What was the Stellinga?18 Is it an example of the ancient German guild surviving in Saxony, but which Charlemagne and the church had stamped out among the other Germans? It seems to bear resemblance to those conjurationes servorum which existed in the sea and salt marshes of Flanders and Frisia, and which the legislation of Louis the Pious condemned in 821.19 If so, then it was a rebellion of broken freemen and serfs. There can be no doubt that the Stellinga was an insurrectionary movement in Saxony which intended to secure the restoration of those old Saxon rights and liberties which the conquest had suppressed or destroyed.20 We know from the biographer of Louis the Pious11 that the emperor restored many of those Saxons who had suffered under his father to their rights and liberties, and this restoration of the Saxon nobles may have infuriated the peasantry, who were not partakers of the imperial clemency and who endured the exactions

18

Nithard, IV, chaps. ii, iv, and vi. The Annal. Fuld. (842) mention liberti, i. e., liti; the Annal. Xanten (841) speak of servi. The Annal. Ruod. Fuld. refer to this movement in Saxony as a "validissimum conspirationem libertorum legitimos dominos opprimere conantium, auctoribus factionis capitali sententia dampnatis, fortiter compescuit." Prudentius, Annal. S. Bert., says that 140 conspirators were beheaded, 14 hanged, and "innumerable" others suffered mutilation. For commentary on these sources, see Derichsweiler, "Der Stellingabund," Progr. des Fr.-Wilh. Gymn, zu Köln (1868); Meyer von Knonau, "Uber Nithards vier Bücher Geschichten." Der Bruderkrieg der Söhne Ludwigs d. Fr. und sein Geschichtsschreiber (1866), p. 77 f.; Dümmler, Gesch. d. Ostfränkischen Reiches, I, 178; Waitz, III, 148–50, and IV, 689; Gfrörer, Gesch. d. Ost- und Westfrank. Carlinger, I, 27–30. As to the derivation of the word Stellinga, modern philology favors its derivation from German stellen, or sich herstellen. Graff, Althochdeutscher Sprachschatz oder Wörterbuch, VI, 674, associates the word with stallo and Notgistallo, which points to the ancient German guild associations which Charlemagne and the church endeavored to suppress as conjurationes.

19

That the Stellinga was very similar to the conjurationes servorum which had been formed earlier in the seaboard regions of Flanders and Frisia, and which the legislation of Louis the Pious condemned in 817, admits of no doubt. For this statute see Baluze, Capitularia regum Francorum, I, 875; (ed. Boretius), I, 301; cf. p. 437.

20

See Wachsmuth, "Aufstände und Kriege der Bauern im Mittelalter," Historisches Taschenbuch, V, 294–96.

of church and feudality, to rebellion.22 The tyranny of the tithe was a potent source of their dissatisfaction.

But the Stellinga was also a pagan reaction. The Annals of St. Bertin, indeed, emphasize this nature of the rebellion.23 After fifty years of professed Christianity, actually it was but a gloss in Saxony. Deep below all outward profession of the conquering faith, in the hearts of the Saxon people were the memories of old worship, old strivings, and victories which the imposed religion could not efface. Even Saxon Christianity was tinctured with these ancient aspirations. We find it in the Heliand:

To the old Saxon poet Christ is a king over his people, a warrior, a mighty ruler. . . . . The Christ in the Heliand is a hero of the old Germanic type, an ideal of courage and loyalty, and his disciples are noble vassals from whom He demands unflinching loyalty in return. . . . . The background of the events in the Heliand is the flat Saxon land with the fresh North Sea . . . . "Nazarethburg," "Bethlehemburg," "Rumuburg" [Rome] called up more vivid, if more homely pictures than any description of Palestine or Rome; the marriage at Cana and Herod's birthday-feast become drinking bouts in the hall of a German prince.24

But traces of this pagan persistence may be found much later than the ninth century in Saxony. In 1013, when Bishop Unwin came to Hamburg, he found pagan rites still celebrated in some parts of the diocese, the fasts of the church ignored, and even, we are told, bloody sacrifices.25

22 It was a tantalizing suggestion of Potgessier (a writer of the eighteenth century), De statu servorum, I, chap. ii, sec. 84, p. 94, n. C, that in the Stedinger movement of the twelfth century in Lower Saxony we have the survival or at least the outcropping of the ancient Stellinga once more.

