Heliand
The Cotton MS. in the British Library, written probably in the second half of the 10th century, is one of the nearly complete manuscripts, ending in the middle of the story of the journey to Emmaus.
[5] The Munich MS., formerly at Bamberg, begins at line 85, and has many lacunae, but continues the history down to the last verse of St. Luke's Gospel, ending, however, in the middle of a sentence with the last two fitts missing.
[7] The poem is based not directly on the New Testament, but on the pseudo-Tatian's Gospel harmony, and it demonstrates the author's acquaintance with the commentaries of Alcuin, Bede, and Rabanus Maurus.
[citation needed] Within the limits imposed by the nature of his task, his treatment of his sources is remarkably free, the details unsuited for poetic handling being passed over, or, in some instances, boldly altered.
It is noteworthy that the poet, like John Milton, sees in Satan no mere personification of evil, but the fallen archangel, whose awful guilt could not obliterate all traces of his native majesty.
[6] Such external evidence as exists bearing on the origin of the Heliand and the companion poem is contained in a Latin document printed by Flacius Illyricus in 1562.
This is in two parts; the one in prose, entitled (perhaps only by Flacius himself) Praefatio ad librum antiquum in lingua Saxonica conscriptum ; the other in verse, headed Versus de poeta et Interpreta hujus codicis.
The Praefatio begins by stating that the emperor Ludwig the Pious, desirous that his subjects should possess the word of God in their own tongue, commanded a certain Saxon, who was esteemed among his countrymen as an eminent poet, to translate poetically into the German language the Old and New Testaments.
[6] The suspicion of some earlier scholars that the Praefatio and the Versus might be a modern forgery is refuted by the occurrence of the word vitteas, which is the Old Saxon fihtea, corresponding to the Old English fitt, which means a canto of a poem.
It is impossible that a scholar of the 16th century could have been acquainted with this word,[citation needed] and internal evidence shows clearly that both the prose and the verse are of early origin.
[9] That the author of the Heliand was, so to speak, another Caedmon – an unlearned man who turned into poetry what was read to him from the sacred writings – is impossible according to some scholars, because in many passages the text of the sources is so closely followed that it is clear that the poet wrote with the Latin books before him.
[5] There is no reason for rejecting the almost contemporary testimony of the first part of the Free folio that the author of the Heliand had won renown as a poet before he undertook his great task at the emperor's command.
It is certainly not impossible that a Christian Saxon, sufficiently educated to read Latin easily, may have chosen to follow the calling of a scop or minstrel instead of entering the priesthood or the cloister; and if such a person existed, it would be natural that he should be selected by the emperor to execute his design.
For example, many scholars believe that Luther favored the angel's greeting to Mary in the Heliand – "you are dear to your Lord" – because he disliked the notion of referring to a human as "full of grace.
Thô uurđun sân aftar thiu thar te Hierusalem iungaron Kristes forđuuard an ferdi, fundun all sô he sprak uuordtêcan uuâr: ni uuas thes giuuand ênig.
(VII, 582-92) Then he spoke and said there would come a wise king, magnificent and mighty, to this middle realm; he would be of the best birth; he said that he would be the Son of God, he said that he would rule this world, earth and sky, always and forevermore.
he said that on the same day on which the mother gave birth to the Blessed One in this middle realm, in the East, he said, there would shine forth a brilliant light in the sky, one such as we never had before between heaven and earth nor anywhere else, never such a baby and never such a beacon.
The fragments of the Heliand and the Genesis contained in the Vatican MS. were edited in 1894 by Karl Zangemeister and Wilhelm Braune under the title Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung.
Luther's Heliand: Resurrection of the Old Saxon Epic in Leipzig (2011) by Timothy Blaine Price is a self-published book detailing results of the author's personal research and travels.
G. Ronald Murphy published The Saxon Saviour: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand (1989) (New York: Oxford University Press).
