Summary

The term Saxons (Latin: Saxones, Old English: Seaxe, Old Saxon: Sahson, Low German: Sassen, German Saxony) refers to population tribes that during the late Roman period and early Middle Ages were located in an area bordering the North Sea and Baltic Sea, north of what is now the Netherlands and Germany, as far north as the German low mountain range. One group also moved into what is now Britain. The vast majority of Saxons remained in their original homeland, resisting the expanding Frankish Empire, under the leadership of the semi-legendary Saxon hero Widukind. The earliest habitat of the Saxons was probably northern Albany. Part of the Saxons' home area is usually also considered to be the habitat of the Angles.

Some of the Saxons, along with the Angles and other continental tribes, sought new habitats in Britain from the 5th century onward; they are now called the Anglo-Saxons. The local Brythonic-Celtic population collectively called all these groups Saxons. It is not known how large their numbers were, it is estimated that about two hundred thousand people made the crossing to the island. During the Middle Ages, the Saxons exerted influence on the languages and cultures of North Germanic, Baltic, Finnish, Polabian and Pomeranian (West Slavic) peoples.

The term Saxon is believed to derive from a particular type of knife or sword used by this people, the sax. The sax still has symbolic significance in English counties such as Essex and Middlesex. Both still have three saxes on their ceremonial emblem. Saxnôt was the Saxon god of war and justice, compared to the Roman war god Mars and the Germanic Týr

Saxon as an ethnonym for English

In the Celtic languages, the word for English nationality is derived from the Latin Saxones. The main example is the Scottish Gaelic Sassenach, which is often used (kindly) mockingly in Scots and English.

The first documented use of the word in English is in 1771, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In Scottish Gaelic, England is Sasainn.

The Irish Sasana, Sasanach (Englishman) has the same derivation, as do the Welsh words for Englishman (Saeson, sing, Sais), Saesneg (the English language), and anything English in general.

In Cornish, English is referred to as Sawsnek, and Sawson (the English people) from the same derivation, in Breton as saoz(on), Saozneg (the English language), Bro-saoz (England).

Romance languages

The designation Sasi (Romanian for Saxon) was also applied to the Sevenburg Saxons, German migrants who settled in southeastern Transylvania in the 13th century. From Transylvania, some of these Saxons moved on to Moldavia, as the name of a town there indicates: Sascut.

Baltic languages

The Finns and Estonians over the centuries have changed their usage of the term Saxony to now refer to all of Germany (Saksa and Saksamaa) and Germans (Saksalaiset and sakslasad). The Finnish word sakset for scissors shows a connection to the Saxon sword, the sax. In Estonian, saks means a nobleman or other person of high status. As a result of the Northern Crusades, from the Middle Ages and into the 20th century, Estonia's upper class consisted mostly of people of German descent.

Saxony as a toponym

After the downfall of Henry the Lion and the subsequent division of the Duchy of Saxony into different territories, the name of the tribal duchy was changed to the lands of the Ascanians. This created a distinction between Lower Saxony, the area occupied by the Saxon tribe, and Upper Saxony, the area belonging to the Wettin family. So when the word Opper disappeared from Oppersaksen, another area had acquired the Saxon name, essentially changing the original meaning of the word.

Original living space

Saxons as a designation for a people is first mentioned in the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. In some editions of this writing, a tribe of Saxones is mentioned in the area north of the lower Elbe River. In other editions, the same tribe is called Axones. Possibly this is a misspelling of Aviones, a tribe described by the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 56-117) in his work De origine et situ Germanorum. According to one scholarly hypothesis, the name Saxones was an attempt by later writers to correct a name that meant nothing to them. Another hypothesis comes from Schütte in his work Ptolemy's Maps of Northern Europe who believes that Saxones is the correct spelling, and he argues that the first letter of words is often omitted from works by Ptolemy.

Schütte also notes that the habitat of the Saxons in the Middle Ages was often called Old Saxony.

The first time it is undisputedly established that the Saxon name was mentioned was in 356, when Emperor Julian mentioned the Saxons as allies of a rival emperor named Magnentius in Gaul. Zosimus also mentioned a distinct tribe of Saxons called the Kouadoi ("Quadi"), by which he may have meant the Chamavi or the Chauks. This tribe crossed the Rhine and drove out the Salian Franks based in Batavia, causing some of the Salians to enter the Toxandrian territory, with the support of Emperor Julian. As a defense against the Saxon colonialists, the Romans erected a defensive line on both sides of the English Channel called Litus Saxonicum or Saxon coast.

