saxon politics in the shadow of ottonian kingship

Saxony after Carolingian incorporation

The conquest and incorporation of Saxony into the Carolingian empire, which Charles the Great achieved after long and bitter struggles, had far-reaching consequences for the political and institutional organisation of the Saxons. The three Saxon ‘armies’ of the Ostfalians, Westfalians and Engrians, and the ‘national’ assembly of all castes – nobles, free men and freed men – ceased to contribute to the coherence of Saxon political life. From 785 all assemblies in Saxony were forbidden except for those summoned by a count or royal missus. It was the so-called comital organisation which henceforth determined the structure of lordship in Saxony; but no more fundamental Frankicisation of the ruling strata in Saxony took place. The Saxon nobility allied itself with the Franks, presumably by ties of marriage, and the Carolingian rulers did not replace it with Frankish magnates. A second characteristic of the Carolingian conquest was to have long-term consequences: Saxon territory did not become a core region of the Carolingian kings, even after the divisions of the empire among Louis the Pious’ sons. Carolingian visits to Saxony remained exceptional events. Already by the mid-ninth century we can observe nobles in eastern and western Saxony termed dux. Between Rhine and Weser in the west it is Ekbert, with his ducatus Westfalorum; in the east it is the dux Liudolf, ancestor of the Ottonians and founder of the nunnery of Gandersheim. In Saxony, therefore, as in other parts of east Francia, we find that phenomenon known as the ‘younger tribal duchy’: an aristocratic lordship claiming exclusive preeminence within a gens (a source of lengthy feuds in Franconia and Suabia), and consequently bound to clash with the king. In Saxony such conflicts are not recorded at first, and it is in any case doubtful whether the dux Liudolf already claimed a leadership within the whole Saxon territory. He seems rather to have confined himself to his own lordship in eastern Saxony, in the Harz mountains.