Hadugato
Hadugato or Hathagat was an early Saxon leader, considered a founding father of Saxony by the tenth century. In 531, he led the Saxons to victory over the Thuringians at the battle of Burgscheidungen, "a legendary victory, and one so great that [Hadugato] appeared to [later] Saxons as an epiphany of divinity itself."[1] The Chronica ducum de Brunswick records that in the Duchy of Brunswick in the sixteenth century a memorial week was still observed following Michaelmas (September 29) to celebrate the Saxon victory over the Thuringians.[2]
Battle of Burgscheidungen
The earliest source to mention Hadugato is the Translatio sancti Alexandri of
The most extensive account of Hadugato is found in
The pagan Saxons then set up an altar of victory and "celebrated the appropriate rites with all due solemnity, according to their ancestral superstition" for three days. They even "raised their leader [duke] to the skies with their praise, declaring him possessed of divine courage and god-like valor who by his constancy had led them to win such a victory." All this took place, Widukind says, "as the memory of our elders testifies, at the Kalends of October," i.e. on October 1.[5][7]
Pagan significance?
The German historian
Clive Tolley has argued that Widukind is in fact describing an ad hoc Irminsul (sacred pillar) rather than a true altar. He argues that Widukind's somewhat garbled passage indicates that the real name of the "altar" was Hirmin (which the Saxon historian glosses as Hermes) and its form was that of a pillar.[9][10]
Name
The name Hadugato (as in Adam of Bremen), Hadugoto (as in the Translatio), Hatugato (as in Frutolf) or Hathagat (as in Widukind) is preserved only in sources written centuries after his life. The form Hathugast that appears in some modern works is etymologically incorrect.[11]
According to Hauck, the name is probably no more than an honorific, Hathugaut, meaning "Gaut of battle", in reference to Gaut, the legendary ancestor of the Geats and of the royal houses of the Goths and the Lombards.[12] A similar name, Sigegéat, meaning "Gaut of victory", is preserved in Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies. The name "Gaut" itself would just be another by-name for Wodan (Odinsheiti).[1][13][14]
Hauck treats Widukind's phrase pater patrum as a variation of
Hauck's conclusions are not universally accepted, since the connection of the name Gaut to Wodan comes only from later Norse
References
- ^ a b c Karl Hauck, "The Literature of House and Kindred Associated with Medieval Noble Families, Illustrated from Eleventh and Twelfth-century Satires on the Nobility", in Timothy Reuter, ed., The Medieval Nobility: Studies on the Ruling Classes of France and Germany from the Sixth to the Twelfth Century (Amsterdam, 1979), pp. 61–85.
- ^ Raymund F. Wood, ed. and trans., The Three Books of the Deeds of the Saxons, by Widukind of Corvey: Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography, PhD diss. (University of California, Los Angeles, 1949), p. 238, n. 107.
- ^ August Wetzel, Die Translatio S. Alexandri: Eine kritische Untersuchung (Kiel: 1881), pp. 84–85, presents the relevant Latin texts of the Translatio and Adam of Bremen in parallel.
- ^ Adam of Bremen; Francis J. Tschan, trans., History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 8–9.
- ^ a b Wood (1949), pp. 170–79.
- ^ Sverre Bagge, Kings, Politics, and the Right Order of the World in German Historiography, c. 950–1150 (Brill, 2002), p. 65.
- ^ Bagge (2002), p. 57, n. 130.
- ^ Karl Hauck, "Lebensnormen und Kultmythen in germanischen Stammes- und Herrschergenealogien", Saeculum 6 (1955), pp. 186–223, at 217–18.
- ^ Clive Tolley, "Oswald's Tree", in Tette Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen and Alasdair A. MacDonald, eds., Pagans and Christians: The Interplay Between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Groningen: 1995), pp. 151–52.
- ^ Carole M. Cusack, The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), pp. 137–38.
- ^ J. O. Plassmann, "Review of Friedrich von der Leyen, Das Heldenliederbuch Karls des Großen. Bestand–Gehalt–Wirkung.", Historische Zeitschrift 186, 1 (1958), pp. 98–103.
- ^ The Amal dynasty of the Goths begins with a legendary Gapt and the Gausian dynasty of the Lombards begins with a legendary Gausus.
- ^ Herwig Wolfram, The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples (University of California Press, 1997), p. 26.
- ^ See Karl Hauck, "Herrschaftszeichen eines Wodanistischen Königtums", Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung 14 (1954), pp. 9–66, at 36–7, for more discussion of the 'name' Hathugaut as a sign.
- ^ Eve Picard, Germanisches Sakralkönigtum?: quellenkritische Studien zur Germania des Tacitus und zur altnordischen Überlieferung (Heidelberg: 1991), p. 36.
- ^ Walter Goffart, "Two Notes on Germanic Antiquity Today", Traditio 50 (1995), pp. 9–30, at 18.
Further reading
- Drögereit, Richard. "Haduloha und Hadugot: Gedanken zur Sächsischen Stammessage." Jahrbuch der Männer vom Morgenstern 45 (1964): 168–80.
- ISSN 0001-6829