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Die Organisation Sachsens nach der Vita Lebuins (German Edition)

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They were forced to pay compensation for what they had robbed before they could enter Austrasia. These people are known only by documents, and their settlement cannot be compared to the archeological artifacts and remains that attest to Saxon settlements in northern and western Gaul. Some Saxons already lived along the Saxon shore of Gaul as Roman foederati.

The location of Grannona is uncertain and was identified by the historians and toponymists at different places: The Notitia Dignitatum does not explain where these "Roman" soldiers came from. The Saxons of Bayeux comprised a standing army and were often called upon to serve alongside the local levy of their region in Merovingian military campaigns. In , the Saxons wore their hair in the Breton fashion at the orders of Fredegund and fought with them as allies against Guntram. One of their own, Aeghyna , was created a dux over the region of Vasconia. In and under king Charles the Bald , other official documents mention a pagus called Otlinga Saxonia in the Bessin region, but the meaning of Otlinga is unclear.

Different Bessin toponyms were identified as typically Saxon, ex: It is the only place name in Normandy that can be interpreted as a -tun one English -ton ; cf. Other cases were considered, but there is no determining example. Another significant example can be found in the Norman onomastics: In addition, archaeological finds add evidence to the documents and the results of toponymic research. The oldest and most spectacular Saxon site found in France to date is Vron , in Picardy.

Physically different from the usual local inhabitants found before this period, they instead resembled the Germanic populations of the north. Then they were ranked to the east [ clarification needed ] , when they were buried in the 5th and later to the beginning of the 6th century. Archaeological material, neighbouring toponymy, and texts [ clarification needed ] support the same conclusion: Saxons, along with Angles , Frisians and Jutes , invaded or migrated to the island of Great Britain Britannia around the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Saxon raiders had been harassing the eastern and southern shores of Britannia for centuries before, prompting the construction of a string of coastal forts called the Litora Saxonica or Saxon Shore. Before the end of Roman rule in Britannia, many Saxons and other folk had been permitted to settle in these areas as farmers. According to tradition, the Saxons and other tribes first entered Britain en masse as part of an agreement to protect the Britons from the incursions of the Picts , Gaels and others. The story, as reported in such sources as the Historia Brittonum and Gildas , indicates that the British king Vortigern allowed the Germanic warlords, later named as Hengist and Horsa by Bede , to settle their people on the Isle of Thanet in exchange for their service as mercenaries.

According to Bede, Hengist manipulated Vortigern into granting more land and allowing for more settlers to come in, paving the way for the Germanic settlement of Britain. Historians are divided about what followed: Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press; and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds; with reverence be it spoken for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried, at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels Some, therefore, of the miserable remnant, being taken in the mountains, were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained by famine , came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes, running the risk of being instantly slain, which truly was the greatest favour that could be offered them: Others, committing the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy, to the mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests and to the rocks of the seas albeit with trembling hearts , remained still in their country.

Gildas described how the Saxons were later slaughtered at the battle of Mons Badonicus 44 years before he wrote his history, and their conquest of Britain halted. The 8th-century English historian Bede tells how their advance resumed thereafter. He said this resulted in a swift overrunning of the entirety of South-Eastern Britain, and the foundation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

During the period of the reigns from Egbert to Alfred the Great , the kings of Wessex emerged as Bretwalda , unifying the country. They eventually organised it as the kingdom of England in the face of Viking invasions. Bede , a Northumbrian writing around the year , remarks that "the old that is, the continental Saxons have no king, but they are governed by several ealdormen or satrapa who, during war, cast lots for leadership but who, in time of peace, are equal in power.

Each Gau had its own satrap with enough military power to level whole villages that opposed him. In the mid-9th century, Nithard first described the social structure of the Saxons beneath their leaders. The caste structure was rigid; in the Saxon language the three castes, excluding slaves, were called the edhilingui related to the term aetheling , frilingi and lazzi.

These terms were subsequently Latinised as nobiles or nobiliores ; ingenui , ingenuiles or liberi ; and liberti , liti or serviles. The frilingi represented the descendants of the amicii , auxiliarii and manumissi of that caste. The lazzi represented the descendants of the original inhabitants of the conquered territories, who were forced to make oaths of submission and pay tribute to the edhilingui.

