Old Saxony
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- The subject of this article was previously also known as Saxony. For other uses, see Saxony (disambiguation)
Old Saxony is the original homeland of the Saxons and the place from which their raids and later colonisations of Britannia were mounted. The Anglo-Saxon writer Bede claimed in his work Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (731) that Old Saxony was the area between the Elbe, Weser and the Eider in the north and north west of modern Germany and was a territory beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. Saxon "pirates" had been raiding the eastern seaboard of Britannia from here during the 3rd and 4th Centuries (prompting the construction of maritime defences in eastern Britannia called the Saxon Shore) and it is thought that following the collapse of the Roman defences at the Rhine in 407 pressure from population movements in the east forced the Saxons and their neighbouring tribes the Angles and the Jutes to migrate westwards by sea and invade the fertile lowland areas of Britannia. The traditional date for this invasion is 449 and is known as the Adventus Saxonum. This began a vicious 400 year war of occupation and led to the creation of various Saxon kingdoms in Britannia including that of the South Saxons (Sussex), the West Saxons (Wessex) and the East Saxons (Essex) alongside others established by the Angles and the Jutes and are the foundations of the modern English nation.
In 690 two priests called Ewald the Black and Ewald the Fair set out from Northumbria to convert their distant kin in Old Saxony to Christianity. It is recorded that at this time Old Saxony was divided into the ancient dioceses of Münster, Osnabrück, and Paderborn. However, by 695 the pagan Saxons had become extremely hostile to the Christian priests and missionaries in their midst and began to suspect that their aim was to convert their over-lord and destroy their temples and religion, which was probably true. Ewald the Fair was quickly murdered, but Ewald the Black they subjected to torture and was torn limb from limb. After which the two bodies were cast into the Rhine. This is understood to have happened on 3 October 695 at a place called Aplerbeck, where a chapel still stands. The two Ewalds are now celebrated in Westphalia as saints.