In 441-442 the Saxons first appear to an unknown Galician writer as inhabitants of Britannia, with the phrase "The Saxons now rule Britannia."

Saxons are first mentioned as inhabitants of northern Germany in the year 555 when Theudowald, the Frankish king, died and the Saxons saw the opportunity for a revolt. The revolt was put down by Chlotarius I, Theudowald's successor. Some of his successors fought against the Saxons; others were their allies. Chlotharius II eventually won a decisive battle against them.

The Thuringians often emerged as reliable allies of the Saxons.

Lower Saxony

The Saxons who lived in the area of present-day Lower Saxony seem to have united at the end of the 8th century. Starting in the 7th century, a political unity developed, from which the Duchy of Saxony emerged after 804.

From the point of view of Charlemagne's biographer, the Saxons have long resisted Christianization and domination by the Frankish Empire. Constantly attacked by Charlemagne's armies, the Saxons fought to preserve their own culture and independence. Eventually they had to lose in the Saxon Wars (772 - 804). Charlemagne had many resources to organize armies and had as an ally the increasingly powerful Roman Catholic Church. After the success of the violent conquest of Saxon territories, forced conversion to the Christian faith as propagated by the Roman Catholic Church followed and the Saxons were forcibly forced to become part of the Frankish Empire. Many of the cultural peculiarities were destroyed by the rulers, such as the Saxon Holy Tree (or pillar), the Irminsul. It is also known that in East Holstein, 10,000 Saxon young men were captured and deported to Neustria. The arable land was confiscated and an agreement was made with a king of the Slavic Abodrites. Einhard, the writer commissioned by Charlemagne to write a biography of him, chose the following words for these acts of violence:

This war, which had lasted so long, ended with the submission to the conditions set by the King, namely, renunciation of their national religious customs and worship of devils and acceptance of the gospel of the Christian faith and union with the Franks to form one nation.

The ruling dynasty of the Carolingians forced the Saxons to provide all kinds of services and goods to them, often without reasonable consideration. According to some sources, both the Saxons and the Slavic Sorbs and Abodrites also provided the Carolingians with military units in this way. The dukes who now ruled Saxony developed into kings (Henry the Fowler) and later in the 10th century, became the first emperors of Germany (Henry's son, Emperor Otto I the Great). This position was lost again in 1024. The tribal duchy was split when Henry the Lion, Emperor Otto's grandson, refused to go to war with his nephew Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in the war in Lombardy.

During the High Middle Ages, under the rule of the Salian dynasty and later under the Teutonic Order, many people from this region migrated eastward, across the Saale River, the territory of the Slavic Sorbs. Thus, this area became Germanized. Silver ore had been found in the Ore Mountains, and newcomers to the Margrave of Meißen were offered rights of freedom as citizens. This caused a large influx of people from the meadow Thuringian area. The rulers of Meißen obtained rule over the Duchy of Saxony in 1423 and eventually used the name Saxony for their entire kingdom. To this day, this Slavic and Thuringian area in eastern Germany has the name Saxony, which sometimes causes confusion about the Saxons' original habitat.

Netherlands

In the Netherlands, the Saxons inhabited the area south of the Frisians and north of the Franks. In the west, their territory extended roughly to the Gooi and in the south to the Rhine. Lower Saxon dialects are still spoken here, which in turn descended from Old Saxon. However, the area came under Frankish rule early on. After Charlemagne's rule, it formed the core area of the Archdiocese of Utrecht.

Italy and Provence

In 569, part of the Saxons accompanied the Lombards, led by Alboin, toward Italy and settled there. In 572 they went on a raid through southwestern Gaul, about as far as Stablo, now Estoublon. Because the Saxons went to war very divided, they were easily defeated by the Gallic-Frankish general Eunius Mummolus.

When the Saxons regrouped, a peace treaty was made, in which the Italian Saxons were allowed to settle with their families in Austrasia. In 573, these Saxons departed from Italy, divided into two groups. One group moved via Nice, while the other took the road past Embrun. They reunited at Avignon, where they then plundered the area. Because of this, the Saxons were stopped by Mummolus. Before they could cross the Rhone, into Austrasia, they were forced to pay compensation for what they had plundered.

