FRISIANS (FRISONI). - A people of Germanic stock which, ever since it is mentioned in history, has been settled on the shores of the North Sea between the mouths of the Scheldt and the Weser and the Cimbrian Peninsula. Tacitus, who mentions them (Germania, 34), distinguishes the Frisii maiores and the Frisii minores, and the Roman historians speak of Rome's repeated efforts to subdue them. In the face of attempts at invasion they knew how to hold their own territory, which was much larger than the present Dutch province, and it seems that together with the Angles and the Saxons they took part in the conquest of Britain. They still speak a dialect of their own today, although it has lost ground before the neighboring and related Low German dialects. Their resistance against the Franks, their neighbors, was stubborn and culminated at the beginning of the 8th century with the uprising of the national hero Radbod. This enmity delayed among them the penetration of Christianity begun by St. Eligius of Noyon, under the Frankish king Dagobert, and by Wilfrid of York; their apostle was Willibrord (d. 736), who, having settled at Utrecht (the ancient Roman Traiectum), in Frankish territory, and having been consecrated bishop in Rome, traveled through the country for over 46 years and with the help of Anglo-Saxon and Frankish monks from Echternach succeeded in giving the country a Christian appearance.
Once the conquest was complete, Charlemagne, respecting local traditions, had them collected into a single body, and thus the lex Frisionum came into being. In the partitions of the Carolingian Kingdom in 813 Frisia was annexed to Lotharingia, in 880 to Austrasia; then, while West Frisia formed the county of Holland, Middle Frisia and East Frisia, nominally subject to the Empire, remained in fact autonomous, broken up into peasant communities, divided among themselves by conflicts of interest, but united in mutual defense against invaders, which was made easy by the canals and the numerous lakes. The 14th and 15th centuries passed without any power dominating the region. In 1523 Charles V seized part of it, although Groningen continued for some time to remain independent; the Frisian Islands and East Frisia, on the other hand, remained autonomous. On the death of the last count, Charles Edzard Cirksena, in 1744, the States General of the United Provinces did not accept the offered union, and the country passed under the dominion of Prussia. It, as a result of the wars of religion which in the second half of the 16th century had thrown all the Low Countries into revolution, had from as early as 1579 adhered to the Protestant Union of Utrecht.
Pio Paschini