Saxons

addressing the Saxons]] (ruled 117–138), showing the original homeland of the Saxones, roughly corresponding to the territory of modern Schleswig-Holstein]]

The Saxons (, , ) were a confederation of Old Germanic tribes. Their modern descendants are generally included in the Low German, Dutch, Frisian and English peoples. They are primarily found in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony-Anhalt, Westphalia, Drenthe, Overijssel, Frisia and England. The modern German state of Saxony is not inhabited by Saxon descendants, and was so named because it came to be ruled by the medieval Saxon dynasty.

The Saxons earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This area overlapped the area of the Angles, a tribe with which they were frequently closely linked.

Saxons participated in the Germanic settlement of Britain during and after the fifth century. It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain though estimates for the total number of Anglo-Saxon settlers is around two hundred thousand. Since the eighteenth century, many modern Saxon Germans have settled in regions around the world, especially in North America, Australia, South Africa, Southern Brazil and in areas of the former Soviet Union, where some communities still maintain parts of their cultural and linguistic heritage along with other Germans.

Because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration during the Middle Ages, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the Scandinavian and Baltic peoples, and also upon the Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic peoples.

The pre-Christian settlement of the Saxon people originally covered an area a little more to the north-west, with parts of the southern Jutland Peninsula, Old Saxony and the area south of the Frisians, north of the Rhine, and east of the Utrecht Hill Ridge of the modern Netherlands. During the fifth century A.D., the Saxons were part of the people migrating to the Romano-British province of Britannia. One of the other tribes was the Germanic Angles, whose name, taken together with that of the Saxons led to the formation of the modern term, Anglo-Saxons.

Early history

(king of a Gallo-Roman rump state), Odoacer (Germanic king of Italy), and (Julius) Nepos (nominally last Western Roman emperor, de facto ruler of Dalmatia).]] Ptolemy's Geographia, written in the 2nd century, is sometimes considered to contain the first mentioning of the Saxons. Some copies of this text mention a tribe called Saxones in the area to the north of the lower River Elbe, thought to derive from the word Sax or stone knife. However, other copies call the same tribe Axones, and it is considered likely that it is a misspelling of the tribe that Tacitus in his Germania called Aviones. It is considered likely that "Saxones" was an attempt by later scribes to correct a name which meant nothing to them.

The first undisputed mention of the Saxon name in its modern form is from 356, when Julian, later the Roman Emperor, mentioned them in a speech as allies of Magnentius, a rival emperor in Gaul. All mentions of the Saxons during the 4th and early 5th centuries referred to pirates and warlords in Gaul and Britain, rather than to a specific tribe or inhabitants of a specific area. In order to defend against Saxon raiders, the Romans created a military district called the Litus Saxonicum ("Saxon Coast") on both sides of the English Channel. In 441/442, Saxons are mentioned for the first time as inhabitants of Britain, when an unknown Gaulish historian wrote: "Britain falls under the rule of the Saxons".

Saxons as inhabitants of present-day Northern Germany are first mentioned in 555, when Theudebald, the Frankish king, died and the Saxons used this opportunity for an uprising. The uprising was suppressed by Chlothar I, Theudebald's successor. Some of their Frankish successors fought against the Saxons, others were allied with them; Chlothar II won a decisive victory against the Saxons. The Thuringians frequently appeared as allies of the Saxons.

The Saxons may have derived their name from seax, a kind of knife for which they were known. The seax has a lasting symbolic impact in the English counties of Essex and Middlesex, both of which feature three seaxes in their ceremonial emblem.

Continental Saxons

Saxony

The Continental Saxons living in what was known as Old Saxony appear to have consolidated themselves by the end of the 8th century. After subjugation by the Emperor Charlemagne a political entity called the Duchy of Saxony appeared.

The Saxons long resisted both becoming Christians and being incorporated into the orbit of the Frankish kingdom, but they were decisively conquered by Charlemagne in a long series of annual campaigns, the Saxon Wars (772 – 804). During Charlemagne's campaign in Hispania (778), the Saxons advanced to Deutz on the Rhine and plundered along the river. With defeat came enforced baptism and conversion as well as the union of the Saxons with the rest of the Germanic, Frankish empire. Their sacred tree or pillar, a symbol of Irminsul, was destroyed. Charlemagne also deported 10,000 of them to Neustria and gave their now vacant lands to the loyal king of the Abotrites. It is constructive now to quote Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, on the closing of such a grand conflict:

"The war that had lasted so many years was at length ended by their acceding to the terms offered by the King; which were renunciation of their national religious customs and the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and union with the Franks to form one people."