The Lex Saxonum regulated the Saxons' unusual society. Intermarriage between the castes was forbidden by the Lex, and wergilds were set based upon caste membership. The edhilingui were worth 1, solidi , or about head of cattle, the highest wergild on the continent; the price of a bride was also very high. This was six times as much as that of the frilingi and eight times as much as the lazzi.

The gulf between noble and ignoble was very large, but the difference between a freeman and an indentured labourer was small. According to the Vita Lebuini antiqua , an important source for early Saxon history, the Saxons held an annual council at Marklo Westphalia where they "confirmed their laws, gave judgment on outstanding cases, and determined by common counsel whether they would go to war or be in peace that year. In , Charlemagne abolished the system of Gaue and replaced it with the Grafschaftsverfassung , the system of counties typical of Francia. The old Saxon system of Abgabengrundherrschaft , lordship based on dues and taxes, was replaced by a form of feudalism based on service and labour, personal relationships and oaths.

Saxon religious practices were closely related to their political practices. The annual councils of the entire tribe began with invocations of the gods. The procedure by which dukes were elected in wartime, by drawing lots, is presumed to have had religious significance, i. Charlemagne had one such pillar chopped down in close to the Eresburg stronghold. Early Saxon religious practices in Britain can be gleaned from place names and the Germanic calendar in use at that time.

There was a religious festival associated with the harvest, Halegmonath "holy month" or "month of offerings", September. They contained a Modra niht or "night of the mothers", another religious festival of unknown content. The Saxon freemen and servile class remained faithful to their original beliefs long after their nominal conversion to Christianity. Nursing a hatred of the upper class, which, with Frankish assistance, had marginalised them from political power, the lower classes the plebeium vulgus or cives were a problem for Christian authorities as late as Liborii remarks on their obstinacy in pagan ritus et superstitio usage and superstition.

The conversion of the Saxons in England from their original Germanic religion to Christianity occurred in the early to late 7th century under the influence of the already converted Jutes of Kent. In the s, Birinus became the "apostle to the West Saxons" and converted Wessex , whose first Christian king was Cynegils. The West Saxons begin to emerge from obscurity only with their conversion to Christianity and keeping written records.

The Gewisse , a West Saxon people, were especially resistant to Christianity; Birinus exercised more efforts against them and ultimately succeeded in conversion. The South Saxons were first evangelised extensively under Anglian influence; Aethelwalh of Sussex was converted by Wulfhere , King of Mercia and allowed Wilfrid , Bishop of York , to evangelise his people beginning in The chief South Saxon bishopric was that of Selsey. The East Saxons were more pagan than the southern or western Saxons; their territory had a superabundance of pagan sites.

Its first bishop, Mellitus , was expelled by Saeberht's heirs. The conversion of the East Saxons was completed under Cedd in the s and s. The continental Saxons were evangelised largely by English missionaries in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Around , two early English missionaries, Hewald the White and Hewald the Black , were martyred by the vicani , that is, villagers.

Saint Lebuin , an Englishman who between and preached to the Saxons, mainly in the eastern Netherlands, built a church and made many friends among the nobility. Some of them rallied to save him from an angry mob at the annual council at Marklo near river Weser, Bremen. Social tensions arose between the Christianity-sympathetic noblemen and the pagan lower castes, who were staunchly faithful to their traditional religion.

Under Charlemagne, the Saxon Wars had as their chief object the conversion and integration of the Saxons into the Frankish empire. Though much of the highest caste converted readily, forced baptisms and forced tithing made enemies of the lower orders. Even some contemporaries found the methods employed to win over the Saxons wanting, as this excerpt from a letter of Alcuin of York to his friend Meginfrid, written in , shows:.

If the light yoke and sweet burden of Christ were to be preached to the most obstinate people of the Saxons with as much determination as the payment of tithes has been exacted, or as the force of the legal decree has been applied for fault of the most trifling sort imaginable, perhaps they would not be averse to their baptismal vows. Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious , reportedly treated the Saxons more as Alcuin would have wished, and as a consequence they were faithful subjects. He celebrated the Frankish monarch as on par with the Roman emperors and as the bringer of Christian salvation to people.

