on. We have a hint as to their language from the 5th century Lex Salica, a body of law developed by the Salians themselves. On one manusript are written glosses in Old Saxon. A difference between low and high may even have existed in the time of Tacitus. Gregory of Tours also mentions the Chamavi as being among the Franks. The name and the unity proved unusually enduring, as the Lex Chamavorum Francorum is known from the 9th century, and was official under Charlemagne. After that they vanish from their province by diffusion into the new population of the Netherlands. The age of tribal polities was finished in west Europe.
"Chamavi"