The Ann. S. Bert. (841), p. 437, emphasizes the pagan nature of the rebellion of the Stellinga more than does Nithard: "Ut Saxonibus qui Stellinga appellantur, quorum multipliciter numerus in eorum gente habetur, optionem cujusque legis vel antiquorum Saxonum consuetudinis, utrum earum vellent, concesserit; qui .... magis ritum paganorum imitari quam christianae fidei sacramenta tenere delegerunt." Under anno 842, p. 439, it is added: "Qui et christianam fidem pene relinquerant."

24

25

J. G. Robertson, History of German literature, p. 20.

Adam of Bremen, II, 48 and 62. Even in the second half of the eleventh century Saxon prejudice against new-fangled church ritual was strong (ibid., III, 26). For traces of Germanic paganism in the popular beliefs around Braunschweig, see Voges, Ztschft. d. Harz Ver. f. Gesch., Vol. XXI, No. 2 (1889). See, also, the valu

It is significant that in 852 there is record of a third revolt of the Stellinga.26 The seat of the discontent was Angraria and the pagi in Eastphalia of Hardego, Suabengo, and Hohsingo, localities in which to this day old Saxon characteristics and ancient Saxon customs still persist with remarkable fidelity."

The conquest of Saxony by Charlemagne, it is manifest, was the point of departure of enormous political, economic, social, and religious changes. But the innate and rock-ribbed conservatism of the Saxons was more proof against the thrusts and pressures imposed by the growing feudalization of things than any other part of Germany. According to Meitzen, there are villages today in this portion of Germany in which nine-tenths of the Höfe may be traced back as far as changes which took place during the tenth and eleventh centuries. 28 A modern French historian (and the only one who is a competent authority upon the history of medieval Germany) relates how he found a peasant of Drantum near Osnabrück who in his (the historian's) belief was living still upon the same farm which his ancestors had worked a thousand years be

26

able work of Pfannenschmidt, Germanische Erntefeste im heidnischen und christlichen Cultus mit Beziehung auf Niedersachsen (Hannover, 1878), and his earlier book, Das Weihwasser im heidnischen und christlichen Cultus (Hannover, 1869). Annal. Fuld. (852): “Hludovicus profectus est in Saxoniam ob eorum vel maxime causas judicandas, qui a pravis et subdolis judicibus neglecti et multimodis, ut dicunt, legis auae dilationis decepti graves atque diurnas patiabantur injurias. Suberant etiam et aliae causae ad se ipsum specialiter aspicientes, possessiones videlicet ab avita vel paterna proprietate jure hereditario sibi derelictae, quas oportuit ab iniquis pervasoribus justa repetitione legitimo domino restitui. . . . . Habito generali conventu tam causas populi ad se perlatas justo absolvit examine quam ad se pertinentes possessiones juridicorum gentis decreto recepit. . . . . Apud Erpfestfurt habito conventu decrevit inter alia ut nullus praefectus in sua praefectura aut quaestionarius infra quaesturam suam alicujus causam advocati nomine susciperet agendam, in alienis vero prae causis agendis haberent facultatem" (cf. Waitz, IV, 410, n. 2).

27

Cf. the notes of Pertz to the Annals of Fulda (852). Of all the Saxons bishoprics founded in the time of Charlemagne, Hildesheim most preserved its ancient character and original condition through the Middle Ages. See Otto Heinemann, Beiträge zur Diplomatik der älteren Bischöfe von Hildesheim (1130-1246), Marburg, 1895.

28

Siedelung und Agrarwesen, I, 562. Wittich, Die Grundherrschaften in Nordwestdeutschland, Leipzig, 1896, admits the same thing, but with more qualification.

fore.29 Winckelmann claims that a considerable proportion of the present farming population in what was once Old Saxony can trace their family history, at least in family tradition, back to the time of Widukind.30

The agrarian economy of the Saxons reflected simple and homely farming conditions.31 The social texture was the result of the agricultural system. While manorial conditions and practices prevailed upon the lands of the church and those of the greater nobles, on the other hand there were thousands of allodial freeholders in Saxony and great blocks of freehold land. In a word, freeholds, not tenures, were the rule. Moreover, the tenacity of family ties and the stubborn persistence of the spirit of the old clan group gave protection and support to this condition.32 What another has written has pertinence here:

It is generally agreed that the isolation of the small landowner was his undoing, since it rendered him unable to withstand adverse circumstances, such as a bad year, a fire, a plague among his beasts, or a piratical raid upon his homestead. This is all quite true of the isolated small landowner, but we cannot believe it at all true of the small peasant proprietor who was surrounded by a kindred. . . . . In regions where the kindred preserved its solidarity it would be far less easy for a wealthy landowner, or even for ecclesiastical foundations, to exploit the financial and social difficulties of a poor neighbor by acquiring his lands, or by extorting rights over him at a period of want.3 33

This is precisely what we find in early Saxony, indeed until as late as the end of the twelfth century, whereas in all the rest of Germany this condition had disappeared centuries before.