References are made to periodic outbreaks of pagan worship, especially of Freya, among the Saxon peasantry as late as the 12th century. In the 9th century, the Saxon nobility became vigorous supporters of monasticism and formed a bulwark of Christianity against the existing Slavic paganism to the east and the Nordic paganism of the Vikings to the north. Much Christian literature was produced in the vernacular Old Saxon , the notable ones being a result of the literary output and wide influence of Saxon monasteries such as Fulda , Corvey and Verden ; and the theological controversy between the Augustinian Gottschalk and Rabanus Maurus.

From an early date, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious supported Christian vernacular works in order to evangelise the Saxons more efficiently. The Heliand , a verse epic of the life of Christ in a Germanic setting, and Genesis , another epic retelling of the events of the first book of the Bible , were commissioned in the early 9th century by Louis to disseminate scriptural knowledge to the masses. A council of Tours in and then a synod of Mainz in both declared that homilies ought to be preached in the vernacular.

It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon.

Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion.

While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from to , a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.

Other parts of the island — Wales and most of Scotland — continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect.

This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English. Anglo-Saxon paganism — A variant of the Germanic paganism found across much of north-western Europe, it encompassed a heterogeneous variety of disparate beliefs and cultic practices, with much regional variation.

The most prominent of these deities was probably Woden, other prominent gods included Thunor, there was also a belief in a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape, including elves, nicor, and dragons. There is some evidence for the existence of temples, although other cultic spaces might have been open-air. The belief system also included ideas about magic and witchcraft. The deities of this provided the basis for the names of the days of the week in the English language.

What is known about the religion and its accompanying mythology have since influenced both literature and Modern Paganism, the word pagan is a Latin term that was used by Christians in Anglo-Saxon England to describe non-Christians. These pagan belief systems would have been inseparable from other aspects of daily life and they also suggested that early Anglo-Saxon Christianity had a similar structure, although acknowledged that this would be a controversial notion. As a phenomenon, it appeared to lack any rules or consistency, also exhibiting regional variation, thus, the archaeologist Aleks Pluskowski suggested that it is possible to talk of multiple Anglo-Saxon paganisms.

Also adopting the categories of Gustav Mensching, she described Anglo-Saxon paganism as a religion, in that they concentrated on survival. Using the expressions paganism or heathenism when discussing pre-Christian belief systems in Anglo-Saxon England is problematic, historically, many early scholars of the Anglo-Saxon period used the terms to describe the religious beliefs in England before its conversion to Christianity in the 7th century. Several later scholars criticised the use of the term in this context, the term pre-Christian religion avoids the judgemental connotations of paganism and heathenism but is not always chronologically accurate.

The pre-Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England was non-literate, thus there is no contemporary written evidence of the Anglo-Saxon practice of paganism. Far fewer textual records discuss Anglo-Saxon paganism than the belief systems found in nearby Ireland, Francia. There is no neat, formalised account of Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs as there is for instance for Classical mythology, although many scholars have used Norse mythology as a guide to understanding the beliefs of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England, caution has been expressed as to the utility of this approach.

As Stenton noted, the connection between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism occurred in a past which was already remote at the time of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain. Moreover, there was clear diversity among the pre-Christian belief systems of Scandinavia itself, Old English place-names also provide some insight into the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of Anglo-Saxon England.

Some of these place-names reference the names of deities, while others use terms that refer to cultic practices that took place there.

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Christianity — Christianity is a Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who serves as the focal point for the religion. It is the worlds largest religion, with over 2. Christian theology is summarized in creeds such as the Apostles Creed and his incarnation, earthly ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection are often referred to as the gospel, meaning good news.

The term gospel also refers to accounts of Jesuss life and teaching, four of which—Matthew, Mark, Luke. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion that began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the mid-1st century, following the Age of Discovery, Christianity spread to the Americas, Australasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of the world through missionary work and colonization.

Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, throughout its history, Christianity has weathered schisms and theological disputes that have resulted in many distinct churches and denominations. Worldwide, the three largest branches of Christianity are the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the denominations of Protestantism. There are many important differences of interpretation and opinion of the Bible, concise doctrinal statements or confessions of religious beliefs are known as creeds.

They began as baptismal formulae and were expanded during the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries to become statements of faith. Many evangelical Protestants reject creeds as definitive statements of faith, even agreeing with some or all of the substance of the creeds. The Baptists have been non-creedal in that they have not sought to establish binding authoritative confessions of faith on one another. Also rejecting creeds are groups with roots in the Restoration Movement, such as the Christian Church, the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada, the Apostles Creed is the most widely accepted statement of the articles of Christian faith.

