Heliand
Encyclopedia
The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon
, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon (cf. German
and Dutch
Heiland meaning "saviour"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase
that recounts the life of Jesus
in the alliterative verse
style of a Germanic saga
. Heliand is the largest known work of written Old Saxon.
The poem must have been relatively popular and widespread because it exists in two manuscript versions and four fragmentary versions. It takes up about 6,000 lines. A praefatio exists, which could have been commissioned by either Louis the Pious
(king from 814–840) or Louis the German
(806-876). This praefatio was first printed by Matthias Flacius
in 1562, and while it has no authority in the manuscripts it is generally deemed to be authentic. The first mention of the poem itself in modern times occurred
when Franciscus Junius (the younger)
found a fragment in 1587. It was not printed until 1705, by George Hickes
. The first modern edition of the poem was published in 1830 by Johann Andreas Schmeller
.
(â ê î ô û are long vowels, đ a soft th, (IPA [ð]), like v):
history, to which its first editor, J. A. Schmeller, gave the appropriate name of Heliand (the word used in the text for Savior, answering to the Old English and the modern German
and Dutch
Heiland), is, with the fragments of a version of the story of Genesis believed to be by the same author, all that remains of the poetical literature of the old Saxon
s, i.e. the Saxons who continued in their original home. It contained when entire about 6000 lines, and portions of it are preserved in four manuscripts. The Cotton MS. in the British Museum
, written probably late in the 10th century, is nearly complete, ending in the middle of the story of the journey to Emmaus. 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. A MS. discovered at Prague
in 1881 contains lines 958–1106, and another, in the Vatican Library
, discovered by K. Zangemeister in 1894, contains lines 1279–1358. 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
.
The questions relating to the Heliand cannot be adequately discussed without considering also the poem on the history of Genesis, which, on the grounds of similarity in style and vocabulary, and for other reasons afterwards to be mentioned, may with some confidence be referred to the same author. A part of this poem, as is mentioned in the article Cædmon
, is extant only in an Old English translation. The portions that have been preserved in the original language are contained in the same Vatican MS. that includes the fragment of the Heliand referred to above. In the one language or the other, there are in existence the following three fragments: (I) The passage which appears as lines 235–851 of the Old English verse Genesis in the Caedmon Manuscript
(MS Junius 11) (this fragment is known as Genesis B, distinguishing it from the rest of the poem, Genesis A), about the revolt of the angels and the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve
. Of this a short part corresponding to lines 790–820 exists also in the original Old Saxon. (2) The story of Cain and Abel, in 124 lines. (3) The account of the destruction of Sodom
, in 187 lines. The main source of the Genesis is the Bible
, but E. Sievers has shown that considerable use was made of the two Latin poems by Alcimus Avitus, De initio mundi and De peccato originali.
The two poems give evidence of genius and trained skill, though the poet was no doubt hampered by the necessity of not deviating too widely from the sacred originals. 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. In many passages his work gives the impression of being not so much an imitation of the ancient Germanic epic, as a genuine example of it, though concerned with the deeds of other heroes than those of Germanic tradition. In the Heliand the Saviour and His Apostles are conceived as a king and his faithful warriors, and the use of the traditional epic phrases appears to be not, as with Cynewulf
or the author of Andreas, a mere following of accepted models, but the spontaneous mode of expression of one accustomed to sing of heroic themes. The Genesis fragments have less of the heroic tone, except in the splendid passage describing the rebellion of Satan
and his host. 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. Somewhat curiously, but very naturally, Enoch the son of Cain is confused with the Enoch who was translated to heaven – an error which the author of the Old English Genesis avoids, though (according to the existing text) he confounds the names of Enoch and Enos.
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. The poet willingly obeyed, all the more because he had previously received a divine command to undertake the task. He rendered into verse all the most important parts of the Bible with admirable skill, dividing his work into vitteas, a term which, the writer says, may be rendered by lectiones or sententias. The Praefatio goes on to say that it was reported that the poet, till then knowing nothing of the art of poetry, had been admonished in a dream to turn into verse the precepts of the divine law, which he did with so much skill that his work surpasses in beauty all other German poetry (Ut cuncta Theudisca poemata suo vincat decore). The Versus practically reproduce in outline Bede's account of Caedmon's dream, without mentioning the dream, but describing the poet as a herdsman, and adding that his poems, beginning with the creation, relate the history of the five ages of the world down to the coming of Christ.