Remnants of the primitive Germanic Gemeinde evidenced in the "plowlands" pertaining to each householder, and the common

29

30

G. Blondel, Etudes sur les populations rurales de l'Allemagne, p. 69.

Winckelmann, Schriften des Vereines f. Sozialpolitik, XXIII, 53.

1 The Heliand furnishes interesting evidence that horse-raising was important in ancient Saxony, for instead of "shepherds watching their flocks by night” on the eve of the nativity, we find ehuscalos watching over their horses in the fields. The whole poem is redolent of German antiquities. See Vilmar, Deutsche Alterthümer im Heliand (2d ed.), Marburg, 1862.

"Inama Sternegg, Grundherrschaften, p. 54; Sering, Erbrecht und Agrarverfassung in Schleswig-Holstein, p. 199; Nitzsch, Das alte Ditmarschen (Kiel, 1862). These authors are cited by Philpotts. See next note.

"B. S. Philpotts, Kindred and Clan, pp. 247-48.

meadow and duck-pond were everywhere visible in Saxony until late in the Middle Ages.34 Forms of tillage grown obsolete in older Germany survived in Saxony, as the ancient one-field and two-field systems, found side by side with the three-field system.

35

Drastic as the conquest of Saxony had been, the native Saxon temper was too sturdy to be wholly altered in genius and character by it. The influence of the church's organization did not wholly extirpate the ancient Gau-system, although Adam of Bremen would have us so believe.36 Nor did the church succeed in utterly stamping out the immemorial pagan religious practices of the Saxons. Fragments of the cult of Woden and Thor survived for centuries in the mutilated form of folklore, custom, superstition.37 The same vitality characterizes the persistence of primitive social institutions. The comitatus-the ancient German war-band or "following" of a war-chieftain or Herzog, can be clearly traced in Saxon history long after it was lost in feudalism in the rest of Germany. The stubborn nature of Saxon social texture yielded ever so slowly to the pressure of the feudal social structure around it.39

34

38

Long after the Allmend had been appropriated by the greediness of both lay and secular nobles, the currency of certain sayings shows how tenaciously the Saxons clung to the memory of free villages and common lands, e.g.: "Allmend ist nicht Nachbarngut"; "Was der Ochs mit dem Horne nicht biegen kann, das weiset man für Markland"; "Wenn der Müller aus der Mühle tritt, so steht er auf der Allmend." Meitzen, II, 53-97.

35

36 Adam of Bremen, I, 3. Cf. Thietmar, Chronicon, II, 20, and the spurious charter (see Sickel, Acta Karol, II, 393-94) for Bremen cited by Adam of Bremen in I, 13: "Huic parrochiae decem pagos subjecimus, quos etiam abjectis eorum antiquis vocabulis et divisionibus in duas redigimus provintias, his nominibus appellantes Wigmodiam et Lorgoe." Usually in Saxony the limits of the dioceses were deliberately made different from the lines of the ancient tribal boundaries.

37

Widukind, I, chap. xii; cf. Grimm, Myth. I (1st ed.), 210 n.; Müllenhoff, Zeitschrift f. deutsch. Alt., XXIII, 3; Halthaus, Cal. med. aevi, p. 131, has collected a mass of evidence on this matter. The Chron. ducum de Brunsw., chap. ix (Deutsche Chron., II, 581), shows that the festivities of "die Gemeine Woche"-the week beginning with the first Sunday after the feast of St. Michael-preserved ancient pagan German practices as late as the sixteenth century.

88

Widukind, I, 21-22, and III, 51; Lambert of Hersfeld, Annales (ed. HolderEgger, 1070) p. 116. The Saxon army as a popular assembly appears as late as 929 (Widukind, I, 38). Cf. Richter and Kohl, Annalen d. deutschen Gesch., Vol. III, Part II, pp. 758-63.

39

Schröder, Deutsche Rechtsgesch, p. 389; Michael, Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes, I, 298; Schulte, Deutsche Staats- und Rechtsgesch, sec. 62.