HELIAND: TEXT AND COMMENTARY

The Historical Setting of the H

The Historical Setting of the Heliand The Old Saxon telling of the gospel, titled Heliand (Savior) by J. A. Schmeller in his edition of 1830, was not written in a vacuum but was, as is everything, a product of its place and time. The Heliand was composed in what is now part of northern Germany in the first half of the 9th century. The time was approximately in the middle of the period extending from the first Christian missions to the north of Europe in the SOO's to the end of the 1100's, by which time most Europeans excepting the BaIts and Prussians had at least superficially been converted. It is the political and religious background of that period which provides a context in which to understand the missionizing intent ofthe Heliand and the political as well. THE SAXONS The Roman historian Tacitus placed the precursors of the Saxons in southern Denmark, north of the Eider river, in the first century A.D. According to the Greek explorer Ptolemaus, they lived in what is now Holstein (between Eider and Elbe rivers) during the second century A.D. As Herbert describes them from the point of view of the Angles, ancestors ofthe English: South of [the Angles], in the lands around the lower Elbe and Weser, were the Suebic tribes. The first Roman writer to mention the English makes no reference to the Saxons. Like Franks, it is the name of a later confederation of tribes from this area. The Saxons were of Suebic stock; their earlier English neighbors called them Swcefe; later they were known as Old Saxons, to distinguish them from the folk who had crossed to Britain (p. 9). 3 He/iaM The Saxons did not expand their territory beyond the Elbe until the third century but were fighting with the Franks to their south by 350 in the area between the lower Rhine and upper Weser rivers. By the 400s they were plundering the coasts of southern England and of France and together with the Angles some of them settled in England beginning in about 450. Toward the end of the 600s the continental Saxons were as far south as the Lippe river and in Thuringia, but by the 700s the Franks were able to exert sufficient pressure to contain them in Westphalia and parts north. THE EARLY MISSIONS Germanic groups were up to the time shortly preceding the composition of the Heliand still in the process of settling their territories and frontiers. Their world view was by definition pre-Christian. Although the Frankish king Clovis had been converted to Roman Catholicism through baptism in 496, the general population had been left largely undisturbed by missionizing efforts. Only later did the mission come, but not, as we might expect, directly northward from Rome but rather it took a long sweep through time and geography. The effort to missionize the Saxons had its historical roots with the Celts of Roman Britain, where Christian churches had been established during the third century. From post-Roman Britain the effort of conversion proceeded to Ireland in the fourth century. The increasing settlement of England by Anglo-Saxons from the continent during the fifth century interrupted communications between Rome and Britain, and the center of the Celtic Church shifted to Ireland , a land little touched by Roman influence. The Irish, in turn, brought the Church back to Britain by establishing northern monasteries at lona and Lindisfarne. From these outposts Irish monks preached the gospel in Scotland and northern England, while the English south remained a mixture of pagan and Anglo-Roman Christian. The missionizing effort conducted by the Irish did not stop at attempts to convert the Scottish Celts and Anglo-Saxons. The first great missionary to the continent was also Irish. st. Columban (born about 545) left Bangor in northern Ireland reportedly along with the apostolic number of twelve fellow monks in the decade before 600. 4 The Historical Setting He (and they) established monasteries adhering to the Celtic Church in what is now eastern France and, later, at Bobbio in northern Italy, where Columban died in 615 on his mission to the Langobards. One companion of Columban, Gall (born in Ireland about 550, died around 630), remained in what is now Switzerland when his patron continued on to Italy. The great monastery at st. Gallen carries his name. The Franks had long been on the periphery...