The Sachsenspiegel retained a force in North Germany long after the law of the Swabians (Schwabenspiegel) and of the Bavarians had gone the way of feudalism.40 In the dissolution of the Frank Empire in the ninth century the native institutions of the Saxons asserted their supremacy over the external and exotic Carolingian institutions which Charlemagne had imposed upon them.*1

The core of the Saxon army for years was the ancient German Heerban, led to the rally by the counts, and interspersed with the more compact fighting groups of the comitatus. The free farming peasantry of Saxony in a trice, if occasion demanded, could be converted into a fighting force, as the Saxon bishop, Thietmar, of Merseburg, gleefully records in 1002, when Henry II was in Saxony with a rout of Bavarian troopers, who "with that insatiable avarice which they curb at home, but wantonly indulge abroad, began to waste the crops of our Saxon farmers," and got soundly thrashed by the infuriated peasants. The brother of the king's chancellor, together with several other Bavarians, was killed in the mêlée. The remainder fled to the royal court, which was soon surrounded with augmented bands of irate peasants who were not dispersed until Duke Bernhard, of Saxony, appeared upon the scene with a strong force.12

43

The army with which Henry II invaded Poland in 1004 contained many Saxon footmen and the same is true of that which he led into Italy, although mounted service prevailed everywhere else in Germany, a fact which shows how unfeudal Saxony was. During the civil war in the reign of Henry IV (1103), the feudal soldiery of the emperor, most of whom came from the Rhinelands and South Germany, were astonished still to find in Saxony freemen cultivating their fields in time of peace and in war swarming to the fyrd, as their forefathers had done before them, raw peasant 40 For this subject of legal complexities and ancient survivals, see Waitz, V, 149 f.

"Widukind, I, 36; II, 3, 16, 33; III, 45, 51, 54, 67. Cf. Schröder, p. 166, n. 18. Some of the Carolingian officials passed into the feudal hierarchy, e.g., Dietrich, Count of Kallenburg, was descended from a “preses Saxonicus” (Annal. Ratisb., anno 1085).

"Thietmar, Chronicon, V, 19; Acta Henrici (II) imper., chap. xvii (Migne, Pat. Lat., CXL, col. 97).

levies fighting on foot, armed with antiquated equipment," and perhaps wearing homemade straw hats, as Otto the Great's army did when it invaded France in 946.45 "Go back to your fields from whence you came," cried Henry IV once to a rebel Saxon army over against him.1

46

As a people, the Saxons as late as the twelfth century were a simple folk, wholly agricultural in their means of livelihood, west of the Weser dwelling in isolated farmsteads bounded by a hedge or ditch, east of the river living in jumbled villages, with the "long fields" of the community lying round about the hamlet," every

“Widukind, I, 21, II, 39; Liutprand, Antapod., II, 25; chap. xvii, would seem to show that Henry I's forces at the battle of the Unstrut in 933 was wholly composed of the Heerban. Cf. Waitz, VII, 124; Baltzer, Zur Gesch. des deutschen Kriegswesens, p. 31; Lambert of Hersfeld (anno 1012, 1075; ed. Holder-Egger), pp. 195, 216, 238, 260. Carmen de bello Sax., Vol. II, vss. 118 f., and Vol. III, vs. 94; Bruno, De bello Sax., chap. iii (ed. Wattenbach), p. 20.

45

The curious information in regard to straw hats is found in Widukind, III, 2; "pillea foenina," according to cod. A, 2, 3; “pillei ex culmis contexti," according to cod. i. This is confirmed by a passage in Rather of Verona, cited by Pertz, “Rerum Ger. Scrip. in usum schol.,” p. 60, n. i; Opera Ratherii (ed. Ballerini), p. 310; Vogel, Ratherius von Verona, I, 260; Lauer, Le règne de Louis IV d'outre-mer, p. 146, n. 5. "Reddite agris quos ex agro deputastis armis, coequate numerum satellitum ad mensuram facultatum" (Vita Henrici Quarti, 1103 [ed. Eberhard], p. 21). The medieval Latin syntax in this sentence is almost as curious as the historical matter in it.