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, and internal evidence shows clearly that both the prose and the verse are of early origin. The Versus, considered in themselves, might very well be supposed to relate to Caedmon; but the mention of the five ages of the world in the concluding lines is obviously due to recollection of the opening of the Heliand (lines 46–47). It is therefore certain that the Versus, as well as the Praefatio, attribute to the author of the Heliand a poetic rendering of the Old Testament. Their testimony, if accepted, confirms the ascription to him of the Genesis fragments, which is further supported by the fact that they occur in the same MS. with a portion of the Heliand. As the Praefatio speaks of the emperor Ludwig in the present tense, the former part of it at least was probably written in his reign, i.e. not later than AD. 840. The general opinion of scholars is that the latter part, which represents the poet as having received his vocation in a dream, is by a later hand, and that the sentences in the earlier part which refer to the dream are interpolations by this second author. The date of these additions, and of the Versus, is of no importance, as their statements are incredible. 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, 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. On the other hand, 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. As has been said above, the tone of many portions of the Heliand is that of a man who was no mere imitator of the ancient epic, but who had himself been accustomed to sing of heroic themes.
(1877), in which the texts of the Cotton and Munich MSS. are printed side by side. It is not provided with a glossary, but contains an elaborate and most valuable analysis of the diction, synonymy and syntactical features of the poem.
Other useful editions are those of Moritz Heyne
(3rd ed., 1903), Otto Behaghel
(1882) and Paul Piper (1897, containing also the Genesis fragments). 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.
The most recent book on the subject in English is James E. Cathey, Heliand: Text and Commentary (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-937058-64-5) which includes an edited version of the text in the original language, commentaries in English and a very useful grammar of Old Saxon along with an appended glossary defining all of the vocabulary found in this version.
Also by Professor Cathey is a grammar "Old Saxon" (Languages of the World/Materials 252. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000. ISBN 3-89586-514-1)
G. Ronald Murphy of Georgetown University wrote two books on the subject, "The Saxon Saviour: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) and an English translation of the poem : "The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.)
In 2012, a Tweants version of the Heliand will be published, which was translated by ds. Anne van der Meiden. Tweants is a descendant dialect stemming from Old Saxon.
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples...
, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon (cf. German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
Heiland meaning "saviour"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase
Biblical paraphrase
A Biblical paraphrase is a literary work that has as its goal not the translation of the Bible but, rather, the rendering of the Bible into a work that retells all or part of the Bible in a manner that accords with a particular set of theological or political doctrines...
that recounts the life of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
in the alliterative verse
Alliterative verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic...
style of a Germanic saga
Norse saga
The sagas are stories about ancient Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking voyages, the battles that took place during the voyages, about migration to Iceland and of feuds between Icelandic families...
. Heliand is the largest known work of written Old Saxon.
The poem must have been relatively popular and widespread because it exists in two manuscript versions and four fragmentary versions. It takes up about 6,000 lines. A praefatio exists, which could have been commissioned by either Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious , also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813...
(king from 814–840) or Louis the German
Louis the German
Louis the German , also known as Louis II or Louis the Bavarian, was a grandson of Charlemagne and the third son of the succeeding Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye.He received the appellation 'Germanicus' shortly after his death in recognition of the fact...
(806-876). This praefatio was first printed by Matthias Flacius
Matthias Flacius
Matthias Flacius Illyricus was a Lutheran reformer.He was born in Carpano, a part of Albona in Istria, son of Andrea Vlacich alias Francovich and Jacobea Luciani, daughter of a wealthy and powerful Albonian family...
in 1562, and while it has no authority in the manuscripts it is generally deemed to be authentic. The first mention of the poem itself in modern times occurred
Modern history
Modern history, or the modern era, describes the historical timeline after the Middle Ages. Modern history can be further broken down into the early modern period and the late modern period after the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution...
when Franciscus Junius (the younger)
Franciscus Junius (the younger)
Franciscus Junius , also known as François du Jon, was a pioneer of Germanic philology. As a collector of ancient manuscripts, he published the first modern editions of a number of important texts.-Life:...
found a fragment in 1587. It was not printed until 1705, by George Hickes
George Hickes
George Hickes was an English divine and scholar.-Biography:Hickes was born at Newsham, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1642...
. The first modern edition of the poem was published in 1830 by Johann Andreas Schmeller
Johann Andreas Schmeller
Johann Andreas Schmeller was a German philologist who initially studied the Bavarian dialect. From 1828 until his death he taught in the University of Munich. He died in 1852.-Biography:...
.
