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92-784: The Heliand ( / ˈ h ɛ l i ən d / ) is an epic alliterative verse poem in Old Saxon , written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means "savior" in Old Saxon (cf. German and Dutch Heiland meaning "savior"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the alliterative verse style of a Germanic epic . 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

184-477: A Saxon warrior culture. The other is the fragmentary Genesis (337 lines in 3 unconnected fragments), created as a reworking of Biblical content based on Latin sources. In more recent times, Richard Wagner sought to evoke these old German models and what he considered a more natural and less over-civilised style by writing his Ring poems in Stabreim . Both German traditions show one common feature which

276-400: 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

368-584: 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 presented as a king and his faithful warriors. While some argue that 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 rather the spontaneous mode of expression of one accustomed to sing of heroic themes, others argue that

460-536: A left-prominent prosodic pattern. In other words, stress falls on the root syllable of a word, which is normally the initial syllable (except where the root is preceded by an unstressed prefix, as in past participles, for example). This means that the first sound of a word was particularly salient to listeners. Traditional Germanic verse had two particular rules about alliteration: The need to find an appropriate alliterating word gave certain other distinctive features to alliterative verse as well. Alliterative poets drew on

552-443: A noble warrior slain       Vengeance now on king is ta'en:   Wolf and eagle tread as prey       Princes born to sovereign sway.   Hallvard's body cloven through       Headlong in the billows flew;   Wounds of wight once swift to fare       Swooping vulture's beak doth tear.' Further details about Old Norse versification can be found in

644-417: 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,

736-534: A prominent feature of modern Icelandic literature , though contemporary Icelandic poets vary in their adherence to traditional forms. By the early 19th century, alliterative verse in Finnish was largely restricted to traditional, largely rural folksongs, until Elias Lönnrot and his compatriots collected them and published them as the Kalevala , which rapidly became the national epic of Finland and contributed to

828-406: A result of phonetic changes from the original common Germanic language, many unstressed syllables were lost. This lent Old Norse verse a characteristic terseness; the lifts tended to be crowded together at the expense of the weak syllables. In some lines, the weak syllables have been entirely suppressed. As a result, while we still have the base pattern of paired half-lines joined by alliteration, it

920-557: 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 Eduard Sievers showed that considerable use was made of two Latin poems by Alcimus Avitus , De initio mundi and De peccato originali . The two poems give evidence of genius and trained skill, though

1012-498: A sign of decadent technique from ill-tutored poets and as an artistic innovation giving scope for additional poetic effects. Either way, it signifies a break with the strict Sievers typology. Essentially all Old Norse poetry was written in some form of alliterative verse. It falls into two main categories: Eddaic and Skaldic poetry. Eddaic poetry was anonymous, originally orally transmitted, and mostly consisted or legends, mythological stories, wise sayings and proverbs. A majority of

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1104-518: A specialized vocabulary of poetic synonyms rarely used in prose texts and used standard images and metaphors called kennings . Old Saxon and medieval English attest to the word fitt with the sense of 'a section in a longer poem', and this term is sometimes used today by scholars to refer to sections of alliterative poems. The trochaic tetrametrical meter that characterises the traditional poetry of most Finnic-language cultures, known as Kalevala meter , does not deploy alliteration with

1196-405: A structural, defining role only in more traditional forms. Old English classical poetry, epitomised by Beowulf , follows the rules of traditional Germanic poetry outlined above, and is indeed a major source for reconstructing them. J.R.R. Tolkien 's essay " On Translating Beowulf " analyses the rules as used in the poem. Old English poetry, even after the introduction of Christianity ,

1288-465: A syllable is either stressed or unstressed, Germanic poets were sensitive to degrees of stress. These can be thought of at three levels: If a half-line contains one or more stress-words, their root syllables will be the lifts. (This is the case in the Gallehus Horn inscription above, where all the lifts are nouns.) If it contains no stress-words, the root syllables of any particles will be

1380-579: A syllable like the ow in growing , which ends in a long vowel or a diphthong . A closed syllable, which ends with one or more consonants, like bird , takes about the same amount of time as a long vowel. In the older Germanic languages, a syllable ending with a short vowel could not be one of the three potentially alliterating lifts by itself. Instead, if a lift was occupied by word with a short root vowel followed by only one consonant followed by an unstressed vowel (i.e. '(-)CVCV(-)) these two syllables were in most circumstances counted as only one syllable. This

1472-431: A wide range of styles and forms, ranging from poems in strict Old English or Old Norse meters, to highly alliterative free verse that uses strong-stress alliteration to connect adjacent phrases without strictly linking alliteration to line structure. While alliterative verse is relatively popular in the speculative fiction (specifically, the speculative poetry ) community, and is regularly featured at events sponsored by

1564-510: A wide variety of stanzaic forms that combine the alliterative structure described above with rhyme ( rimur ), including quatrain structures like ferskeytla that rhyme ABAB, couplet structures ( stafhenduætt ), tercet structures like baksneidd braghenda , and longer patterns, in which rhyming and alliteration patterns run either in parallel or in counterpoint. Traditional poetic synonyms and kennings persisted in Icelandic rimur as late as