47

See Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen, II, 53-97, and Fuchs, Epochs of German Agrarian History and Agrarian Policy, translated in T. N. Carver, Readings in Rural Economics, pp. 224–30, where the theories as to the origin of this dualism are given. Cf., also, Seebohm's review of Meitzen in Economic Journal, VII, 71, and Ashley's in his Surveys, Historic and Economic, pp. 116-28, and Wuttke's in Neue Jahrb d. klass, Alterthumsgesch. und deutsche Literatur, Vol. I, No. 5 (1898). Meitzen's work strongly emphasizes the importance of agricultural practices and agrarian economy for the interpretation of history. But the honor of first perceiving this valuable fact and formulating the principle is to be given to Justus Moeser, who wrote in the Preface to his Osnabrückische Geschichte: "The history of landed property in Germany is the most important chapter in the history of German civilization." Elsewhere in the same work, Vol. I, p. 2, sec. 1, he returned to this thought in these weighty words: "Die Einrichtung eines Landes hängt gar sehr von der Natur seines Bodens und seiner Lage ab. Viele Bedürfnisse der Menschen werden allein dadurch erweckt und befriediget. Sitten, Gesetze und Religion müssen sich nach diesen Bedürfnissen richten." It is evident that the early Saxons dwelt both in nucleated villages and in tiny hamlets and scattered farmsteads. According to Meitzen (and others have followed him in this interpretation of the origin of these

man among them proud of his "long knife," the sachs, from which they were believed to have derived their tribal name, and hating strangers."

Feudalism in Saxony was almost rudimentary when compared to the system elsewhere in Germany. There was hardly any ordo militaris there. Suzerainty and vassalage-overlordship and underlordship were less formal relations than in Swabia and Bavaria. While there were many nobles, there was also a large body of free peasants. Moreover, these nobles were not many of them great landowners. Their distinction was a social one rather than one of political superiority. They lived much like English country

differences), where the population is found dwelling in rambling villages and outlying farms it is evidence that we have an autocthonous population, or at least peaceful occupation, e.g., the territory of the great Saxon plain. On the other hand, where the population is found settled in compact villages, it is the proof of German conquest, or at least of settlement made with more or less force. House construction and house decoration also sheds some light on this distinction in the nature of ancient Germanic settlement in Old Saxony, and the elements which went to form the Saxon nation. West of the Weser the popular ornamentation is a horsehead; east of the Weser, on the other hand, pillars or columns reminiscent of the Irminsaeule are to be found. See Hartmann's monograph on house and gable ornamentation in Old Saxony (Monatschrift f. d. Gesch. Westdeutschlands, VIII [1882]; cf. Brandi, Mitteil. d. Ver. f. Gesch. von Osnabrück, XVIII [1893]). He determines the line of division as running through Detmold, Bielefeld, Osnabrück, Hanteburg, and Petershagen. The southern limit of the Low German type of peasant house today does not coincide with the dividing-line between the Low and High German peoples, but runs to the north of that line. Since the eighteenth century the High German type of peasant-house has steadily trespassed on the region of the Low German peasanthouse, so that the latter seems doomed gradually to disappear and to be known in future only in pictures. See Andree, Ztschft. f. Ethnologie, Band, XXVII, Heft 1 (1895).

48

“ Widukind, I, 6–7; Nennius, Hist. Britton, chap. xlviii; Schatten, Hist. Westphal, II (2d ed.), says: "Usus hujus vocis hodiedum in Saterlandia obtinet apud incolas prisci sermonis retinentissimos, apud quos coram audivi loquentes ‘sachs' cultrum sonat." For information on the Saterland see Kretschmer, Hist. Geographie von Mitteleuropa, sec. 121, where other literature is cited.

The Goths, too, earlier seem to have been partial to this short blade. For in the Gesta Francorum by Rorico, a monk of Moissac, we find the Visigoths using it against the Franks in Clovis' time: "Gothi . . . . cultellos permaximos quos vulgariter 'hantsaccos' corrupto vocabulo nominamus," etc. (Migne, CXXXIX, col. 609).

