Salian Franks

The Salian Franks, or Salians, sometimes referred to using the Latin word Salii or Sali, were a Frankish people who lived in what was is now the Netherlands in the fourth century. They are only mentioned under this name in historical records relating to this one period, when they came into conflict with Roman forces led by Julian the Apostate in 358 AD, during the period when Julian ruled in Gaul as Caesar, under his cousin the emperor Constantius II. In modern historiography, they are traditionally believed to be ancestral to the Franks who became the rulers of much of present day northern France in the 5th century - at first under the leadership of Chlodio, and later under the leadership of the Merovingian dynasty.

Roman sources describing the events of 358 AD indicate that the Salians were a Frankish people who had entered the empire from across the Rhine some time earlier, and settled with Roman acceptance in Batavia, which is a large island in the Rhine delta, that lay on the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. They had subsequently been settling in the relatively unpopulated and infertile area of Texandria, south of the delta, which was still considered to be under direct Roman control. They were also one of the tribes of this region who were being paid off by the Roman government to allow the safe passage of grain shipments up the Rhine, along with another people, the Chamavi. Julian, seeking to end the payments, entered the region with military force. After defeating both peoples and taking hostages he proclaimed new agreements with them, authorizing the Salians to keep any lands they had settled without fighting, but forcing many of the Chamavi to return to their homeland. He also obliged both peoples to contribute soldiers to the Roman military. Consistent with this, Julian is known to have created several military units named after the Salians.

Until the 1950s it was also generally accepted that the Salians subsequently expanded their territories to the south, and became one of two large divisions among the Franks in the fifth century, along with another large group, the Ribuarian Franks, living to their east. This is not directly attested in any historical evidence, but the reasoning was based on the names of two distinct legal codes used by the Franks after they were united under Merovingian rule. The older one, the so-called Salic Law (Lex Salica) was valid in what is now northern France, and its name might be related to the name of the earlier Salians, although this is no longer considered certain. The later one, the Lex Ripuaria, in contrast, is associated with the region near Cologne in what is now Germany. In the 21st century, scholars no longer generally accept that the term "Salic" in Salic law referred to any tribe by the 5th century, and some historians argue that it never did. It is also no longer widely accepted that the two Frankish legal codes imply two distinct Frankish peoples.