Gaul

In the year 463, a Saxon king named Adovacrius conquered the city of Angers, after which he was immediately driven out again by Childeric I and his Salian Franks, allies of the Roman Empire. It is possible that the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain began in response to Frankish expansion along the coast of mainland Europe. Saxons had lived in this area for some time, for which there is evidence not only in documents but also in the archaeology and toponymy of the area.

The Notitia dignitatum tells of a town called Grannona where Saxon laeti were located. It is not certain exactly where Grannona was located and several options are possible, such as Granville in Normandy or Graignes. A number of historians have suggested that the same element gran- in Grannona can be recognized in Guernsey. This location is closer to Bayeux, where, according to Gregory of Tours, a group of Saxons was defeated in 579 by Waroch II, a Breton warlord. We know that a Saxon unit of laeti was stationed at Bayeux, the Saxones Baiocassenses This was subdued by Clovis I in the 5th century. The Saxons of Bayeux formed a full army and were often called upon to fight alongside local conscripts in Merovingian war campaigns. Although they had been defeated by the Bretons of Waroch II in 579, in 589 they were ordered by Fredegonde to wear their hair according to Breton tradition and join them in battle against Gontram, king of Burgundy. From 626, the Saxons of Bayeux were used by Dagobert I against the Basques and even one of them, named Aeghyna, was proclaimed Duke of Vasconia.

In 843 and 846 other official documents speak of a pagus called Otlinga Saxonia near the Bessin, it is just not clear what is meant by Otlinga. Several place names are recognized in the Bessin region that can be characterized as typically Saxon. One example is Cottun (Coltun 1035 - 1037 Cola's town). This is the only place name in Normandy that ends with -tun' and this can perhaps be compared to villages in Boulonnais, northern France, that end in -thun such as Alincthun, Verlincthun, Pelingthun, etc that indicate Saxon or Anglo-Saxon habitation.

If we consider the concentration of villages with -ham

However, the examples from the Bessin fairly certainly indicate a Saxon origin, such as Ouistreham (Hubba 's "home"), Surrain (Surrehain 11th century), etc. Another important indication is found in Norman surnames, such as the common name Lecesne with different spellings: Le Cesne, Lesène, Lecène and Cesne. This name comes from the Gallo-Roman saxinu, "The Saks" > saisne in Old French. These examples cannot be of later Anglo-Scandinavian origin, since there would have had to be numerous examples from the Norman areas (pays de Caux, Basse-Seine, North-Cotentin). Additionally, the Bessin was not among the pagi that faced extensive Anglo-Scandinavian immigration.

This evidence is further supported by an amount of archaeology in the Cain and de Bessin area (Bénouville, Giverville, Hérouvillette) where numerous excavations have been made where Anglo-Saxon jewelry, weapons and decorations were found. All these objects were found in tombs dating from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries.

The oldest and most startling Saxon excavation in France is that at Vron in Picardy. Here a number of tombs were found from the time of the Roman Empire to the 6th century. Using both grave goods and human remains from the 5th century, a group of people was identified who were morphologically different from the usual inhabitants of this area before the 5th century. This group of people bore a considerable resemblance to Germanic populations from the north.

At the beginning of the 4th century, 92% of the dead were buried, sometimes with typical Germanic weapons as burial gifts. Then, in the 5th and 6th centuries they were arranged eastward when buried. In the middle of this period a strong Anglo-Saxon influence can be noticed which later disappears.

All this evidence from archaeology, toponymy and writings points to the same conclusion: settlement of Saxon foederati and their families. Further anthropological research by Joël Blondiaux showed that this group of people came from Lower Saxony.

Britain

About the same time that Roman authority in Britannia fell away, the inhabitants faced an onslaught (or wave of migration) of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians crossing from mainland Europe. The Saxons had been regularly pillaging the coasts of Britannia for an extended period before this event, which had given rise to the construction of a complex of fortifications called the Litus Saxonicum or Saxon coast. Also, with the permission of the Roman Empire, many Saxons and other groups of people had already been established as farmers on the British island.

According to tradition, the Saxons and other tribes were the first to arrive on the island as part of an agreement to protect the British from incursions by the Picts, Goidels and other tribes. Sources such as the Historia Britonum and Gildas describe how the British king Vortigern allowed two Germanic warlords, called Hengest and Horsa by the 8th-century historian Beda, to settle with their people on the Isle of Thanet in exchange for their service as mercenaries. According to Beda, Hengist eventually managed to manipulate Vortigem into granting him more land to bring his people over, laying the groundwork for Germanic settlement in Britain.