It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and this particular creed was developed between the 2nd and 9th centuries. Its central doctrines are those of the Trinity and God the Creator, each of the doctrines found in this creed can be traced to statements current in the apostolic period. The creed was used as a summary of Christian doctrine for baptismal candidates in the churches of Rome.

Most Christians accept the use of creeds, and subscribe to at least one of the mentioned above. The central tenet of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God, Christians believe that Jesus, as the Messiah, was anointed by God as savior of humanity, and hold that Jesus coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The Christian concept of the Messiah differs significantly from the contemporary Jewish concept, Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pains and temptations of a mortal man, but did not sin.

Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about and , after their settlement and up until the Norman conquest.

The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including government of shires. During this period, Christianity was re-established and there was a flowering of literature, charters and law were also established. The term Anglo-Saxon is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England, in scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English.

The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity and it developed from divergent groups in association with the peoples adoption of Christianity, and was integral to the establishment of various kingdoms. Threatened by extended Danish invasions and occupation of eastern England, this identity was re-established, the visible Anglo-Saxon culture can be seen in the material culture of buildings, dress styles, illuminated texts and grave goods.

Behind the symbolic nature of these emblems, there are strong elements of tribal. The elite declared themselves as kings who developed burhs, and identified their roles and peoples in Biblical terms, above all, as Helena Hamerow has observed, local and extended kin groups remained.

Assigning ethnic labels such as Anglo-Saxon is fraught with difficulties and this term began to be used only in the 8th century to distinguish the Germanic groups in Britain from those on the continent. The earliest historical references using this term are from outside Britain, referring to piratical Germanic raiders, Saxones who attacked the shores of Britain, procopius states that Britain was settled by three races, the Angiloi, Frisones, and Britons.

Un proverbe allemand dit: The Externsteine are a distinctive rock formation located in the Teutoburger Wald region of northwestern Germany, not far from the city of Detmold at Horn-Bad Meinberg. The formation consists of several tall, narrow columns of rock which rise abruptly from the surrounding wooded hills. The name probably means "stones of the Egge". The columns are up to 40 meters tall and form a wall of several hundred meters length, in a region that is otherwise largely devoid of rocks. The geological formation consists of a hard, erosion-resistant sandstone, laid down during the early Cretaceous era about million years ago, near the edge of a large shallow sea that covered large parts of Northern Europe at the time.

The Externsteine relief of the Descent from the Cross. The bent tree below the cross has been suggested to represent the Irminsul, humiliated by the triumph of Christianity. It is generally assumed that Externsteine was a center of religious activity for the Teutonic peoples and their predecessors prior to the arrival of Christianity in northern Europe.

This notion can be traced back to Hermann Hamelmann However, archaeological excavations did not produce any findings earlier than the 11th century other than some Paleolithic and Mesolithic stone tools from before about 10, BC. Whatever its early history, in the land surrounding the stones was supposedly bought by the Abdinghof monastery of Paderborn, as a questionable inscription inside the Stones indicate. Another dating suggests an early monastery, which might have been founded as early as , after the destruction of the Irminsul by Charlemagne.

The findings, however, are not yet conclusive, though the dating of has been proven as false by art historians, dating the relief as early 9th century. The last pagan inhabitants of the region were Saxons until their defeat and conversion by Charlemagne. Charlemagne is reported to have destroyed the Saxon Irminsul in ; and Wilhelm Teudt in the s suggested that the location of the Irminsul had been at the Externsteine. In Teudt joined the Nazi Party and proposed to turn the Externsteine into a "sacred grove" for the commemoration of the ancestors. Heinrich Himmler was open to the idea, and in initiated and then presided over the "Externstein Foundation".

Interest in the location was furthered by the Nazi Ahnenerbe division within the SS, who studied the stones for their value to Germanic folklore and history. Some Neo-Pagans continue to believe that the Irminsul was located at the Externsteine and identify a bent tree depicted beneath the cross in a 12th-century Christian carving with it.

