Saxons

Saxons

Sahson
The Stem Duchy of Saxony
Regions with significant populations
Old Saxony, Frisia, England, Normandy
Languages
Old Saxon, Old English
Religion
Originally Germanic and Anglo-Saxon paganism, later Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Anglo-Saxons, Angles, Frisii, Jutes, Franks

The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons, were the Germanic people of "Old" Saxony (Latin: Antiqua Saxonia) which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany.^[1] The political history of the inland Saxons, who were neighbours of the Franks, is unclear until the 8th century and the conflict between their semi-legendary hero Widukind and the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. They do not appear to have been politically united until about that time. Previous Frankish rulers of Austrasia, both Merovingian and Carolingian, fought numerous campaigns against Saxons, both in the west near the Lippe, Ems and Weser, and further east, neighbouring Thuringia and Bohemia. Later medieval sources referred to this eastern area as "North Swabia". Charlemagne conquered all the Saxons after winning the long Saxon Wars (772-804), and forced them to convert to Christianity, annexing Saxony into the Carolingian domain. Under the Carolingian Franks, Saxony became a single duchy, fitting it within the basic political structure of the later Holy Roman Empire. The early rulers of this early Duchy of Saxony expanded their territories, and therefore those of the Holy Roman empire, to the east, at the expense of Slavic-speaking Wends.

Long before any clear historical mention of Saxony as a country, a related but possibly distinct group of "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.^[2] 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, and possibly parts of the territory which came to be called Saxony. It has been proposed that these coastal Saxons should be seen as a distinct but related people with an etymologically equivalent name, such as the Dutch and Deutschen (Germans) today.^[3] 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. In contrast, the settlers once called Saxons in England became part of a new Old English-speaking nation, now commonly referred to as the Anglo Saxons, or simply "the English". This brought together local Romano-British populations, Saxons, and other migrants from the same North Sea region, including Frisians, Jutes, and Angles. The Angles are the source of the term English which became the more commonly-used collective term. The term Anglo-Saxon, combining the names of the Angles and the Saxons, came into use by the eighth century, initially in the work of Paul the Deacon, to distinguish the Germanic-speaking inhabitants of Britain from continental Saxons, but both the Saxons of Britain and those of Old Saxony in northern Germany long continued to be referred to as "Saxons" in an indiscriminate manner.

There is possibly a single classical reference to a smaller and still much earlier Saxon tribe, but the interpretation of this text ("Axones" in most surviving manuscripts) is disputed. According to this proposal, the original Saxon tribe lived north of the mouth of the Elbe, close to the probable homeland of the Angles.^[4]

Today the Saxons of Germany no longer form a distinctive ethnic group or country, but their name lives on in the names of several regions and states of Germany, including Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen) which includes most of the original duchy. Their language evolved into Low German which was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League, but has faced a long and gradual decline since the Late Medieval period as a literary, administrative and, to a significant extent, cultural language in favor of Dutch and German.