Historians are divided on how the Germanic people settled in Britain; some suggest that it was a peaceful takeover, although there is only one testimony from a Briton who lived about this time in the 5th century. This testimony tells of a hostile takeover of the island:

For the fire...spread from sea to sea, fed by our enemies from the east, raged on, destroying neighboring villages and lands, until it reached the other side of the island and dipped its fierce and fire-red tongue into the western sea. In this attack every pillar was razed to the ground, by the rhythmic stroke of the battering ram; all the lords of the land fled, together with their bishops, priests and people, while the sword sparkled, and flames crackled all around them. How lamentable a sight, of streets buried under the tops of lofty towers, fallen to the ground, stones from the highest walls, holy altars and parts of human bodies, covered by wretched rags of clotted blood, as if they had been pressed together by a press, merely buried under the ruins of their houses, or swallowed up in the greedy stomachs of wild beasts and birds, with reverence shall be spoken of their blessed souls, when many of them were found in that instant, and carried on the wings of holy angels, to the high heavens. .. Some, therefore, were taken to the mountains and murdered in great numbers. Others, forced by famine, came and gave themselves up to serve as slaves to their enemies forever, with the chance of being killed instantly, which could very certainly be the greatest favor offered them. Still others disappeared beyond the seas with loud wailing, instead of the voice of rebuke. Others protected their lives, which were in constant danger, in the mountains, among cliffs or in the dense forests, and remained, though with shuddering hearts, at home.

After this, Gildas describes how the Saxons were massacred in the Battle of Mons Badonicus, 44 years before he writes his testimony, after which Britain returned to Romano-British rule. In this, Beda contradicts him. Indeed, Beda writes that after the Battle of Mons Badonicus, the expeditions of the Saxons as well as the Jutes and Angles continued and the entire southeast of Britain was soon overrun by Germanic tribes, laying the foundation for the founding of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Four autonomous Saxon kingdoms emerged:

Under the reign of Egbert of Wessex to Alfred the Great, the kings of Wessex were elevated to Bretwalda, united the land and eventually formed the kingdom of England under the threat of Viking invasions.

Social structure

Beda, a writer from Northumbria, noted in his writings around 730 that "the ancient (i.e. continental) Saxons had no king, but were governed by several ealdorman, who in times of peace were equal in power, but in times of war chose their leader by lot." The territory of the Saxons consisted of about one hundred pagi or gouwen divided into three provinces: Westphalia, Eastphalia and Engern. Each gouw had its own leader, who had enough military power to destroy entire villages that opposed him.

In the mid-9th century, Nithard described their social structure. Their class system was rigid: it consisted of three distinct classes (excluding slaves). The Saxon names for these classes were edhilingui, frilingi, and lazzi. Later the names were Latinized to nobiles or nobiliores respectively; ingenui, ingenuiles, liberi; liberti or liti, and serviles According to very early lore, believed to be close to the truth, the edhilingui were descendants of the Saxons who led their tribe out of Holstein, and also led their people in migration to Britannia in the 6th century. They formed an elite of conquering warlords. The frilingi were the descendants of the followers and auxiliaries of these warlords. The third and lowest rank consisted of the descendants of inhabitants of the conquered territories who were forced to take an oath of obedience.

Their unusual society was governed by the Lex Saxonum. It was not allowed to marry outside one's own class, and wergelds were established depending on which class one belonged to. For example, the edhilingui were worth 1440 solidi (about 700 pieces of cattle). This was six times as much as the frillingi and eight times as much as the lazzi. The gap between noble and non noble was huge, while the difference between a free man and a bonded laborer was relatively small.

According to the Vita Lebuini antiqua, an important source for early Saxon history, the Saxons held an annual meeting at a place called Marklo, the exact location of which is uncertain. Here, as it says in the Vita Lebuini, "they confirmed their laws, ruled on open matters, and decided whether to remain at peace or wage war that year through a common council." All classes were represented in this council by 12 members of each class per guild. In 782, Charlemagne abolished the guild system and replaced it with a system of counties. Charlemagne banned assemblies at Marklo, thus excluding the frilingi and lazzi from political power. The old Saxon system of Abgabengrundherrschaft, a system based on reciprocity and taxes gave way to a feudal system based on services and labor, personal relationships and oaths.

