HELIAND. - An Old German word, today Heiland, Savior; a sort of religious popular poem in Old Saxon and in alliterative verse (6000 lines), written around 830, not by a monk but by a professional singer, commissioned, it seems, by Louis the Pious, and containing the poetic narration of the life of Jesus according to the four Gospels (having been composed on the basis of Tatian's Evangelical Harmony, it also bears this title, with the addition: "in Old Saxon").
The only complete Germanization of Christian poetry and doctrine, the H. is the most extensive and distinguished monument in that language, and gives an image of the German popular epic of the time, almost entirely lost. Hence its great philological value. The central and dominant part of the poem is occupied by the Sermon on the Mount, that is, the story of love and peace, of justice and humility, which, by its contrast with the traditional pagan ethic, earthly and ferocious, of that people, recently converted to Christianity by Charlemagne, was better suited to achieve the poet's intended aim of taming and Christianizing them. To facilitate the understanding of so different a world, the author partly availed himself of the affinity that the cult of fidelity and the blind acceptance of fate, proper to the Germanic people, had with it, and partly Germanized the events, even assigning to Christ and the Apostles feudal hierarchies or inserting names and concepts from Germanic mythology. Artistically, despite its exuberance and high-flown style, the poem preserves a spontaneous genuineness of expression, at times becomes dramatic, and traces a clear line of narrative.
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Giovanni Guerra