Franks to form one people. 17. The Capitulary Concerning the Saxon Territory (cir. 780) Just as the Saxons were the most formidable of Charlemagne's foes to meet and defeat in open battle, so were they the most difficult to maintain in anything like orderly allegiance after they had been tentatively conquered. This was true in part because of their untamed, freedom-loving character, but also in no small measure because of the thoroughgoing revolution which the Frankish king sought to work in their conditions of life, and especially in their religion. Before the Saxon war was far advanced it had very clearly assumed the character of a crusade of the Christian Franks against the "pagans of the north." And when the Saxon had been brought to give sullen promise of submission, it was his dearest possession--his fierce, heroic mythology--that was first to be swept away. By the stern decree of the conqueror Woden and Thor and Freya must go. In their stead was to be set up the Christian religion with its churches, its priests, its fastings, its ceremonial observances. Death was to be the penalty for eating meat during Lent, if done "out of contempt for Christianity," and death also for "causing the body of a dead man to be burned in accordance with pagan rites." Even for merely scorning "to come to baptism," or "wishing to remain a pagan," a man was to forfeit his life. The selections which follow are taken from the capitulary _De Partibus Saxoniae_, which was issued by Charlemagne probably at the Frankish assembly held at Paderborn in 780. If this date is correct (and it cannot be far wrong) the regulations embodied in the capitulary were established for the Saxon territories when there perhaps seemed to be a good prospect of peace but when, as later events showed, there yet remained twenty-three years of war before the final subjugation. From the beginning of the struggle the Church had been busy setting up new centers of influence--some abbeys and especially the great bishoprics of Bremen, Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Osnabrueck, and Halberstadt--among the Saxon pagans, and the primary object of Charlemagne in this capitulary was to give to these ecclesiastical foundations the task of civilizing the country and to protect them, together with his counts or governing agents, while they should be engaged in this work. The severity of the Saxon war was responsible for the unusually stringent character of this body of regulations. In 797, at a great assembly at Aix-la-Chapelle, another capitulary for the Saxons was issued, known as the _Capitulum Saxonicum_, and in this the harsh features of the earlier capitulary were considerably relaxed. By 797 the resistance of the Saxons was pretty well broken, and it had become Charlemagne's policy to give his conquered subjects a government as nearly as possible like that the Franks themselves enjoyed. The chief importance of Charlemagne's conquests toward the east lies in the fact that by them broad