Religion

The religious practice of the Saxons (Old Saxon religion) was closely tied to their political system. Their annual assembly began with the invocation of the gods, and the way dukes were appointed by drawing lots is also seen as an act of religious significance. Such a drawing of lots was seen as handing an important decision over to divine providence. There were also rituals and objects of spiritual value, such as the pillars the Saxons called Irminsul. These beacons were seen as a link between the afterlife and the material world. Near the fortress of Eresburg (on the Obermarsberg), one of these pillars was razed to the ground by Charlemagne in 772.

Some remnants of early Saxon religion can be seen in Britain through place names and the Germanic calendar used during this period. The traditional Germanic gods, Wodan, Frigg, Týr (Saxnôt among the Saxons) and Thunor were worshiped in Wessex, Sussex and Essex. Although these are the only deities that we know for certain were worshiped here, the third and fourth months of the Old English calendar (March and April) bear the names Hrethmonath and Eosturmonath, "month of Hretha" and "month of Ostara," respectively, probably the names of two goddesses worshipped during these months. In the month of February (Solmonath) the Saxons had the tradition of offering cakes to their gods, also in September ("holy month" or "month of gifts") they had a religious festival dedicated to the harvest.

The Saxon calendar began on December 25, and a 12-day festival, the Feast of Joel, was celebrated during the months of December and January. These months also saw a Modra niht or "night of the mothers," a religious event about which very little is known. The two lowest Saxon classes continued to cling to their original religion for a long time, even after being forcibly converted to Christianity by the Frankish empire. Since these classes harbored resentment toward the ruling class for having been removed from their political power with the help of the Franks, they continued to pose a problem for Christian rulers for a long time. As late as at least 838, when the Translatio S. Liborii notes their stubbornness in the form of pagan ritus et superstitio (actions and superstitiousness).

According to Tacitus, the Germanic people did not make images of their gods to worship in a particular room, but dedicated places in the landscape and in forests to them because the gods were so grand. The Saxons had a deep-rooted nature religion that had been handed down orally for centuries. The religion was also inseparable from the family, ancestry or tribe. Consecrated trees, according to the Saxons, had a stronger connection to the gods. Sacrifices were made at consecrated springs. The water was scooped silently and is said to have had a rejuvenating effect (iuncprunno). Only later were images made and temples and other shrines built. In 743, an Index of pagan and superstitious customs was compiled at the Frankish church meeting. This shows, among other things, that they had cottages and huts for the gods, wore amulets, made statues of gods out of dough or rags, dug ditches around the village to ward off evil spirits, and prophesied from birds, horses, cattle dung, sneezes, animal brains and flames. The gods were not considered omnipotent or perfect. Fate (metod in Old Saxon, wurd in Old High German) was more powerful. To this everyone had to submit, and people were eager to fathom what fate had determined. Soothsayers and priests could approach this destiny. The gods were not seen as "guardians of morality" and "punishers of evil. Evil had come into the world through the gods themselves. The Saxons cremated their dead.

The Saxons from England were converted to Christianity during the 7th century under the influence of the Jutes. In the 630s, St. Birinus took on the task of converting the western Saxons of Wessex. To this end, a bishopric was founded near Dorchester-on-Thames. With their conversion to Christianity, and with it the keeping of written records, the western Saxons really stepped out of obscurity. The southern Saxons were first intensively evangelized under the influence of the Angles. King Aethelwealh of Sussex was converted by Wulfhere, King of Mercia and then gave Archbishop Wilfrid of York permission in 681 to convert the southern Saxons from a newly founded diocese at Selsey. From the large number of pagan sites in the area of the eastern Saxons, it can be seen that they held more tightly to their pagan traditions. Although their king Saeberht was converted early on and a bishopric was founded near London, the first bishop (Mellitus) of this, was driven out by Saeberht's successors. Finally, the eastern Saxons were converted in the 650s and 660s under the leadership of Cedd.

Continental Saxons were evangelized primarily by Anglo-Saxon missionaries during the 7th and 8th centuries. The Saxons had several reasons for not being served by the new religion being preached to them:

Bishop Switbert went to the Bructeres after 692 in a border area with a Frankish-Saxon population. After an invasion by Saxon warriors from the northeast, Switbert retreated to the island in the Rhine Switbertwerth. Around the year 695, two Anglo-Saxon missionaries were killed by Saxon villagers. They were the Ewald brothers: White and Black Ewald, about whom Hugo Heussen's Batavia Sacra (1715) is written, following the Church History of the English People (731) by Beda the Venerable. White Ewald died by the sword and Black Ewald was tortured to death by the people, their corpses thrown into the Rhine. However, the Saxon chief was furious, had the murderers killed and the village burned. In the years that followed, the villagers and peasants also proved to be the greatest opponents of Christianization, while missionaries often received support from the edhilingui and other nobility.

