{"id":5482,"date":"2019-11-08T12:04:27","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T17:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/?p=5482"},"modified":"2019-11-08T12:04:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T17:04:27","slug":"syncretism-in-the-heliand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/2019\/11\/08\/syncretism-in-the-heliand\/","title":{"rendered":"Syncretism in the H\u00ealiand"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bust of Charlemagne (14th century), Aachen Cathedral Treasury<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The H\u00ealiand<\/em> represents a towering yet puzzling work of early continental Germanic literature whose deliberate fusion of Christian ideas with the language of warrior elites creates a rich and intense patchwork for audiences. Composed in the first half of the ninth century in the Carolingian Empire at a time when the emperors sought to impose Christianity on their newly conquered Saxon subjects, the text consists of a lengthy verse Gospel paraphrase completed in the so-called Old Saxon dialect\u2014a predecessor of Middle and High varieties of Low German spoken throughout the northern regions of contemporary Germany. The religious subject of the poem is translated into the language of a Germanic warrior culture in order to reach a wide audience of lay\u2014especially male\u2014elites. This, in turn, transforms the narrative of Jesus\u2019 life into a uniquely Christian-Germanic epic propped up by the language of fidelity and war.<\/p>\n

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The statue of Charlemagne erected in Aachen’s Market Place, 1620<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the moments in the H\u00ealiand<\/em> where the juxtaposition of Christian ideas and prophecy with a Germanic vocabulary of warrior elites comes in the work\u2019s fifty-sixth fitt<\/em> (\u201csong\u201d), the Last Supper narrative. Linked\u00a0is an excerpt and translation<\/a> from this turning point in the text (H\u00ealiand <\/em>56, lines 4665-4701), revolving around Simon Peter\u2019s reaction to Jesus\u2019 forecasting of the former\u2019s impending betrayal (which I have titled “Peter’s Promise”). Throughout his speeches, Jesus relies upon the vocabulary of fidelity and lordship, while Peter\u2019s promise to sacrifice himself \u201can uuapno spil<\/em>\u201d\u2014literally \u201cin the play of weapons\u201d\u2014reads as a transparent euphemism for the scourges of battle.<\/p>\n

Jake Coen
\nPhD Candidate in Medieval Studies
\nUniversity of Notre Dame<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The H\u00ealiand represents a towering yet puzzling work of early continental Germanic literature whose deliberate fusion of Christian ideas with the language of warrior elites creates a rich and intense patchwork for audiences. Composed in the first half of the ninth century in the Carolingian Empire at a time when the emperors sought to impose … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Syncretism in the H\u00ealiand”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1846,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[264204,43988,264212,264206,73957,264203,17940],"tags":[324779,324694,324776,35386,324780,68226,17907],"class_list":["post-5482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disciplines","category-digital-humanities","category-german-and-russian-languages-and-literatures","category-history-disciplines","category-north-seas","category-special-series","category-theology","tag-carolingian","tag-gospels","tag-heliand","tag-jesus","tag-old-saxon","tag-peter","tag-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5482"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5521,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5482\/revisions\/5521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/manuscript-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}