Sample passage
Lines 4537-4549 from the EucharistEucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
(â ê î ô û are long vowels, đ a soft th, (IPA [ð]), like v):
Detailed commentary
The 9th century poem on the GospelGospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
history, to which its first editor, J. A. Schmeller, gave the appropriate name of Heliand (the word used in the text for Savior, answering to the Old English and the modern German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
Heiland), is, with the fragments of a version of the story of Genesis believed to be by the same author, all that remains of the poetical literature of the old Saxon
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is the earliest recorded form of Low German, documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in the Netherlands by Saxon peoples...
s, i.e. the Saxons who continued in their original home. It contained when entire about 6000 lines, and portions of it are preserved in four manuscripts. The Cotton MS. in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, written probably late in the 10th century, is nearly complete, ending in the middle of the story of the journey to Emmaus. 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. A MS. discovered at Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
in 1881 contains lines 958–1106, and another, in the Vatican Library
Vatican Library
The Vatican Library is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from...
, discovered by K. Zangemeister in 1894, contains lines 1279–1358. The poem is based, not directly on the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, but on the pseudo-Tatian
Tatian
Tatian the Assyrian was an Assyrian early Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century.Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a Biblical paraphrase, or "harmony", of the four gospels that became the standard text of the four gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the...
's Gospel harmony
Gospel harmony
A Gospel harmony is an attempt to merge or harmonize the canonical gospels of the Four Evangelists into a single gospel account, the earliest known example being the Diatesseron by Tatian in the 2nd century. A gospel harmony may also establish a chronology for the events of the life of Jesus...
, and it demonstrates the author's acquaintance with the commentaries of Alcuin
Alcuin
Alcuin of York or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus was an English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York...
, Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
, and Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius , also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, the archbishop of Mainz in Germany and a theologian. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis . He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible...
.
The questions relating to the Heliand cannot be adequately discussed without considering also the poem on the history of Genesis, which, on the grounds of similarity in style and vocabulary, and for other reasons afterwards to be mentioned, may with some confidence be referred to the same author. A part of this poem, as is mentioned in the article Cædmon
Cædmon
Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals and was attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of St. Hilda , he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream,...
, is extant only in an Old English translation. The portions that have been preserved in the original language are contained in the same Vatican MS. that includes the fragment of the Heliand referred to above. In the one language or the other, there are in existence the following three fragments: (I) The passage which appears as lines 235–851 of the Old English verse Genesis in the Caedmon Manuscript
Caedmon manuscript
MS Junius 11 is one of the four major codices of Old English literature...
(MS Junius 11) (this fragment is known as Genesis B, distinguishing it from the rest of the poem, Genesis A), about the revolt of the angels and the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
. Of this a short part corresponding to lines 790–820 exists also in the original Old Saxon. (2) The story of Cain and Abel, in 124 lines. (3) The account of the destruction of Sodom
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
, in 187 lines. The main source of the Genesis is the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, but E. Sievers has shown that considerable use was made of the two Latin poems by Alcimus Avitus, De initio mundi and De peccato originali.
The two poems give evidence of genius and trained skill, though the poet was no doubt hampered by the necessity of not deviating too widely from the sacred originals. 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. In many passages his work gives the impression of being not so much an imitation of the ancient Germanic epic, as a genuine example of it, though concerned with the deeds of other heroes than those of Germanic tradition. In the Heliand the Saviour and His Apostles are conceived as a king and his faithful warriors, and the use of the traditional epic phrases appears to be not, as with Cynewulf
Cynewulf
Cynewulf is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets known by name today, and one of four whose work survives today. He is famous for his religious compositions, and is regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of Old English Christian poetry. Posterity knows of his name by means of runic signatures that...
or the author of Andreas, a mere following of accepted models, but the spontaneous mode of expression of one accustomed to sing of heroic themes. The Genesis fragments have less of the heroic tone, except in the splendid passage describing the rebellion of Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
and his host. It is noteworthy that the poet, like John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, sees in Satan no mere personification of evil, but the fallen archangel, whose awful guilt could not obliterate all traces of his native majesty. Somewhat curiously, but very naturally, Enoch the son of Cain is confused with the Enoch who was translated to heaven – an error which the author of the Old English Genesis avoids, though (according to the existing text) he confounds the names of Enoch and Enos.
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
Matthias Flacius
Matthias Flacius Illyricus was a Lutheran reformer.He was born in Carpano, a part of Albona in Istria, son of Andrea Vlacich alias Francovich and Jacobea Luciani, daughter of a wealthy and powerful Albonian family...
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
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious , also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813...