Under Carolingian rule, the Saxons were reduced to tributary status. There is evidence that the Saxons, as well as Slavic tributaries such as the Abodrites and the Wends, often provided troops to their Carolingian overlords. The dukes of Saxony became kings (Henry I, the Fowler, 919) and later the first emperors (Henry's son, Otto I, the Great) of Germany during the 10th century, but they lost this position in 1024. The duchy was divided up in 1180 when Duke Henry the Lion, Emperor Otto's grandson, refused to follow his cousin, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, into war in Lombardy.

During the High Middle Ages, under the Salian emperors and, later, under the Teutonic Knights, German settlers moved east along the River Elbe into the area of a western Slavic tribe, the Sorbs. The Sorbs were gradually Germanised. This region subsequently acquired the name Saxony through political circumstances, though it was initially called the March of Meissen. The rulers of Meissen acquired control of the Duchy of Saxony in 1423 and eventually applied the name Saxony to the whole of their kingdom. Since then, this part of eastern Germany has been referred to as Saxony (German: Sachsen), a source of some misunderstanding about the original homeland of the Saxons, mostly in the present-day German state of Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen).

Netherlands

In the Netherlands, Saxons occupied the territory south of the Frisians and north of the Franks. In the west it reached as far as the Gooi region, in the south as far as the Lower Rhine. After the conquest of Charlemagne this formed the main part of the Bishopric of Utrecht. The Saxon duchy of Hamaland played an important role in the formation of the duchy of Guelders.

The local language, although strongly influenced by standard Dutch, is still officially recognized as Dutch Low Saxon.

Italy and Provence

In 569, some Saxons accompanied the Lombards into Italy under the leadership of Alboin and settled there. In 572, they raided southeastern Gaul as far as Stablo, now Estoublon. Divided, they were easily defeated by Gallo-Frankish General Mummolus. When the Saxons regrouped, a peace treaty was negotiated whereby the Italian Saxons were allowed to settle with their families in Austrasia. Gathering their families and belongings in Italy, they returned to Provence in two groups in 573. One group proceeded by way of Nice and another via Embrun, joining up at Avignon, where they plundered the territory and were consequently stopped from crossing the Rhone by Mummolus. They were forced to pay compensation for what they had robbed before they could enter Austrasia. Nevertherless, they are only known by documents and it can't be compared to the traces of Saxon settlements in northern and western Gaul.

Gaul

A Saxon king named Eadwacer conquered Angers in 463 only to be dislodged by Childeric I and the Salian Franks, allies of the Roman Empire. It is possible that Saxon settlement of Great Britain began only in response to expanding Frankish control of the Channel coast.

Some Saxons already lived along the Saxon shore of Gaul. We can trace them in the documents, but in the archeology and in the toponymy too. The Notitia Dignitatum mentions the Tribunus cohortis primae novae Armoricanae, Grannona in litore Saxonico. The location of Grannona is uncertain and was identified by the historians and toponymists at different places, mainly with the town known today as Granville (nowadays in Normandy) or nearby. The Notitia Dignitatum does not explain, where these "Roman" soldiers came from. Some toponymists proposed another location for Grannona / Grannonum, that is to say Graignes (Grania 1109 - 1113). It could be the same element *gran, that is recognized in Guernsey (Greneroi 11th c.). This location is closer to Bayeux, where Gregory of Tours evokes otherwise the Saxones Bajocassini (Bessin Saxons), that were ineffective to defeat the Breton Waroch in 579.

So thus, a Saxon unit of laeti would have been settled at Bayeux — the Saxones Baiocassenses — . These Saxons became subjects of Clovis I late in the fifth century. The Saxons of Bayeux comprised a standing army and were often called upon to serve alongside the local levy of their region in Merovingian military campaigns. They were ineffective against Waroch in this capacity in 579. In 589, the Saxons wore their hair in the Breton fashion at the orders of Fredegund and fought with them as allies against Guntram. Beginning in 626, the Saxons of the Bessin were used by Dagobert I for his campaigns against the Basques. One of their own, Aeghyna, was even created a dux over the region of Vasconia.

In 843 and 846 under king Charles the Bald, other official documents mention a pagus called Otlinga Saxonia in the Bessin region, but the meaning of Otlinga is unclear. Different Bessin toponyms were identified as typically Saxon, ex : Cottun (Coltun 1035 - 1037 ; Cola 's "town"). It is the only place-name in Normandy, that can be interpreted as a -tun one (English -ton. cf. Colton). However, we cannot compare this single fact in Normandy with the extension of the -thun villages in the north of France, in Boulonnais, ex : Alincthun, Verlincthun, Pelingthun, etc. showing with other toponyms, an important Saxon or Anglo-Saxon settlement. If we compare the concentration of -ham / -hem (Anglo-Saxon hām > home) in the Bessin and in the Boulonnais, we obtain a better result. In the area known today as Normandy, the -ham cases of Bessin are unique, they don't exist out of it. Other cases were considered, but there is no determining example, f.e. : Canehan (Kenehan 1030 / Canaan 1030 - 1035) could be the biblical name Canaan or Airan (Heidram 9th c.), the Germanic masculine name Hairammus.