49

For Saxon hatred of outsiders (advenae) see Adam of Bremen, III, 55; Helmold, Chron. Slavorum, I, 83.

gentlemen upon their estates. The early Saxon noble was more a rich proprietor farming his ancestral acres than a great baron. His life was rustic and his activities and interests rural. He was proud of his class, but he wore no escutcheon.50

The true-born Saxon was opposed to new-fangled feudal laws and feudal methods like rigid definition of the relations of overlord and underlord, relief (i.e., inheritance tax for succession to a fief), new judicial processes, new kinds of taxes, extension of the king's ban over the forests, etc. He was a staunch conservative in this attitude, and in the sentiment the peasantry shared.1 They were proud of the crudelissima lex Saxonum,52 opposed to the new invention of the church to regulate and restrain private war, the Truce of God,53 resented efforts to stamp out the good old blood feud (faida), were sticklers for the old legal idea of personality of law,55 were democratic within their class, but clung tenaciously to social distinctions.

54

Such is a picture of the culture of Saxony and the Saxon people in the depth of the feudal age-a bit of older Germany surviving and persisting in central Europe, when all the rest of Europe had gone the road of feudalism. Racial instincts, customs and inhibitions, primitive Teutonic religion, primitive Teutonic law, a simple Teutonic society gradually broken down by stronger outside contacts such is the history of early Saxony. I have barely scratched the surface of the soil. It is rich enough to merit deep ploughing by the sociologist.

Nitzsch, II, 10; Müller, Sachsen unter Herzog Magnus (1881), p. 9; Huebner, Germanic Private Law, p. 94.

1 Bruno, De bello saxonico, chap. xxv. Cf. what Huebner, pp. 6-7, says about the conservatism of Saxon law. The revolt of Margrave Dedi, of the Ostmark, or Thuringian Mark was due to the fact that having married the widow of the former margrave, Henry IV demanded payment-of an inheritance tax (relief) for the lands which she brought him (Lambert of Hersfeld, p. 106; Bruno, op. cit., chap. xxvi).

62

Wipo, Vita Chuonradi, chap. vi.

53 Lambert of Hersfeld, p. 160.

Ibid., pp. 108, 116. "Ibid., pp. 158, 270.

SOCIAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

FLOYD N. HOUSE
University of Chicago

ABSTRACT

In a recent article dealing with the sociological vocabulary, Professor Hayes raises some fundamental methodological questions. (1) All sociologists should use technical terms in the same sense. Terms are to be judged by their serviceability, which is measured in part by disjunctiveness, inclusiveness, and fewness of the concepts proposed. Methodology should tend to lead to fresh discoveries. (2) The process of competition is the physical aspect of the social reality; it determines the spatial and economic organization of human society, and affords a starting-point for the study of other social processes. (3) Conflict and accommodation are processes which involve the "personal" type of interaction. Conflict arises out of conflicting claims, and accommodation is the process in which an equilibration of conflict through redefinition of claims is established. (4) Conflict, accommodation, and assimilation are processes in which control is established. Assimilation is the process in which persons develop sympathetic responsiveness to one another's claims. (5) The concepts proposed here are intended to make possible somewhat complete accounts of reactions evoked by social contact. The immediate reduction of the social reality to description in more ultimate terms tends to obscure some of its features. (6) The actual social reality may be abstracted in substantive or in active terms. The reality is in fact a process of becoming, but the concept of becoming, unless broken up into small units connected with types of social interaction, is not serviceable for scientific purposes.

In a recent article, Professor E. C. Hayes of the University of Illinois raises some interesting questions concerning the grammar of social science,1 using as a text for his remarks passages from certain chapters in the Park and Burgess sociology." He has essentially two suggestions to offer: (1) that thirteen terms which he proposes3 be used in place of the four, competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation; and (2) that the term "social process" be reserved for reference to the evolution or "becoming" of human society, and that other aspects of the social reality which have been called "social processes" be referred to as "social relations.'

1 "Some Social Relations Restated," American Journal of Sociology, XXXI (November, 1925), 333–46. Figures in parentheses in later sections of this paper refer to pages of Hayes's article.

* Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, 1924), pp. 504-784.

'Hayes gives the complete list of terms which he proposes in a footnote on p. 342 of his article.