Old Saxony
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Old Saxony is the original homeland of the Saxons and the place from which their raids and later colonisations of Britannia were mounted. The region is in the northwest corner of modern Germany and abuts the penninsula of Jutland, which is believed to be the homeland of the related Germanic tribes known now as the Angles and Jutes. The Saxons were loosely associated with the Merovingian Kingdom but practically remained independent until they were subdued by Charlemagne in the Saxon Wars (772–804) giving rise to the early Medieval stem duchy, the Duchy of Saxony. (Not to be confused with the much later Medieval duchy of the same name, which is usually called the Electorate of Saxony to avoid the ambiguity.)
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. At a later date, the Saxons were a thorn in the side of the new Frankish kingdoms who came to power and the Emperor Charlemange himself. In the next century after Bede, the Saxons were at odds with the early Holy Roman Empire even after the conquest, and eventually were incorporated (pacified) by a combination of conversion to Christianity and suppression of local unrest towards the end of the Early Middle Ages.
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.
