The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons, were the Germanic people of "Old" Saxony which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Before any clear historical mention of Saxony as a country, "Saxons" became important during the late Roman Empire, when the name was used to refer to coastal raiders who attacked from the north, in a similar sense to the much later term Viking. These early raiders and settlers were believed by contemporaries to come from coastal regions north of the Rhine and the homeland of the Franks, including Frisians, Angles and Jutes, as well as the territory which came to be called Saxony. Significant numbers of these early Saxons settled in what later became northern France and England, and England was sometimes seen as their homeland. To avoid confusion, already in the 8th century authors such as Bede sometimes referred to the Saxons of Saxony in Germany as the old Saxons, and their country as old Saxony, and this differentiation is still often used by historians today when discussing this period.
The 770s decade ran from January 1, 770, to December 31, 779.
Year 797 (DCCXCVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 797 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
The Massacre of Verden was an event during the Saxon Wars where the Frankish king Charlemagne ordered the death of 4,500 Saxons in October 782. Charlemagne claimed suzerainty over Saxony and in 772 destroyed the Irminsul, an important object in Saxon paganism, during his intermittent thirty-year campaign to Christianize the Saxons. The massacre occurred in Verden in what is now Lower Saxony, Germany. The event is attested in contemporary Frankish sources, including the Royal Frankish Annals.
A stem duchy was a constituent duchy of the Kingdom of Germany at the time of the extinction of the Carolingian dynasty and through the transitional period leading to the formation of the Ottonian Empire. The Carolingians had dissolved the original tribal duchies of the Empire in the 8th century. As the Carolingian Empire declined, the old tribal areas assumed new identities. The five stem duchies were Bavaria, Franconia, Lotharingia (Lorraine), Saxony and Swabia (Alemannia). The Salian emperors retained the stem duchies as the major divisions of Germany, but the stem duchies became increasingly obsolete during the early high-medieval period under the Hohenstaufen, and Frederick Barbarossa finally abolished them in 1180 in favour of more numerous territorial duchies.
Old Saxony was the homeland of the Saxons during the Early Middle Ages. It corresponds roughly to the modern German states of Lower Saxony, eastern part of modern North Rhine-Westphalia state (Westphalia), Nordalbingia and western Saxony-Anhalt (Eastphalia), which all lie in northwestern Germany. It had four provinces: Nordalbingia, Eastphalia, Westphalia and Angria, these provinces, in turn, were divided into smaller territories, the gaue, which are equivalent to modern Districts of Germany (Kreise), and were equivalent to the English shires.
A capitulary was a series of legislative or administrative acts emanating from the Frankish court of the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, especially that of Charlemagne, the first emperor of the Romans in the west since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century. They were so called because they were formally divided into sections called capitula.
Lex Frisionum, the "Frisian Law", was recorded in Latin during the reign of Charlemagne, after the year 785, when the Frankish conquest of Frisia was completed by the final defeat of the Saxon rebel leader Widukind. The law code covered the region of the Frisians.
The Saxon Wars were the campaigns and insurrections of the thirty-three years from 772, when Charlemagne first entered Saxony with the intent to conquer, to 804, when the last rebellion of tribesmen was defeated. In all, 18 campaigns were fought, primarily in what is now northern Germany. They resulted in the incorporation of Saxony into the Frankish realm and their forcible conversion from Germanic paganism to Christianity.
The history of Saxony began with a small tribe living on the North Sea between the Elbe and Eider River in what is now Holstein. The name of this tribe, the Saxons, was first mentioned by the Greek author Ptolemy. The name Saxons is derived from the Seax, a knife used by the tribe as a weapon.
The Evangeliary or Book of the Gospels is a liturgical book containing only those portions of the four gospels which are read during Mass or in other public offices of the Church. The corresponding terms in Latin are Evangeliarium and Liber evangeliorum.
Collections of ancient canons contain collected bodies of canon law that originated in various documents, such as papal and synodal decisions, and that can be designated by the generic term of canons.
