Saxon Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- This article is about the Saxons, a Germanic people. For other uses of the term, see Saxon (disambiguation).
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2 Cultural Layers In Depth 3 International Relations |
Saxons invaded Britain in the early Middle Ages, giving their names to the kingdoms of Essex, Sussex and Wessex (the lands respectively of the East, South and West Saxons), which with the shorter-lived Middlesex eventually became part of the kingdom of England. As in Germany, Saxons here would be the southern people of the North, and north of the Franks in France as the German Saxons are north of the Franks in Franconia, likewise. Saxons formed from the 8th century Duchy of Saxony. They long avoided becoming Christians and being incorporated into the orbit of the Frankish kingdom, but were decisively conquered by Charlemagne in a long series of annual campaigns (772 - 804). With defeat came the enforced baptism and conversion of the Saxon leaders and their people. Even their sacred tree, Irminsul, was destroyed. Under Carolingian rule, the Saxons were reduced to a tributary status. There is evidence that the Saxons, as well as Slavic tributaries like the Abodrites and the Wends, often provided troops to their Carolingian overlords. The dukes of Saxony became kings (Henry I, the Fowler, 919) and later the first Emperors (Henry's son, Otto I, the Great) of Germany during the 10th century, but lost this Position in 1024. The duchy was divided up in 1180 when Duke Henry the Lion, Emperor Otto's grandson, refused to follow Emperor Frederick Barbarossa into war in Italy.
The later Upper Saxony in the southern part of eastern Germany, from 1806 to 1918 the kingdom of Saxony, and from then till 1952, and again from 1990 until today the Free State of Saxony, became so known through the acquisition of the dukedom of Saxony by the Margrave of Meissen in 1423. His successors' territory, in fact, lay beyond the traditional lands of the Saxon people. The label "Saxons" was generally applied to German settlers who migrated during the 13th century to south-eastern Transylvania in present-day Romania, where their descendants numbered a quarter of a million in the early decades of the 20th century. Most have left since World War II, many of them during the 1970s and 1980s due to the Romanianisation policies of the Ceauşescu; regime. Since reunification in 1990, three federal states of Germany derive their name from the Saxons: Niedersachsen or Lower Saxony, whose area corresponds roughly to the traditional Saxon lands between the Netherlands and the Elbe River; Sachsen-Anhalt, located around the city of Magdeburg; and the Free State of Sachsen or Saxony, which included the city of Dresden, in eastern Germany bordering the Czech Republic, the old kingdom (see above).
The Saxons are more often than not, presented to students as indistinguishable with the Angles of Schleswig who are on the north side of the presently German occupied, ancient Danish border, the Danevirke. Commonly, references will often repeat partisan rhetoric, such as Anglo-Saxon and Schleswig-Holstein side by side and seemingly indifferent. One must always remember that these are two separate tribes with an almost always lukewarm relationship and joined at the hip by convenient and profitable geography, so to speak, each with their own traditions and ways distinguishing one another. For much of history, the Saxons have made attempts to annex and conglomerate the Anglican folk, nearly always in conflict with the Jutes and Danes over the presently German territory known as the landschaft Angeln. Claims were made in propaganda in several periods, by Saxons, that the English are their same kin, while the English themselves would never wholly agree and more times than not, wilfully ally themselves with the Danes when it came to chosen affiliation and dominion. This was to maintain their personal identity and avoid assimilation. Regardless of this truth and at times, Denmark has personally held northern Saxony(Hamburg and Holstein) and Saxon areas in Britain(Middlesex and Essex-and even the whole of what is now England through royal conquest and succession) to much harassment and lengthy Saxon complaint, so the blade has very much gone both ways and it would seem as though the Saxons of Wessex and Saxony both have gotten their Christian vengeance. This seems to have attracted the Angles to stick by those with a more strategic advantage in European affairs, however, not fully annulling the Anglo-Danish bond, just splitting their efforts amongst them both(In England, they remain under auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury and not those of the Archbishop of York, yet their socio-economic lifestyle is more Danish in every respect).
