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The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were the Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony (Latin: Antiqua Saxonia) which became a Carolingian "stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. [1] Many of their neighbours were, like them, Germanic-speaking, including the Franks and Thuringians to the south.
The name of this tribe, the Saxons (Latin: Saxones), was first mentioned by the Greek author Ptolemy. The name Saxons is derived from the Seax, a knife used by the tribe as a weapon. [citation needed] In the 3rd and 4th centuries, Germany was inhabited by great tribal confederations of the Alamanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, Franks, Frisii, and ...
The Saxons were one of the most robust groups in the late tribal culture of the times, and eventually bequeathed their tribe's name to a variety of more and more modern geopolitical territories, such as Old Saxony (Altsachsen), Upper Saxony, the Electorate, the Prussian Province of Saxony (in present-day Saxony-Anhalt), and the Kingdom of ...
The cultural and linguistic changes were stark and led to the creation of various Saxon kingdoms in England including that of the South Saxons , the West Saxons and the East Saxons alongside others established by the Angles and the Jutes and are the foundations of the modern English nation.
Saxony has a long history as a duchy, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire (the Electorate of Saxony), and finally as a kingdom (the Kingdom of Saxony).In 1918, after Germany's defeat in World War I, its monarchy was overthrown and a republican form of government was established under the current name.
In mid-January 772, the sacking and burning of the church of Deventer by a Saxon expedition was the casus belli for the first war waged by Charlemagne against the Saxons. It began with a Frankish invasion of Saxon territory and the subjugation of the Engrians and destruction of their sacred symbol Irminsul near Paderborn in 772 or 773 at Eresburg.
The southern and east coasts were, of course, the areas settled first and in greatest numbers by the settlers and so presumably were the earliest to pass from Romano-British to Anglo-Saxon control. Once established they had the advantage of easy communication with continental territories in Europe via the North Sea or the Channel.
[1] [2] (Because the early Frisians and Anglo-Saxons were formed from largely identical tribal confederacies, their respective languages were very similar. Old Frisian is the most closely related language to Old English [3] and the modern Frisian dialects are in turn the closest related languages to contemporary English.)