Wallach, Luitpold. Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1959.
ALEMANNI
. The Alemanni or Alamanni (“All Men”) were a confederation of Germanic tribes first
mentioned in A.D. 213 as fighting against the Roman Empire; they raided both Italy and
Gaul in the 3rd and 4th centuries. In the early 5th century, they were able to cross the
Rhine, and the decline of the western Roman Empire in the middle of that century
allowed them to expand westward to the Vosges and into Alsace. Colliding with Frankish
expansion, they were defeated by Clovis I in the mid-490s at Zülpich (Tolbiac).
Afterward, most of the Alemanni were under Frankish authority.
Although the fortunes of the Alemanni were generally linked to those of the Frankish
kingdom of Austrasia, they did enjoy a measure of self-rule under native dukes
subordinate to the Merovingians, and they came to dominate southwestern Germany and
northern Switzerland along the Jura mountain range. The Alemanni were included in the
kingdom of Louis the German in the Treaty of Verdun in 843 and later were attached to
Germany rather than to France, forming the core of the later duchy of Swabia. In the
Merovingian period, Alemannia was a sort of eastern frontier of the Frankish kingdom,
and the Alemanni gave their name to the French words for Germany (Allemagne) and for
Germans (allemands).
Steven Fanning
[See also: CLOVIS I; FRANKS; MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY]
James, Edward. The Franks. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
Musset, Lucien. The Germanic Invasions, trans. Edward and Columba James. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975, pp. 80–83.
ALEXANDER III
(d. 1181). Pope. When Pope Hadrian IV died in 1159, the majority of the cardinals
elected the chancellor of the Roman church, the Sienese Rolando Bandinelli, to succeed
him as Alexander III. The emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, offended by Rolando’s
conduct at the Diet of Besançon earlier that year, supported the rival claim of Cardinal
Octavian. Despite support by the Norman king of Sicily, William I, and by the cities that
formed the Lombard League, in 1162 Alexander was forced to take refuge in France,
where he conducted councils at Montpellier (1162) and Tours (1163). Although Louis
VII, fearing to alienate his mighty vassal Henry I Plantagenêt of England, adhered to
Alexander, he also was reluctant to offend Barbarossa. Alexander also found himself
caught between princes when in 1170 Louis demanded in vain that the pope condemn
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