Saxnot- Germanic GodDeity
Also known as: Seaxneat, Saxnēat, and Sahsnōt
Description
When Saxon converts renounced their gods under Charlemagne's forced Christianization, the vow named three: Thunaer, Wodan, and Saxnot. The Sword Companion stood alongside the highest gods of the Germanic pantheon, the patron of a people who named themselves after their weapon, the seax.
Mythology & Lore
The Vow
In the late eighth century, Charlemagne's missionaries put a formula into the mouths of Saxon converts. The words survive in a Vatican manuscript, Codex Palatinus Latinus 577: "Thunaer ende Wōden ende Saxnōte ende allum thēm unholdum thē hira genōtas sint." "Thunaer and Wodan and Saxnot and all those fiends who are their companions." Three gods named. Three gods worth the trouble of renouncing by name.
His name means "Sword Companion" or "Companion of the Seax," the single-edged blade that gave the Saxon people their name. The Saxons carried the seax as warriors and as civilians. Their god carried it in his name.
Ancestor of Kings
In Anglo-Saxon England, the Genealogical Regnal List of Essex traces the East Saxon royal line back to Seaxneat, the Old English form of Saxnot. He appears as a son of Woden. The Essex kings wrote the Sword Companion into their blood.
No myths survive. No rituals. Only a name in a vow and a line in a genealogy, enough to mark a god who once mattered to a people defined by their blade.