HELIAND. - An Old High German word, now *Heiland*, meaning Saviour; a kind of popular religious poem in Old Saxon and 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 a poetic narrative of the life of Jesus according to the four Gospels (having been composed on the basis of Tatian’s Gospel 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 largest and most distinguished monument in that language, and provides an image of the popular Germanic epic of the time, most of which has been lost. Hence its great philological value. The central and dominant part of the poem is occupied by the Sermon on the Mount, the story of love and peace, justice and humility, which, because of its contrast with the traditional pagan, earthly, and fierce ethics of that people, recently converted to Christianity by Charlemagne, was best suited to achieve the poet’s aim of softening and Christianizing them. To facilitate the understanding of such a different world, the author partly made use of the affinity that the Germanic people had with the cult of loyalty and blind acceptance of fate, and partly Germanized the events, even assigning feudal hierarchies to Christ and the Apostles or inserting names and concepts from Germanic mythology. Artistically, despite its exuberance and grandiloquence, the poem retains a spontaneous genuineness of expression, becomes dramatic at times, and draws a clear narrative line.
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