Lebuine, an Englishman who preached in between 745 and 770 against the Saxons from mainly the eastern Netherlands, managed to make many friends among the noble classes. They even eventually managed to rescue him from the hands of an angry mob at the annual meeting in Marklo. The author of the Vita antiqua (c. 850), a saint's life about Lebuïnus, reports that his conversion expedition was a failure. Twice the church he founded near Daventre was burned down. The missionary Ludger was only able to rebuild the church for the second time after Charles' first invasion of Saxony.

The Wars of Saxony starting in 772 under Charlemagne had as its main objective the conversion and annexation of the Saxons to the Frankish Empire. Although the highest caste was soon converted, the forcibly enforced conversion of the lower castes caused them to become very hostile to their rulers. The way Charlemagne brought the Saxons to the Catholic faith was qualified as "baptism or death" and "preaching with iron tongue, with the sword. The methods used were inappropriate according to some contemporaries, as the following shows. This is a piece from a letter written by Alcuinus of York, a senior Roman Catholic official and advisor to Charlemagne, to his friend Meginfrid in 796.

If the light yoke and sweet burden of Christ were preached to the most stubborn of Saxons, with as much devotion as when the payment of gifts was demanded, or as the way in which for the most trivial faults imaginable the law was forced upon them, perhaps they would not resist their Christian vows.

Three other quotes from Alcuin's letters:

Faith, as the holy apostle says, is a voluntary matter; it is not a matter of compulsion.

To faith, man can be raised, but not forced.

A mature person must answer for himself the question of what he believes and what he wants.

It is said that Louis the Pious treated the Saxons more as Alcuin would have liked and they were therefore loyal subjects.

The lowest classes offered resistance to their Frankish rulers as late as the year 840, when the Stellinga rebelled against their Saxon leaders, who were allied to Lothar I. After this rebellion was quelled, Louis the German had relics brought from Rome to the Duchy of Saxony in 851 in order to consecrate people more fully to the Roman Catholic Church. In his work Annales de gestis Caroli Magni imperatoris, the anonymous poet Poeto Saxo placed great emphasis on the conquest of Saxony and praised the Frankish emperor as the bringer of Christian liberation and even compared him to the Roman emperors.

In the 9th century, Saxon nobility became ardent supporters of monasticism, forming a Christian bulwark against Slavic religion in the east and Nordic paganism in the north. Many Christian writings were written in Old Saxon. The most important were the result of intensive literary production and wide influence of the Saxon monasteries of such places as Fulda, Corvey and Verden and theological controversy between the Augustinian Godschalk and Hrabanus Maurus an adherent of Semipelagianism.

Early on, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious began to support these works written in vernacular to more effectively convert the Saxons. In the 9th century, Louis ordered the publication of two works to better educate the people about biblical stories. These were the Heliand, an epic verse about the life of Christ in a Germanic setting, and Genesis, a retelling of the first book of the Bible. At meetings at Tours and Mainz, it was decided that henceforth preaching would be done in Old Saxon to appeal to the lowest classes of society. The earliest text in Old Saxon is a vow from the late 8th or early 9th century.

Sources

1. Saxons
2. Saksen (volk)
3. ^ Springer 2004, p. 12: "Unter dem alten Sachsen ist das Gebiet zu verstehen, das seit der Zeit Karls des Großen (reg. 768–814) bis zum Jahre 1180 also Saxonia '(das Land) Sachsen' bezeichnet wurde oder wenigstens so genannt werden konnte."
4. ^ Springer 2004, pp. 27–31.
5. Simon Young "AD 500 A journey through the dark isles of Britain and Ireland" pag. 36, Phoenix 2006
6. Torsten Capelle: Die Sachsen des frühen Mittelalters. Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1384-4, S. 10–11.
7. a b Albert Genrich: Der Name der Sachsen – Mythos und Realität. In: Hans-Jürgen Hässler (Hrsg.): Studien zur Sachsenforschung. Band 7 (= Veröffentlichungen der urgeschichtlichen Sammlungen des Landesmuseums zu Hannover. Band 39), Hildesheim 1991, S. 137–144.
8. Springer 2004, σ. 12
9. 2,0 2,1 Springer 2004, σ. 2004