ABSTRACT
In 1968, Karl Leyser, Chichele Professor of modern history at Oxford, published what today remains the most influential explanation for the success of the Saxon dynasty. Leyser argued that such troops, whom he often calls “knights,” dominated the battlefields not only of Saxony but also of western and central Europe from 933 onward. Leyser based his view that there was a military revolution in the Saxon region on the Res gestae Saxonicae written after c. 973 by Widukind, a monk from the monastery of Corvey. The process of rehabilitating Widukind’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information about the tenth-century Saxon duchy began with Helmut Beumann’s study of the Res gestae in 1950. Leyser treats the Corvey monk as a reliable source and argues that Widukind, in writing about the middle years of Henry’s reign, describes the Saxon king as having “accomplished something like a military revolution in his stemland.”.
