Saxon Identities, AD 150–900

289 Pages·2017·2.25 MB·English

by  Robert Flierman

Saxon Identities, AD 150–900
Studies in Early Medieval History
Series editor: Ian Wood
Concise books on current areas of debate in late antiquity/early medieval
studies, covering history, archaeology, cultural and social studies, and the
interfaces between them.
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Ross Balzaretti
Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, Leslie Brubaker
Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostra, Hreda
and the Cult of Matrons, Philip A. Shaw
Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages,
edited by Jinty Nelson and Damien Kempf
Vikings in the South, Ann Christys
Saxon Identities, AD 150–900
Robert Flierman
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2017
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-1945-4
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ePub: 978-1-3500-1946-1
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Series: Studies in Early Medieval History
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Contents
Maps viii
Preface ix
Note on Annotation and Translation xii
Abbreviations xiii
1 Introduction 1
2 The Most Ferocious of Enemies: Saxons from a Roman Perspective 23
3 Rebels, Allies and Neighbours: Saxons from a Merovingian Perspective 53
4 Gens Perfida or Populus Christianus? The Saxons and the Saxon Wars
in Carolingian Historiography 89
5 From Defeat to Salvation: Remembering the Saxon Wars in
Carolingian Saxony 119
Conclusion 163
Notes 171
Bibliography 235
Index 265
Maps
3.1 The Merovingian World, c. 600 55
4.1 The Carolingian Empire in 814 91
5.1 Carolingian Saxony, c. 860 131
Preface
This book’s origins go back to the years 2010–2013, when I participated in the
joint research project Cultural Memory and the Resources of the Past (CMRP),
funded by the European Science Foundation. The project brought together a
group of junior and senior medievalists from Cambridge, Vienna, Leeds and
Utrecht, who set out to study how societies in the post-Roman West approached
the past and used it with an eye to identity-formation. My own research focused
on Charlemagne’s wars of expansion and the ideological challenges posed by the
foundation of a multi-ethnic empire. This, at least, was my initial aim, for while
studying the subtle and less-than-subtle means through which Charlemagne
and his successors shaped former enemies into loyal subjects, I came to focus
more and more on one group in particular, who appeared to me by far the most
intriguing of the peoples brought under Carolingian dominion: the Continental
Saxons. Various factors contributed to this fascination. Of course, there were
the dramatic circumstances encompassing the Saxons’ incorporation into
Charlemagne’s empire: a protracted and exceedingly violent war of conquest
accompanied by an unprecedented campaign of forced conversion. This part
of Saxon history is well known and probably constitutes the most conspicuous
blemish on Charlemagne’s modern reputation as pater Europae, Father of
Europe. But I soon found out that the events of the Saxon Wars were only part
of the Saxon story. I was struck even more by the intense and highly polemical
manner in which people reported on the Saxons in this period, and indeed,
had reported on them since late antiquity. The Saxons themselves left no
textual evidence prior to the ninth century AD, but they generated a lot of talk
among their Roman and Frankish neighbours, mostly hostile, rarely truthful
and informed, it seemed, by deep-seated biases and unspoken agendas. It thus
became my aim to explore what prompted such talk about Saxons and how it
developed over time, from the first reference to Saxons in the second century
AD up till Saxony’s integration into the Carolingian Empire seven centuries
later. The resulting study cannot properly be called a history of the Saxons,
for its main focus is not on the Saxons themselves but on those writing about
them. It is an exploration of how ancient and early medieval authors thought
about Saxons; who they hoped, feared or imagined the Saxons to be; and how