BURGUNDI. — The first mention of the B. is found in Pliny (Nat. Hist., IV, 99), before their settlement beyond the Vistula. Perhaps of Scandinavian origin, but certainly of Germanic stock, their migration toward richer and warmer regions took place in the 3rd century: they clashed with the Gepids and Vandals, and as a result of these clashes were driven toward the Danube and the Rhine; around the middle of the century, amid continuous struggles with the Romans, Alemanni, and Chatti, and often serving as auxiliaries of the empire, the B. were settled in the region of the Main, outside the imperial boundaries. But, drawn into the wake of the barbarian avalanche of Alans, Vandals, and Suebi that burst into Gaul at the end of the 4th century, they too crossed those boundaries and settled in the Rhineland, around Mainz and Worms, where they were found by the imperial proclamation of Jovinus in 411. For having crossed into Belgica, in the counties of Metz and Trier, they were punished in 437 by Aetius, who defeated them and killed their king Gundikar, or Gunther, according to the saga of the Nibelungs. In 443, however, while some of the surviving forces passed into Spain with the Visigoths, others obtained from Aetius himself permission to settle in the region surrounding Lake Geneva. Initially federates of the empire, there they established their kingdom, wresting from the original Roman inhabitants the « tertia » of the lands and of the cultivating slaves. Having become Latinized and converted to Catholicism, they left their name to the region (Burgundia or Burgundy). Christianity entered among the B. with an Arian coloring, but soon, through the work of s. Vienne (v.), they became Catholics. Clotilde, daughter of the king of the B., was a Catholic when she married Clovis, king of the Franks, and probably played a part in the conversion of her husband and his people, which took place in 496.
The expansionist tendency of the B. led them to seize Lyon in the middle of the 5th century; Maiorianus expelled them from it shortly afterward, but only temporarily. The year that chronology gives as the last of the Western empire sees
Among the invading Germanic populations, they were not among the strongest, as their limited power shows; this was also, and perhaps above all, due to the constitutional weakness of royal power, caused by the control exercised by the armed companions and by patrimonial divisions within the royal family itself. Nevertheless, toward the end of the fifth century, the B. succeeded in extending the territory in which they had settled: an incursion of theirs into Liguria in 490 was repelled by the Ostrogoths. But then the increasing power of the two neighboring kingdoms, those of the Franks and the Goths, together with the ties of kinship established with the Frankish king, Clodoveo, and his intervention, undermined the Burgundian kingdom. For a few years, Gundobaldo managed to restore power in his own hands; then, immediately, the fortunes of the kingdom declined, increasingly caught in the coils of the vast Frankish-Gothic struggle. Having allied himself with the Franks and continued his father’s policy, Sigismondo, son of Gundobaldo, was taken prisoner in battle by the sons of Clodoveo, while Teodorico attacked the kingdom from the south. A few years more, and the Franks, returning to the attack, deposed the last king and divided the Burgundian kingdom among Clodoveo’s heirs. Alongside Austrasia and Neustria, «Burgundia», or Burgundy, would henceforth be an integral part of the Merovingian kingdom, thus becoming part of the formation of France.