The Lex Ripuaria, also spelled Lex Ribuaria, is a 7th-century collection of Germanic law, the laws of the Ripuarian Franks. It is a major influence on the Lex Saxonum of AD 802. The Lex Ripuaria originated about 630 around Cologne and has been described as a later development of the Frankish laws known from Lex Salica.
The Stellinga or Stellingabund was a movement of Saxon frilingi (freemen) and lazzi (freedmen) between 841 and 843. These were the middle two Saxon castes, below the nobility and above the unfree. The aim of the Stellinga was to recover those rights the two castes had possessed before their conversion from Germanic paganism in the 770s. At that time they had still possessed political privileges, but Charlemagne, having won over to his cause the Saxon nobility, had reduced them to mere peasants. The Stellinga thus despised the Lex Saxonum, which had been codified by Charlemagne, preferring to live in accordance with ancient and unwritten tribal custom. The movement was violently resisted by the uppermost caste, the nobiles (nobility), not always with the support of the Frankish kings.
Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae was a legal code issued by Charlemagne and promulgated amongst the Saxons during the Saxon Wars. Traditionally dated to Charlemagne's 782 campaign, and occasionally to 785, the much later date of 795 is also considered possible. Despite the laws, some Saxons continued to reject Charlemagne's rule and attempts at Christianization, with some continuing to rebel even after Charlemagne's death . The Saxons responded to Charlemagne's Christianization efforts by destroying encroaching churches and injuring or killing missionary priests and monks, and the law marks Charlemagne's effort "to impose Christianity on the Saxons by the same force that Charlemagne applied in imposing Carolingian political authority".
The Lex Thuringorum is a law code that survives today in one 10th-century manuscript, the Codex Corbeiensis, alongside a copy of the Lex Saxonum, the law of the Saxons. The code was compiled in the first decade of the 9th century, probably 802–3, under Frankish patronage. The language of the law code is Latin and few Thuringians could have read it, nonetheless some must have cooperated with Frankish officials during the process of collecting and codifying the customs. The Lex Thuringorum, the Lex Saxonum, the Lex Francorum Chamavorum and the Lex Frisionum comprise the four so-called "Carolingian tribal laws", because they were produced at the same time at the direction of King Charles I in order to accommodate the differing legal customs of the nations living within his empire. They were neither totally faithful nor comprehensive reproductions of tribal law, but were created as part of a process of official christianisation. The historian Timothy Reuter writes that "the manuscript transmission does not suggest that [the Thuringian law] was extensively used, though there are enough different strata of law still visible in the text to suggest that it was not merely a literary exercise."
Wulfar or Wulfaire was the archbishop of Reims from 812 until his death. He was an important administrator in the Carolingian Empire, both before and during his episcopate, under the emperors Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.
The Lex Romana Curiensis, also known as the Lex Romana Raetica, Lex Romana Utinensis or Epitome Sancti Galli, is a Latin legal treatise of the eighth century from the region of Churraetia. It was not a law code in force, but a handbook for use in legal education. Nonetheless, it may be the basis of the Raetian lex et consuetudo that Charlemagne confirmed in the early 770s.
Ewa ad Amorem, traditionally known as the Lex Francorum Chamavorum, is a 9th-century law code from the Carolingian Empire. It is generally counted among the leges barbarorum, but it was not a national law. It applied only to a certain region in the Low Countries, although exactly where is disputed. Its association with the Chamavi is a modern conjecture.
The Carmen de conversione Saxonum—or in English, Poem Concerning the Conversion of the Saxons—is a Latin poem celebrating the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity in 777. It was written by a poet of the Frankish Kingdom for or shortly after the assembly held by Charlemagne at Paderborn in Saxony in that year. This marked the end of the first phase of the Saxon Wars and was believed at the time, as shown by the Carmen and other contemporary sources, to mark the full acceptance by the Saxons of their defeat and conversion. The following year, however, the Saxons rebelled and the wars continued for several decades.
