Germanus (Caesar)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Germanus was a Caesar in the Byzantine Empire. He married Charito, the daughter of Emperor Tiberius II Constantine and Ino Anastasia. The scholar Michael Whitby says Germanus was a patrician and governor of Africa. In 582, as Tiberius lay dying, Germanus was chosen as a possible heir. On August 5, Germanus and Maurice were made Caesars and were betrothed to Tiberius’s daughters, Charito and Constantina. Whitby thinks this showed Tiberius planned two co-rulers, perhaps reviving a split between Western and Eastern emperors, with Germanus tied to the West.

Germanus apparently refused the throne. John of Nikiû records that, out of humility, he declined to be emperor and Maurice, from Cappadocia, was made emperor instead. This view is not the only one. Gregory of Tours, in the Historia Francorum, gives a different account of Maurice’s rise, but Whitby questions that version. After the marriage, Germanus is not mentioned again, and on August 11, 582, Maurice is the only one named Caesar in a law of Tiberius.

Germanus’s exact parentage is uncertain. Whitby identifies him with a son of a Germanus (born around 550–551) and Matasuntha, who was connected to the Ostrogothic royal line. Other possibilities include the general Justinian, who was the son of the senior Germanus, or a descent from the noble Anicii family, a claim some sources mention. Theodor Mommsen suggested his mother might be a daughter of Anicia Juliana. After his marriage, Germanus largely disappears from the sources, and some historians even identify him with a later patricius Germanus whose daughter married Maurice’s eldest son Theodosius, though this is not certain.