Stellinga

The Stellinga (Old Saxon for "companions, comrades") or Stellingabund (German for "Stellinga league") was a movement of Saxon frilingi (freemen) and lazzi (freedmen) between 841 and 843. These were the middle two Saxon castes, below the nobility and above the unfree. The aim of the Stellinga was to recover those rights the two castes had possessed before their forced conversion from Germanic paganism to Christianity in the 770s. At that time they had still possessed political privileges, but Charlemagne, having won over to his cause the Saxon nobility, had reduced them to mere peasants. The Stellinga thus despised the Lex Saxonum (law of the Saxons), which had been codified by Charlemagne, preferring to live in accordance with ancient and unwritten tribal custom. The movement was violently resisted by the uppermost caste, the nobiles (nobility), not always with the support of the Frankish kings.

==Saxon conditions 838–841== During the civil war of 840–843 in the Carolingian Empire, between the heirs of Louis the Pious, the Stellinga had the support of Lothair I, who promised to grant them the rights they had had when formerly pagan and whom they in turn promised to support for the throne of East Francia. Saxony, on the eve of the Stelling uprising, was divided into two noble factions: the Saxons supportive of Hattonid influence (and thus of imperial unity) and the Saxones sollicitati, who were allied with Louis the German in his invasion of Alemannia in 839.