The Stellinga ("companions, comrades") is a movement of frilingi (freemen) and lazzi (freedmen), the lower two of the three Saxon non-slave castes, between 841 and 845.
Its aim is to recover those rights the two castes had possessed before their converion 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 despise 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 is violently resisted by the uppermost caste, the nobiles (nobility), not always with the support of the Frankish kings.
