Genial, Genialis, or Genealis was the Duke of Gascony

Duke of Gascony

The Duchy of Vasconia , later known as Gascony, was a Merovingian creation: a frontier duchy on the Garonne, in the border with the rebel Basque tribes...

 (Vasconia

Duchy of Vasconia

The Duchy of Vasconia , or Wasconia, was originally a Frankish march formed by 602 to keep the Basques in check. It comprised the former Roman province of Novempopulania and, at least in some periods, also the lands south of the Pyrenees centred on Pamplona.In the ninth century, civil war within...

) in the early seventh century. He is attested in the Chronicle of Fredegar

Chronicle of Fredegar

The Chronicle of Fredegar is a chronicle that is a primary source of events in Frankish Gaul from 584 to around 641. Later authors continued the history to the coronation of Charlemagne and his brother Carloman on 9 October 768....

.

Genial was probably a Frank

Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...

 or a Gallo-Roman when Theuderic II

Theuderic II

Theuderic II , king of Burgundy and Austrasia , was the second son of Childebert II...

 and Theudebert II

Theudebert II

Theudebert II , King of Austrasia , was the son and heir of Childebert II. He received the kingdom of Austrasia plus the cities of Poitiers, Tours, Vellay, Bordeaux, and Châteaudun, as well as the Champagne, the Auvergne, and Transjurane Alemannia, on the death of his father in 595, but was...

 appointed him dux

Dux

Dux is Latin for leader and later for Duke and its variant forms ....

over the Basques

Basque people

The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...

 (Vascones) of southwestern Aquitaine

Aquitaine

Aquitaine , archaic Guyenne/Guienne , is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It comprises the 5 departments of Dordogne, :Lot et Garonne, :Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes...

:

Theudebert and Theuderic sent an army against the Wascones and with God's help defeated them, subjected them to their overlordship, and made them pay tribute. They appointed a duke named Genialis, who ruled them well.

Some scholars believe Genial was more of a tribal leader over whom the Frankish sovereigns exercised a vague suzerainty than a Frankish court official sent to the outskirts of the realm to lord it over a subject people. Sometime around 612, Sisebut, king of the Visigoths, reconquered the trans-Pyrenean portion of his realm, diminishing Frankish suzerainty in Vasconia

Vasconia

Vasconia is an historical name derived from the ancient tribe of the Vascones and used in different times, specially in the Middle Ages, to refer to the Basque territories...

. Genial was succeeded by Aeghyna

Aeghyna

Aighyna, Aeghyna, Aegyna, Aigino, or Aichina, probably a Saxon, was the duke of Gascony from 626 or 627 to his death in 638. He succeeded Genial. The chief source for his reign is Fredegar....

.

Sources

• Collins, Roger
  Roger Collins
  Roger J. H. Collins is an English medievalist, currently an honorary fellow in history at the University of Edinburgh.Collins studied at the University of Oxford under Peter Brown and John Michael Wallace-Hadrill. He then taught ancient and medieval history at the universities of Liverpool and...
  
  . The Basques. Blackwell Publishing: London, 1990.
• Wallace-Hadrill, J. M.
  John Michael Wallace-Hadrill
  John Michael Wallace-Hadrill CBE was Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of Manchester , a Senior Research Fellow of Merton College in the University of Oxford , Chichele Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford and a Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford...
  
  , translator. The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations. Greenwood Press: Connecticut, 1960.
• Lewis, Archibald R. "The Dukes in the Regnum Francorum, A.D. 550-751." Speculum, Vol. 51, No. 3. (Jul., 1976), pp. 381–410.
• Auñamendi Encyclopedia: Ducado de Vasconia.
• Monlezun, Jean Justin. Histoire de la Gascogne. 1846.
• Higounet, Charles. Bordeaux pendant le haut moyen age. Bordeaux, 1963.