On the contrary, the Bessin examples are quite sure. f. e. Ouistreham (Oistreham 1086), Étréham (Oesterham 1350 ?), Huppain (*Hubbehain ; Hubba 's "home"), Surrain (Surrehain 11th c.), etc. Another significant example can be found in the Norman onomastics : the widespread surname Lecesne, with variant spellings : Le Cesne, Lesène, Lecène and Cesne. It comes from Gallo-Romance *SAXINU "the Saxon" > saisne in Old French. These examples cannot be more recent Anglo-Scandinavian toponyms, because in that case they would have been numerous in the Norman regions (pays de Caux, Basse-Seine, North-Cotentin) concerned by these Nordic settlements. That is not the case, and Bessin does not belong to the pagii that were touched by an important Anglo-Scandinavian immigration.

Otherwise, archeological finds add evidence to the documents and the results of toponymic research. All around the city of Caen and in the Bessin (Vierville-sur-Mer, Bénouville, Giverville, Hérouvillette), excavations have shown numerous Anglo-Saxon jewelry, design elements, settings and weapons. All these things were discovered in cemeteries in a context of the 5th, 6th and 7th century AD.

However, the oldest and most spectacular Saxon site found in France to date is Vron, in Picardy. There, archeologists excavated a large cemetery with tombs dating from the Roman Empire until the 6th century. Furniture and other gravegoods, as well as the human remains revealed a group of people buried in the 4th and 5th century AD. Physically different from the usual local inhabitants found before this period, they instead resembled the Germanic populations of the North. At the beginning (4th c.) 92% were buried, sometimes with typical Germanic weapons. Then, they were ranked to the east, when they were buried in the 5th and later to the beginning of the 6th c. We can notice a strong Anglo-Saxon influence in the middle of the period, that disappears later. Archeological material, neighbouring toponymy and texts tend toward to the same conclusions: settlement of Saxon foederati with their families. Further anthropological research by Joël Blondiaux shows they were from Low Saxony.

Saxons in Britain

Saxons, along with Angles, Frisians and Jutes, invaded or migrated to the island of Great Britain (Britannia) around the time of the collapse of Roman authority in the west. Saxon raiders had been harassing the eastern and southern shores of Britannia for centuries before, prompting the construction of a string of coastal forts called the litora Saxonica or Saxon Shore, and many Saxons and other folk had been permitted to settle in these areas as farmers long before the end of Roman rule in Britannia. According to tradition, however, the Saxons (and other tribes) first entered Britain en masse as part of a deal to protect the Britons from the incursions of the Picts, Irish, and others. The story as reported in such sources as the Historia Brittonum and Gildas indicates that the British king Vortigern allowed the Germanic warlords Hengist and Horsa to settle their people on the Isle of Thanet in exchange for their service as mercenaries. Hengist manipulated Vortigern into granting more land and allowing for more settlers to come in, paving the way for the Germanic settlement of Britain.

Four separate Saxon realms emerged: # East Saxons: created the Kingdom of Essex. # Middle Saxons: created the province of Middlesex # South Saxons: led by Aelle, created the Kingdom of Sussex # West Saxons: created the Kingdom of Wessex

During the period of the reigns from Egbert to Alfred the Great, the kings of Wessex emerged as Bretwalda, unifying the country and eventually forging it into the kingdom of England in the face of Viking invasions.

Historians are divided about what followed: some argue that the takeover of southern Great Britain by the Anglo-Saxons was peaceful. There is, however, only one known account from a native Briton who lived at this time (Gildas), and his description is of a forced takeover:

For the fire...spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east, and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island, and dipped its red and savage tongue in the western ocean. In these assaults...all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press; and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels... Some, therefore, of the miserable remnant, being taken in the mountains, were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes, running the risk of being instantly slain, which truly was the greatest favour that could be offered them: some others passed beyond the seas with loud lamentations instead of the voice of exhortation...Others, committing the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy, to the mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests, and to the rocks of the seas (albeit with trembling hearts), remained still in their country.