For the viking times, the Saxons have denied the Danes the "Anglo-Saxon" royal allocation of the Danelaw in Britain for the Danes themselves(East Anglia and Wessex are proper regions[-Mercia is merely a Midlands convergence of varying folks from Angles to Saxons and Danes], so is the Danelaw-by royal decree) and also the reposession of the whole in Schleswig amongst English for their own sake(East Anglia has greater unity despite their own North-South division, so why not Schleswig?), in their traditional relatedness to Denmark. On the whole, the Angles have preferred to remain neutral in the face of Germano-Danish conflicts, hoping that the other two tribes just settle the score themselves(and hopefully, just maybe, striking up some individual independence apart from either one! One could say that remaining in the middle has jeopardised that very notion beyond repair and so hath disintegrated their nation). One fundemental truth as always encountered, (in comparative and contemporary description) is that both the Danish in York with English in Thetford(vs Saxons in London) and Danish in Copenhagen with Angles in Angeln(vs Saxons in Berlin) have much protested the dominance by their southern neighbours' usage of hegemonial efforts upon them "in the interest of public order and Christendom" while the Saxons themselves would no doubt brand the Danes as unsophisticated rabble to the point of chauvinistically patronising composers in classical music to riches while denegrating country music or folk music as rags to be quieted for disturbance and ignoring the issue of Anglian individuality. For all the differences these peoples have, it is rather a refreshing understanding to know that the Saxons have been chief harbingers of European civilisation to the north, by filtering and translating the Frankish culture in a way more transmutable to far removed peoples from the cradle of Roman legacy.
It is another coin toss when we see the source of viking raids from the very presence of Saxons with enough prosperity(by Carolingian ideal) to bring forth their own assaults upon themselves by furnishing the northern pauper heathens with these means through trade and otherwise, cultural imperialism(as the Volkerwanderung Romanised the Franks before them). The Angles have been postulated in affiliation to the nearby Jomsborg vikings as the probable extent of their influence in that area near Saxons. This has much relation to the wife of King Sweyn I of Denmark and England, mother of the Danish King Canute the Great of England and Scandinavia). All the while, these Saxons were never vikings like many Angles-who on many occasions, joined with Varangians on journeys to service in the Byzantine Empire. The "Anglo-Saxons" as a bonded unit, did gain ground with their Knights Templars and Plantagenet Empire having Normandy to bring Anglicanism and the British Empire while the Teutonic Order and Hanseatic League had Prussia to bring Lutheranism and the German Empire. Yet, the Angles were largely responsible for the British-German capitalist and nationalist sentiment inspired by the old freebooting viking methods of moneymaking which precluded specific feudal obligations and tenure(this ensured the name of eastern Britain as England and not another, since the Saxons and Danes had severely weakened eachother's influence over eachother by constant quarrel). This made their religion change for its alternative and somehow superior economy enabling the Northern Renaissance and Protestant Reformation because of the shift of power from Freemasonry and Calvinism to a more developed form of that in this part of Europe(Calvinist issues were more of a Rhine experience from Switzerland to the Low Countries that served as a bridge from the French Avignon Papacy to the full out reformation set forth by Saxons. With their Angle "side-kicks" in tow, the rest of the Scandinavians would be nowhere close to sight(Angles happen to be a quasi-national border between northern and middle Europe as on one side or the other, there are drastically different ways of life...at least in the common perception) while led by the Danes to their own separate glory under the Kalmar Union in its various forms, including the Nordic Council of today).
As in the West Saxon conquest of the Danelaw in England(even under Anglian protest) which made the rest of Britain its tributaries, here too, these other Saxons would conquer Denmark in World War Two and use leverage against the other folks of Scandinavia-with the same arguments-that these folks under their rule would benefit by cultural assimilation, the indoctrination that they are superior for giving up their sovereignty and without cause to arm themselves against such a coup. This happens to give identity to Angles in name only, and effectively avoids English solidarity other than such obvious dilutions as language and land, both of which they are told happens to not be theirs, yet a bastardisation based on others. This is an ever prominent issue, for considering how Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler held England in his esteem as a likely Aryan ally, when the majority of English adamantly refused to be a party to the German war machine. One could ironically see it as the Saxons fulfilling their French conversion prophecy,(as formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire) themselves and furthermore understand the similar motives of Napoleon which led to this recent arrangement(hypocritically, bringing the fight elsewhere but avenging their own wrongs by conquering Vichy France). It can be plainly understood, that the Saxons have tried to manage the northern folks and call them "Germanic"(or even "British"), as if they somehow belonged in ancient Germania or modern Germany(or Roman Britain) alongside or partial to Roman culture with them, despite every single instance when there are general, muttered complaints and gossip at the pushy behaviour of these people, somehow more moderate than the French in this esteem. Brashness is something they are fond of not giving up because of the power they wield in geopolitics as Fenno-Scandinavia and Irish-Northern Britain just happens to be beyond many others' concern. As it stands, Deutschland(Roman Germania) and England(Roman Britain) have a historical record of schadenfreude while the more northern folks have janteloven and these neverending problems between them, do not resolve themselves because they both share seasonal affective disorder.
This is an Article on Saxon. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Saxon Historical Progression
Cultural Layers In Depth
International Relations