§ 27. The Conversion of the Saxons. Charlemagne and Alcuin. The Heliand, and the
Gospel-Harmony.
Funk: Die Unterwerfung der Sachsen unter Karl dem Gr. 1833.
A. Schaumann: Geschichte des niedersächs. Volkes. Götting. 1839.
Böttger: Die Einfahrung des Christenthums in Sachsen. Hann. 1859.
W. Giesebrecht; Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, Vol. I. (1863), pp. 110 sqq.
Of all the German tribes the fierce and warlike Saxons were the last to accept the Christian
religion. They differed in this respect very much from their kinsmen who had invaded and conquered
England. But the means employed were also as different: rude force in one case, moral suasion in
the other. The Saxons inhabited the districts of modern Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and
Westphalia, which were covered with dense forests. They had driven the Franks beyond the Weser
and the Rhine, and they were now driven back in turn by Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne.
They hated the foreign yoke of the Franks, and far-off Rome; they hated the tithe which was imposed
upon them for the support of the church. They looked upon Christianity as the enemy of their wild
liberty and independence. The first efforts of Ewald, Suidbert, and other missionaries were fruitless.
Their conversion was at last brought about by the sword from political as well as religious motives,
and was at first merely nominal, but resulted finally in a real change under the silent influence of
the moral forces of the Christian religion.
Charlemagne, who became master of the French kingdom in 768, had the noble ambition
to unite the German tribes in one great empire and one religion in filial communion with Rome,
but he mistook the means. He employed material force, believing that people become Christians
by water-baptism, though baptized against their will. He thought that the Saxons, who were the
most dangerous enemies of his kingdom, must be either subdued and Christianized, or killed. He
pursued the same policy towards them as the squatter sovereigns would have the United States
government pursue towards the wild Indians in the Western territories. Treaties were broken, and
shocking cruelties were committed on both sides, by the Saxons from revenge and for independence,
by Christians for punishment in the name of religion and civilization. Prominent among these
atrocities is the massacre of four thousand five hundred captives at Verden in one day. As soon as
the French army was gone, the Saxons destroyed the churches and murdered the priests, for which
they were in turn put to death.
Their subjugation was a work of thirty-three years, from 772 to 805. Widukind (Wittekind)
and Albio (Abbio), the two most powerful Saxon chiefs, seeing the fruitlessness of the resistance,
submitted to baptism in 785, with Charlemagne as sponsor.^125
But the Saxons were not entirely defeated till 804, when 10,000 families were driven from
house and home and scattered in other provinces. Bloody laws prohibited the relapse into heathenism.
The spirit of national independence was defeated, but not entirely crushed, and broke out seven
centuries afterwards in another form against the Babylonian tyranny of Rome under the lead of the
Saxon monk, Martin Luther.
(^125) "Jetzt war Sachsen besiegt," says Giesebrecht (l.c., p. 117), "und mit Blutgesetzen worden das Christenthum und das
Königthum zugliech den Sachsen aufgedrungen. Mit Todesstrafen wurde die Taufe erzwungen, die heidnischen Gebräuche
bedroht; jede Verletzung eines chistlichen Priesters wurde, wie der Aufruhr gegen den König und der Ungehorsam gegen seine
Befehle, zu einem todeswuerdigen Verbrechen gestempelt."