Stellinga

The Stellinga ("companions, comrades") or Stellingabund (German for "Stellinga league") was a movement of frilingi (freemen) and lazzi (freedmen), the lower two of the three Saxon non-slave castes, between 841 and 845. Its aim was to recover those rights the two castes had possessed before their conversion from Germanic paganism 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.

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.

When Louis the Pious died, the German Louis deposed the Hattonid leader Banzleib from his royal offices and bestowed them on the Abbey of Corvey. Among Louis's chief supporters in Saxony were the Ecbertiner and the Bardonids. Having patronised new families and removed from power old ones, Louis the German made the Saxon aristocracy his organ of government there and forced his foes, such as Lothair, to look to the lower classes for support in Saxony.

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