, 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. The poet willingly obeyed, all the more because he had previously received a divine command to undertake the task. He rendered into verse all the most important parts of the Bible with admirable skill, dividing his work into vitteas, a term which, the writer says, may be rendered by lectiones or sententias. The Praefatio goes on to say that it was reported that the poet, till then knowing nothing of the art of poetry, had been admonished in a dream to turn into verse the precepts of the divine law, which he did with so much skill that his work surpasses in beauty all other German poetry (Ut cuncta Theudisca poemata suo vincat decore). The Versus practically reproduce in outline Bede's account of Caedmon's dream, without mentioning the dream, but describing the poet as a herdsman, and adding that his poems, beginning with the creation, relate the history of the five ages of the world down to the coming of Christ.
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, and internal evidence shows clearly that both the prose and the verse are of early origin. The Versus, considered in themselves, might very well be supposed to relate to Caedmon; but the mention of the five ages of the world in the concluding lines is obviously due to recollection of the opening of the Heliand (lines 46–47). It is therefore certain that the Versus, as well as the Praefatio, attribute to the author of the Heliand a poetic rendering of the Old Testament. Their testimony, if accepted, confirms the ascription to him of the Genesis fragments, which is further supported by the fact that they occur in the same MS. with a portion of the Heliand. As the Praefatio speaks of the emperor Ludwig in the present tense, the former part of it at least was probably written in his reign, i.e. not later than AD. 840. The general opinion of scholars is that the latter part, which represents the poet as having received his vocation in a dream, is by a later hand, and that the sentences in the earlier part which refer to the dream are interpolations by this second author. The date of these additions, and of the Versus, is of no importance, as their statements are incredible. 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, 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. On the other hand, 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. As has been said above, the tone of many portions of the Heliand is that of a man who was no mere imitator of the ancient epic, but who had himself been accustomed to sing of heroic themes.
Editions and translations
The first complete edition of the Heliand was published by J. A. Schmeller in 1830; the second volume, containing the glossary and grammar, appeared in 1840. The standard edition is that of Eduard SieversEduard Sievers
Eduard Sievers was a philologist of the classical and Germanic languages. Sievers was one of the Junggrammatiker of the so-called "Leipzig School"...
(1877), in which the texts of the Cotton and Munich MSS. are printed side by side. It is not provided with a glossary, but contains an elaborate and most valuable analysis of the diction, synonymy and syntactical features of the poem.
Other useful editions are those of Moritz Heyne
Moritz Heyne
Moritz Heyne was a German Germanic linguist .He taught as a professor at the University of Halle , University of Basel , University of Göttingen ....
(3rd ed., 1903), Otto Behaghel
Otto Behaghel
Otto Behaghel was a germanist and professor in Heidelberg, Basel, and Gießen.He added theoretical contributions to the German and Middle High German language. He formulated Behaghel's laws...
(1882) and Paul Piper (1897, containing also the Genesis fragments). The fragments of the Heliand and the Genesis contained in the Vatican MS. were edited in 1894 by Karl Zangemeister and Wilhelm Braune
Wilhelm Braune
Theodor Wilhelm Braune was a German Germanist, historical linguist and philologist....
under the title Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung.
The most recent book on the subject in English is James E. Cathey, Heliand: Text and Commentary (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-937058-64-5) which includes an edited version of the text in the original language, commentaries in English and a very useful grammar of Old Saxon along with an appended glossary defining all of the vocabulary found in this version.
Also by Professor Cathey is a grammar "Old Saxon" (Languages of the World/Materials 252. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000. ISBN 3-89586-514-1)
G. Ronald Murphy of Georgetown University wrote two books on the subject, "The Saxon Saviour: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) and an English translation of the poem : "The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.)
In 2012, a Tweants version of the Heliand will be published, which was translated by ds. Anne van der Meiden. Tweants is a descendant dialect stemming from Old Saxon.
See also
- Germanic languagesGermanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
: A language familyLanguage familyA language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
, the languages of which are spoken in northern and northwestern EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, and in many places colonized since around 1500 - Germanic peoplesGermanic peoplesThe Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
: Collective name of a number of tribes and peoples, originating from northern Europe, several of which invaded the Roman EmpireRoman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
in the 5th and 6th centuries - their Germanic mythologyGermanic mythologyGermanic mythology is a comprehensive term for myths associated with historical Germanic paganism, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, Continental Germanic mythology, and other versions of the mythologies of the Germanic peoples...
- Germanic ChristianityGermanic ChristianityThe Germanic people underwent gradual Christianization in the course of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the 8th century, England and the Frankish Empire were Christian, and by AD 1100 Germanic paganism had also ceased to have political influence in Scandinavia.-History:In the 4th...
that came to dominate much of North-Western Europe in the second millennium, i.e. the Germans (in a wide sense), Anglo-Saxons and the ScandinaviaScandinaviaScandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
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