The site has also been of interest to various German nationalist movements over the years, and continues to be a frequently visited point of interest. Earth Hour on flickr blog. Mit der Nationalromantik des Die Felsen sind vom Wiembecketeich und einer parkartigen Anlage umgeben. Den Externsteinen werden besondere kulturgeschichtliche Bedeutungen zugeschrieben.

It remains controversial whether the site was already used for Christian worship in the 8th to early 10th centuries [Wikipedia]. In January the sack and burning of this church by a Saxon expedition was the cause for the first punitive war waged by Charlemagne to the Saxons, in which, in retribution, the[where? No word yet on whether Hughes believes his experiment proves or disproves flat-Earth theory, but he's always maintained that wasn't the goal.

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He believes the Earth is frisbee shaped. Hughes is happy regardless. I guess," he said. I won't be able to get out of bed.

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At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight. The launch had its issues, which is why, according to Hughes, the rocket only managed to hit 1, feet. They had planned to hit psi for thrust but could only hit as a result of less-than-ideal conditions. The next step for Hughes is a "Rockoon", essentially a rocket that transforms into a balloon after launch, which will allow Hughes to fly higher. Sixty-eight miles up, Hughes believes.

A film crew is following Hughes for a documentary set for release in August. The self-taught rocket scientist, who believes Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1, feet into the air before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert. Mike Hughes, a California man who is most known for his belief that the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee, finally blasted off into the sky in a steam-powered rocket he had built himself. The year-old limo driver and daredevil-turned-rocket-maker soared about 1, feet above the Mojave Desert on Saturday afternoon, the Associated Press reported.

Pacific time and reached a speed of about mph, Waldo Stakes, who has been helping Hughes, told the AP. Hughes deployed two parachutes while landing, the second one just moments before he plopped down not far from his launching point. A video shows that the whole endeavor, from the moment his rocket went up to the moment he landed, lasted about a minute. The vertical launch, which happened without a countdown more than miles east of Los Angeles, came amid growing skepticism that Hughes would ever lift himself off. Hughes had been on a mission to prove that the Earth is flat and that NASA astronauts such as John Glenn and Neil Armstrong were merely paid actors performing in front of a computer-generated image of a round globe.

His previous failed attempts, as well as the successful one on Saturday, are all part of his ultimate goal to propel himself at least 52 miles above Earth by the end of the year — and to prove once and for all that the planet is flat. On March 6, self-taught rocket scientist Mike Hughes began repairing a steam leak after scrubbing a launch attempt near Amboy, Calif. A spokeswoman for the agency, however, said its field office has no record of speaking with Hughes. The launch was postponed again later that month, as Hughes moved his launching point to a private property near Amboy, Calif.

It takes three days to set up. He blamed technical difficulties. Mike Hughes planned to launch his homemade rocket on Feb. The second version failed, too. He set a Guinness World Record in for a limousine jump, according to Ars Technica, and has been building rockets for years, albeit with mixed results. He built his first manned rocket in , the AP reported, and managed to fly a quarter-mile over Winkelman, Ariz. Photos show paramedics carrying Hughes on a stretcher and into an ambulance. Mike Hughes is carried on a stretcher after his rocket landed in the Mojave Desert on Saturday.

A flat-earther finally tried to fly away. The idea that the Earth was flat was typical of ancient European cosmologies until about the 4th century BCE, when the Ancient Greek philosophers proposed the idea that the Earth was a sphere, or at least rounded in shape. By the early Middle Ages, it was widespread knowledge throughout Europe that the Earth was a sphere.

The Flat Earth model is an archaic belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period early centuries AD and China until the 17th century.

It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas, and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies. The paradigm of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras 6th century BC , although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.

The modern misconception that educated Europeans at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as the myth of the flat Earth. Modern hypotheses supporting a flat Earth originated with English inventor Samuel Rowbotham — Based on his incorrect interpretation of experiments on the Bedford Level, Rowbotham published a page pamphlet, called Zetetic Astronomy, which he later expanded into a page book, Earth Not a Globe, expounding his views.

According to Rowbotham's system, the earth is a flat disc centred at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice Antarctica , with the sun and moon 3, miles 4, km and the "cosmos" 3, miles 5, km above earth. He also published a leaflet entitled "The inconsistency of Modern Astronomy and its Opposition to the Scriptures!! Rowbotham and his followers, like William Carpenter who continued his work, gained attention by engaging in public debates[when?

One such debate, involving the prominent naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, concerned the Bedford Level experiment and later led to several lawsuits for fraud and libel. He also edited The Zetetic and Anti-Theorist: After Rowbotham's death, Lady Elizabeth Blount, wife of the explorer Sir Walter de Sodington Blount, established a Universal Zetetic Society, whose objective was "the propagation of knowledge related to Natural Cosmogony in confirmation of the Holy Scriptures, based on practical scientific investigation".

The society published a magazine entitled The Earth Not a Globe Review, and remained active well into the early part of the 20th century. In , she repeated Rowbotham's Bedford Level Experiment and photographed the effect, sparking a correspondence in the magazine English Mechanic with several counter-claims. Later it achieved some notoriety by being involved in a scam involving dental practices.

After World War I, the movement underwent a slow decline. Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales thought the earth floated in water like a log.

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It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a round Earth. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the sun and the moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness. Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Hecataeus of Miletus believed the earth was flat and surrounded by water.

Herodotus in his Histories ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world,yet most classicists agree he still believed the earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the earth. Ancient Jain and Buddhist cosmology held that the Earth is a disc consisting of four continents grouped around a central mountain Mount Meru like the petals of a flower. An outer ocean surrounds these continents. This view of traditional Buddhist and Jain cosmology depicts the cosmos as a vast, oceanic disk of the magnitude of a small planetary system , bounded by mountains, in which the continents are set as small islands.

The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat earth cosmography of the earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi a world-tree: Irminsul in the centre. The Norse believed that in the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr. In the Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning VIII it is stated that during the creation of the earth, an impassable sea was placed around the earth like a ring:.

If you take a lighted candle and set it in a room, you may expect it to light up the entire interior, unless something should hinder, though the room be quite large. But if you take an apple and hang it close to the flame, so near that it is heated, the apple will darken nearly half the room or even more. However, if you hang the apple near the wall, it will not get hot; the candle will light up the whole house; and the shadow on the wall where the apple hangs will be scarcely half as large as the apple itself.

From this you may infer that the earth-circle is round like a ball and not equally near the sun at every point. But where the curved surface lies nearest the sun's path, there will the greatest heat be; and some of the lands that lie continuously under the unbroken rays cannot be inhabited.

In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round,[48] an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century. The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy:. Chinese thought on the form of the earth remained almost unchanged from early times until the first contacts with modern science through the medium of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century.

The model of an egg was often used by Chinese astronomers like Zhang Heng AD to describe the heavens as spherical:. The heavens are like a hen's egg and as round as a crossbow bullet; the earth is like the yolk of the egg, and lies in the centre. This analogy with a curved egg led some modern historians, notably Joseph Needham, to conjecture that Chinese astronomers were, after all, aware of the Earth's sphericity. The egg reference, however, was rather meant to clarify the relative position of the flat earth to the heavens:. In a passage of Zhang Heng's cosmogony not translated by Needham, Zhang himself says: Earth takes its body from the Yin, so it is flat and quiescent".

The point of the egg analogy is simply to stress that the earth is completely enclosed by heaven, rather than merely covered from above as the Kai Tian describes. Chinese astronomers, many of them brilliant men by any standards, continued to think in flat-earth terms until the seventeenth century; this surprising fact might be the starting-point for a re-examination of the apparent facility with which the idea of a spherical earth found acceptance in fifth-century BC Greece. Further examples cited by Needham supposed to demonstrate dissenting voices from the ancient Chinese consensus actually refer without exception to the Earth's being square, not to its being flat.

As noted in the book Huai Nan Zu,[57] in the 2nd century BC Chinese astronomers effectively inverted Eratosthenes' calculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate the height of the sun above the earth. By assuming the earth was flat, they arrived at a distance of , li, a value short by three orders of magnitude. In The Histories, written — BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the sun observed shining from the north. He stated that the phenomenon was observed during a circumnavigation of Africa undertaken by Phoenician explorers employed by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II c.

After the Greek philosophers Pythagoras, in the 6th century BC, and Parmenides, in the 5th, recognized that the Earth is spherical,[58] the spherical view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around BC, Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical. The Earth's circumference was first determined around BC by Eratosthenes.

By the second century CE. Ptolemy had derived his maps from a curved globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His Almagest was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations. In the 2nd century BC, Crates of Mallus devised a terrestrial sphere that divided the Earth into four continents, separated by great rivers or oceans, with people presumed living in each of the four regions.

Opposite the oikumene, the inhabited world, were the antipodes, considered unreachable both because of an intervening torrid zone equator and the ocean. This took a strong hold on the medieval mind. BC opposed the concept of a spherical Earth, because he considered that an infinite universe had no center towards which heavy bodies would tend. Thus, he thought the idea of animals walking around topsy-turvy under the Earth was absurd.

By the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to claim that everyone agrees on the spherical shape of Earth, though disputes continued regarding the nature of the antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape. Pliny also considered the possibility of an imperfect sphere, " In late antiquity such widely read encyclopedists as Macrobius 5th century and Martianus Capella 5th century discussed the circumference of the sphere of the Earth, its central position in the universe, the difference of the seasons in northern and southern hemispheres, and many other geographical details.

In his commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio, Macrobius described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos. During the early Church period, with some exceptions, most held a spherical view, for instance, Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose to name a few. In Book III of The Divine Institutes Lactantius ridicules the notion that there could be inhabitants of the antipodes "whose footsteps are higher than their heads. But if you inquire from those who defend these marvellous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne to the middle, and that they are all joined together towards the middle, as we see spokes in a wheel; but that the bodies that are light, as mist, smoke, and fire, are borne away from the middle, so as to seek the heaven.

I am at a loss what to say respecting those who, when they have once erred, consistently persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another. Saint Augustine — took a more cautious approach in arguing against assuming that people inhabited the antipodes:. But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours that is on no ground credible.

And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled.

Since these people would have to be descended from Adam, they would have had to travel to the other side of the Earth at some point; Augustine continues:. It is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man.

Scholars of Augustine's work have traditionally understood him to have shared the common view of his educated contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with the quotation above, and with Augustine's famous endorsement of science in De Genesi ad litteram. That tradition has, however, recently been challenged by Leo Ferrari, who concluded that many of Augustine's passing references to the physical universe imply a belief in an essentially flat Earth "at the bottom of the universe".

Diodorus of Tarsus d. Severian, Bishop of Gabala d. The Egyptian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes in his Topographia Christiana, where the Covenant Ark was meant to represent the whole universe, argued on theological grounds that the Earth was flat, a parallelogram enclosed by four oceans. In his Homilies Concerning the Statutes St. John Chrysostom — explicitly espoused the idea, based on his reading of Scripture, that the Earth floated on the waters gathered below the firmament, and St. A very recent essay by Leone Montagnini, discussing the question of the shape of the Earth from the origins to the late Antiquity, has shown that the Fathers of the Church shared different approaches that paralleled their overall philosophical and theological visions.

Those of them who were more close to Platonic visions, like Origen, shared peacefully the geosphericism. A second tradition, including Basil, Ambrose and Augustine, but also Philoponus, accepted the idea of the round Earth and the radial gravity, but in a critical way.

In particular they pointed out a number of doubts about the physical reasons of the radial gravity, and hesitated in accepting the physical reasons proposed by Aristotle or Stoicism. However, a "flattist" approach was more or less shared by all the Fathers coming from the Syriac area, who were more inclined to follow the letter of the Old Testament. Diodorus, Severian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes, but also Chrysostom, belonged just to this latter tradition.

At least one early Christian writer, Basil of Caesarea — , believed that the matter was theologically irrelevant. Early medieval Christian writers in the early Middle Ages felt little urge to assume flatness of the earth, though they had fuzzy impressions of the writings of Ptolemy, Aristotle, and relied more on Pliny. With the end of Roman civilization, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production.

Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity in Greek were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth. Further examples of such medieval diagrams can be found in medieval manuscripts of the Dream of Scipio. In the Carolingian era, scholars discussed Macrobius's view of the antipodes. One of them, the Irish monk Dungal, asserted that the tropical gap between our habitable region and the other habitable region to the south was smaller than Macrobius had believed.

In , Charlemagne abolished the system of Gaue and replaced it with the Grafschaftsverfassung , the system of counties typical of Francia. The old Saxon system of Abgabengrundherrschaft , lordship based on dues and taxes, was replaced by a form of feudalism based on service and labour, personal relationships and oaths. Saxon religious practices were closely related to their political practices. The annual councils of the entire tribe began with invocations of the gods.

The procedure by which dukes were elected in wartime, by drawing lots, is presumed to have had religious significance, i. Charlemagne had one such pillar chopped down in close to the Eresburg stronghold. Early Saxon religious practices in Britain can be gleaned from place names and the Germanic calendar in use at that time. There was a religious festival associated with the harvest, Halegmonath "holy month" or "month of offerings", September.

They contained a Modra niht or "night of the mothers", another religious festival of unknown content. The Saxon freemen and servile class remained faithful to their original beliefs long after their nominal conversion to Christianity. Nursing a hatred of the upper class, which, with Frankish assistance, had marginalised them from political power, the lower classes the plebeium vulgus or cives were a problem for Christian authorities as late as Liborii remarks on their obstinacy in pagan ritus et superstitio usage and superstition.

The South Saxons were first evangelised extensively under Anglian influence; Aethelwalh of Sussex was converted by Wulfhere , King of Mercia and allowed Wilfrid , Bishop of York , to evangelise his people beginning in The chief South Saxon bishopric was that of Selsey.

The East Saxons were more pagan than the southern or western Saxons; their territory had a superabundance of pagan sites. Its first bishop, Mellitus , was expelled by Saeberht's heirs. The conversion of the East Saxons was completed under Cedd in the s and s. The continental Saxons were evangelised largely by English missionaries in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Around , two early English missionaries, Hewald the White and Hewald the Black , were martyred by the vicani , that is, villagers.

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Social tensions arose between the Christianity-sympathetic noblemen and the pagan lower castes, who were staunchly faithful to their traditional religion. Under Charlemagne, the Saxon Wars had as their chief object the conversion and integration of the Saxons into the Frankish empire.

Though much of the highest caste converted readily, forced baptisms and forced tithing made enemies of the lower orders. Even some contemporaries found the methods employed to win over the Saxons wanting, as this excerpt from a letter of Alcuin of York to his friend Meginfrid, written in , shows:. If the light yoke and sweet burden of Christ were to be preached to the most obstinate people of the Saxons with as much determination as the payment of tithes has been exacted, or as the force of the legal decree has been applied for fault of the most trifling sort imaginable, perhaps they would not be averse to their baptismal vows.

Charlemagne's successor, Louis the Pious , reportedly treated the Saxons more as Alcuin would have wished, and as a consequence they were faithful subjects. He celebrated the Frankish monarch as on par with the Roman emperors and as the bringer of Christian salvation to people. References are made to periodic outbreaks of pagan worship, especially of Freya, among the Saxon peasantry as late as the 12th century. In the 9th century, the Saxon nobility became vigorous supporters of monasticism and formed a bulwark of Christianity against the existing Slavic paganism to the east and the Nordic paganism of the Vikings to the north.

Much Christian literature was produced in the vernacular Old Saxon , the notable ones being a result of the literary output and wide influence of Saxon monasteries such as Fulda , Corvey and Verden ; and the theological controversy between the Augustinian Gottschalk and Rabanus Maurus. From an early date, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious supported Christian vernacular works in order to evangelise the Saxons more efficiently.

The Heliand , a verse epic of the life of Christ in a Germanic setting, and Genesis , another epic retelling of the events of the first book of the Bible , were commissioned in the early 9th century by Louis to disseminate scriptural knowledge to the masses. A council of Tours in and then a synod of Mainz in both declared that homilies ought to be preached in the vernacular. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Saxon disambiguation.

Ancient Germanic culture portal. Retrieved 19 October Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons. The Cornish word Emit meaning "ant" and perversely derived from OE is more commonly used in Cornwall as of [update] as slang to designate non-Cornish Englishmen. Bach, Beethoven And the Boys: Music History as it Ought to be Taught. An Ethnographic Perspective, Boydell Press, , pp. Romeinse tijd en Merovingische periode, deel A: God, Nation, and Race in World History. Dalton , Clarendon Press Lorren in Studien zur Sachsenforschung 2, Bracteates Fibula Suebian knot.

List of ancient Germanic peoples Portal: Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons. This page was last edited on 4 December , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Old Saxon , Old English. Originally Germanic and Anglo-Saxon paganism , later Christianity. Anglo-Saxons , Angles , Frisii , Jutes.