Vandals

Don't worry. Nothing bad happened. I just stumbled across this little tidbit on the Internet today and thought it worthy of sharing in the blog.

Have you ever wondered where the term vandalism comes from?

Around 439 AD, there was an East Germanic tribe called the Vandals, who under king Genseric formed a kingdom in North Africa, around the area that is now Tunisia. Part of this kingdom included an area that was claimed by Rome - the Roman Africa province. In 455, the Vandals sacked the city of Rome, leaving a great deal of destruction in their wake. The north Africa Vandal kingdom was only held for about 100 years at which point, in the Vandalic War (533-4), Justinian I re-siezed control for the Eastern Roman Empire.

Early Pro-Roman historians classified the Vandals, as, I suppose, any culture that was not Roman, barbarians for their sacking and looting of Rome. While the Vandals destruction of Roman antiquities was likely no more destructive than other invaders of the time, the Vandals were often blamed for Rome's downfall.

So, the Vandals got a bad rep and a bad rap. But it wasn't until much later (1794) that the term "vandalisme" was coined by Henri Grégoire to describe the destruction of artwork following the French Revolution. The term quickly swept into public use across Europe and - as we well know - is still used to this day to describe wanton or useless destruction of property.

Information gathered from Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge)