In the early fourth-century Notitia Dignitatum

Notitia Dignitatum

The Notitia Dignitatum is a unique document of the Roman imperial chanceries. One of the very few surviving documents of Roman government, it details the administrative organisation of the eastern and western empires, listing several thousand offices from the imperial court down to the provincial...

, Germania Secunda (Germania II), situated along the Lower Rhine and administered by a Consularis

Consularis

Consularis is a Latin word, derived from consulo, "take counsel".-Roman history:Originally it was simple and adjective meaning "consular", but more interestingly it has also become a substantive, used in technical meanings.* Any former consul...

, was the name under the Dominate

Dominate

The Dominate was the "despotic" latter phase of government in the ancient Roman Empire from the conclusion of the Third Century Crisis of 235–284 until the formal date of the collapse of the Western Empire in AD 476. It followed the period known as the Principate...

 of Germania Inferior

Germania Inferior

Germania Inferior was a Roman province located on the left bank of the Rhine, in today's Luxembourg, southern Netherlands, parts of Belgium, and North Rhine-Westphalia left of the Rhine....

, a military border territory which had been established under the Flavian reorganization of the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

, out of northeasternmost Gaul

Gaul

Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...

, separated from Belgica by the estuary of the Scheldt

Scheldt

The Scheldt is a 350 km long river in northern France, western Belgium and the southwestern part of the Netherlands...

. Germania Secunda in the diocese of Gaul remained to the end of the Roman Empire a small, intensely garrisoned Roman province

Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and, until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of Italy...

 that was inhabited by Romans and Ripuarian Franks

Ripuarian Franks

Ripuarian Franks is a distinction of the Frankish people made by a number of writers in the Latin language of the first several centuries of the Christian Era...

 in the 5th century. Its capital remained Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, Roman Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, which was the seat of a Christian bishopric, in charge of an ecclesiastical province that survived the fall of the Roman Empire.