Social structure

Bede, a Northumbrian, writing around the year 730, remarks that "the old (that is, the continental) Saxons have no king, but they are governed by several ealdormen (or satrapa) who, during war, cast lots for leadership but who, in time of peace, are equal in power." The regnum Saxonum was divided into three provinces — Westphalia, Eastphalia and Angria — which comprised about one hundred pagi or Gaue. Each Gau had its own satrap with enough military power to level whole villages which opposed him.

In the mid 9th century, Nithard first described the social structure of the Saxons beneath their leaders. The caste structure was rigid; in the Saxon language the three castes, excluding slaves, were called the edhilingui (related to the term aetheling), frilingi, and lazzi. These terms were subsequently Latinised as nobiles or nobiliores; ingenui, ingenuiles, or liberi; and liberti, liti, or serviles. According to very early traditions which probably contain a good deal of historical truth, the edhilingui were the descendants of the Saxons who led the tribe out of Holstein and during the migrations of the sixth century.

According to the Vita Lebuini antiqua, an important source for early Saxon history, the Saxons held an annual council at Marklo where they "confirmed their laws, gave judgment on outstanding cases, and determined by common counsel whether they would go to war or be in peace that year." Charlemagne outlawed the Marklo councils and thus pushed the frilingi and lazzi out of political power. The old Saxon system of Abgabengrundherrschaft, lordship based on dues and taxes, was replaced by a form of feudalism based on service and labour, personal relationships, and oaths.

Religion

Paganism and politics

Saxon pagan practices were closely related to Saxon political practices. The annual councils of the entire tribe began with invocations of the gods, and the procedure by which dukes were elected in wartime, by drawing lots, probably had pagan significance, that is, giving trust to divine providence to guide the seemingly random decision making. There were also sacred rituals and objects, such as the pillars called Irminsul, which were believed to connect heaven and earth. Charlemagne had one such pillar chopped down in 772.

Something of pagan Saxon practice in Britain can be gleaned from place names. The Germanic gods Woden, Frigg, Tiw, and Thunor, who are attested to in every Germanic pagan tradition, were worshipped in Wessex, Sussex, and Essex, and they are the only ones directly attested to, though the names of the third and fourth months (March and April) of the Old English calendar bear the names Hrethmonath and Eosturmonath, meaning "month of Hretha" and "month of Ēostre", apparently from the names of two goddesses who were worshipped around that season. The pagan Saxons offered cakes to their gods in February (Solmonath) and there was a religious festival associated with the harvest, Halegmonath ("holy month" or month of offerings", September). The pagan calendar began on 25 December, and the months of December and January were called Yule (or Giuli) and contained a Modra niht or "night of the mothers", another religious festival of unknown content.

The Saxon freemen and servile class remained practising pagans long after their nominal conversion to Christianity. Nursing a hatred of the upper class which, with Frankish assistance, had marginalised them from political power, the lower classes (the plebeium vulgus or cives) were still a problem for Christian authorities as late as 836, when the Translatio S. Liborii remarks on their obstinacy in pagan ritus et superstitio (usage and superstition).

Conversion and resistance

The conversion of the Saxons in England from their original Germanic paganism to Christianity occurred in the early to late seventh century under the influence of the already converted Jutes of Kent. In the 630s, Birinus became the "apostle to the West Saxons" and converted Wessex, whose first Christian king was Cynegils. The West Saxons begin to emerge from obscurity only with their conversion to Christianity and the keeping of written records. The Gewisse, a West Saxon people, were especially resistant to Christianity; but Birinus merely exercised more efforts against them. Their king, Saeberht, was converted early and a diocese was established at London, but its first bishop, Mellitus, was expelled by Saeberth's heirs. The conversion of the East Saxons was only completed under Cedd in the 650s and 660s.

The continental Saxons were evangelised largely by English missionaries in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Around 695, two early English missionaries, Hewald the White and Hewald the Black were martyred by the vicani, that is, villagers.

Under Charlemagne, the Saxon Wars had as their chief object the conversion and integration of the Saxons into the Frankish empire. Though much of the highest caste converted readily, forced baptisms and forced tithing made enemies of the lower orders. Even some contemporaries found the methods employed to win over the Saxons wanting, as this excerpt from a letter of Alcuin of York to his friend Meginfrid, written in 796, shows:

If the light yoke and sweet burden of Christ were to be preached to the most obstinate people of the Saxons with as much determination as the payment of tithes has been exacted, or as the force of the legal decree has been applied for fault of the most trifling sort imaginable, perhaps they would not be averse to their baptismal vows.

Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's successor, reportedly treated the Saxons more as Alcuin would have wished, and consequently they were faithful subjects. The lower classes, however, revolted against Frankish overlordship in favour of their old paganism as late as the 840s, when the Stellinga rose up against the Saxon leadership, who were allied with the Frankish emperor Lothair I. After the suppression of the Stellinga, in 851 Louis the German brought relics from Rome to Saxony to foster a devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. The Poeta Saxo, in his verse Annales of Charlemagne's reign (written between 888 and 891), laid an emphasis on his conquest of Saxony and celebrated the Frankish monarch on par with the Roman emperors and as the bringer of Christian salvation to a pagan people.

Vernacular Christianity

In the ninth century, the Saxon nobility became vigorous supporters of monasticism and formed a bulwark of Christianity against the existing Slavic paganism to the east and the Nordic paganism of the Vikings to the north. A lot of Christian literature was produced in the vernacular Old Saxon, notably the literary output and wide influence of Saxon monasteries such as Fulda, Corvey, and Verden; and the theological controversy between the Augustinian Gottschalk and the semipelagian Rabanus Maurus.

From an early date, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious supported Christian vernacular works in order to evangelise the Saxons more efficiently. The Heliand, a verse epic of the life of Christ in a Germanic setting, and Genesis, another epic retelling of the events of the first book of the Bible, were commissioned in the early ninth century by Louis to disseminate scriptural knowledge to the masses. A council of Tours in 813 and then a synod of Mainz in 848 both declared that homilies ought to be preached in the vernacular. The earliest preserved text in the Saxon language is a baptismal vow from the late eighth or early ninth century; the vernacular was used extensively in an effort to Christianise the lowest castes of Saxon society.

Etymology

).]] Following the downfall of Henry the Lion and the subsequent split of the Saxon tribal duchy into several territories, the name of the Saxon duchy was transferred to the lands of the Ascanian family. This led to the differentiation between Lower Saxony, lands settled by the Saxon tribe, and Upper Saxony, as the duchy (finally a kingdom). When the Upper was dropped from Upper Saxony, a different region had acquired the Saxon name, ultimately replacing the name's original meaning.

The Finns and Estonians have changed their usage of the term Saxony over the centuries to denote the whole country of Germany (Saksa and Saksamaa respectively) and the Germans (saksalaiset and sakslased, respectively) now. In old Finnish the word saksa meant merchant, as in the words voisaksa (butter seller) and kauppasaksa (traveling salesman). In Estonian saks means a nobleman or, colloquially, a wealthy or powerful person.

The label "Saxons" (in Romanian 'Saşi') was also applied to German settlers who migrated during the 13th century to southeastern Transylvania.

In the Celtic languages, the word for the English nationality is derived from the word Saxon. The most prominent example, often used in English, is the Gàidhlig loanword Sassenach (Saxon), often used disparagingly in Scottish English/Scots. England, in Gàidhlig, is Sasainn (Saxony). Other examples are the Welsh Saesneg (the English language), Irish Sasana (England), Breton saoz(on) (English, saozneg "the English language", Bro-saoz "England"), and Cornish Sowson (English people) and Sowsnek (English language), as in the famous My ny vynnav kows Sowsnek! (I will not speak English!).

During Georg Friederich Händel's visit to Italy, much was made of his being from Saxony; in particular, the Venetians greeted the 1709 performance of his opera Agrippina with the cry Viva il caro Sassone, "Long live the beloved Saxon!"

The word also survives as the surnames Saß/Sass, Sachse and Sachs. The Dutch female first name "Saskia" originally meant "A Saxon woman" (alteration of "Saxia").

See also

List of Germanic tribes

Notes

References

Thompson, James Westfall. Feudal Germany. 2 vol. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1928.

Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056. New York: Longman, 1991.

Reuter, Timothy (trans.) The Annals of Fulda. (Manchester Medieval series, Ninth-Century Histories, Volume II.) Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992.

Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., translator. The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1960.

Stenton, Sir Frank M. Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 1971.

Bachrach, Bernard S. Merovingian Military Organization, 481–751. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971.

Goldberg, Eric J. "Popular Revolt, Dynastic Politics, and Aristocratic Factionalism in the Early Middle Ages: The Saxon Stellinga Reconsidered." Speculum, Vol. 70, No. 3. (Jul., 1995), pp 467–501.

Hummer, Hans J. Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm 600–1000. Cambridge University Press: 2005.

External links

James Grout: Saxon Advent, part of the Encyclopædia Romana

Saxons and Britons

Info Britain: Saxon Britain

Category:Ancient peoples Category:Ancient Germanic peoples Category:Germanic peoples Category:Ethnic groups in Europe Category:History of the Germanic peoples Category:Iron Age Europe Category:Saxons Category:West Germanic peoples