1656-463: Is also accepted. Like Germanic alliterative verse, Somali and Mongol verse both emerge from oral traditions. Mongol poetry, but not Somali poetry, resembles Germanic verse in its emphasis on heroic epic. The Old High German and Old Saxon corpus of Stabreim or alliterative verse is small. Fewer than 200 Old High German lines survive, in four works: the Hildebrandslied , Muspilli ,

1748-532: Is better to be meek than mighty that the text lends more to a Germanized Christianity. Other scholars argue that the message of meekness is so blatant that it renders the text as a stronger representation of a Christianized Germany. This discussion is important because it reveals what culture was more pervasive to the other. Many historians agree that Martin Luther possessed a copy of the Heliand . Luther referenced

1840-431: Is called resolution . The patterns of unstressed syllables vary significantly in the alliterative traditions of different Germanic languages. The rules for these patterns remain imperfectly understood and subject to debate. Alliteration fits naturally with the prosodic patterns of early Germanic languages. Alliteration essentially involves matching the left edges of stressed syllables. Early Germanic languages share

1932-658: Is much less common elsewhere: a proliferation of unaccented syllables. Generally these are parts of speech which would naturally be unstressed — pronouns , prepositions , articles , modal auxiliaries — but in the Old Saxon works there are also adjectives and lexical verbs . The unaccented syllables typically occur before the first stress in the half-line, and most often in the b-verse. The Hildebrandslied , lines 4–5: G arutun se iro g uðhamun,   g urtun sih iro suert ana, h elidos, ubar h ringa,   do sie to dero h iltiu ritun. They prepared their fighting outfits,   girded their swords on,

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2024-585: Is not the only alliterative verse tradition. It is thus worthwhile briefly to compare Germanic alliterative verse with other alliterative verse traditions, such as Somali and Mongol poetry. Like German alliterative verse, Somali alliterative verse is built around short lines (phrasal units, roughly equal in size to the Germanic half-line) whose strongest stress must alliterate with the strongest stress in another phrase. However, in traditional Somali alliterative verse, alliterating consonants are always word-initial, and

2116-487: Is still a living cultural tradition. Icelandic alliterative verse contains lines that typically contain eight to ten syllables. They are traditionally analyzed into feet, one per stress, with typically falling rhythm. The first foot in a line is considered a heavy foot , the second, a light foot, and so on, with the third and fifth foot counting as heavy, and the second and fourth as light. Icelandic lines are basically Germanic half-lines; they come in pairs. The head-stave

2208-564: Is that of Snorri Sturluson in the Prose Edda . He describes metrical patterns and poetic devices used by skaldic poets around the year 1200. Snorri's description has served as the starting point for scholars to reconstruct alliterative meters beyond those of Old Norse . Alliterative verse has been found in some of the earliest monuments of Germanic literature. The Golden Horns of Gallehus , discovered in Denmark and likely dating to

2300-608: Is the Papyrus Ebers , one of the oldest medical treatises ever (around 1525 BC) or the Leipziger Weltchronik, the remains of the oldest preserved world chronicle (2nd century after Christ). Papyrus Ebers is the longest and oldest surviving medical manuscript from ancient Egypt, dated to around 1600 BC. In 2010 the library was given 12 sketchbooks and a number of diaries of the late Leipzig artist Werner Tübke . In 2014 an early, unknown manuscript fragment of

2392-584: Is the central library of the University of Leipzig . It is one of the oldest German university libraries. The library was founded in 1542 following the Reformation by the then Rector of the university, Caspar Borner, who persuaded Moritz , Duke of Saxony , to donate the property and buildings of the dissolved Dominican friary of St Paul in Leipzig to the university. The library began in one of

2484-505: Is the first stressed syllable in the second line in each pair, which must alliterate with at least one stress in the preceding line. The alliterating stresses in the first line in each pair are called props, or studlar , following the usual Germanic rules about which consonants alliterate. They are subject to the following rules: This system allows considerable rhythmic flexibility. Icelandic keeps some Old Norse forms, such as fornyrðislag , ljóðaháttur , and dróttkvætt . It also has

2576-511: Is very rare to have multiple-syllable dips. The following example from the Hávamál illustrates this basic pattern: Deyr fé   deyja frændr Cattle die;   kinsmen die... The terseness of the Norse form may be linked to another feature of Norse poetry that differentiates it from common Germanic patterns: In Old Norse poetry, syllable count sometimes matters, and not just

2668-538: The Merseburg Charms and the Wessobrunn Prayer . All four are preserved in forms that are clearly to some extent corrupt, suggesting that the scribes may themselves not have been entirely familiar with the poetic tradition. Two Old Saxon alliterative poems survive. One is the reworking of the four gospels into the epic Heliand (nearly 6000 lines), where Jesus and his disciples are portrayed in

2760-641: The s ilver water plummets,   of glaciers swelling b road and b are       a b ove earth's fiery sinews —   the L ord pour out his l argess there       as l ong as earth continues! Alliterative verse appears to have been the dominant poetic tradition in Iceland until well after World War II. In the last generation, or so, a split appears to have developed between avant garde and traditionalist approaches to Icelandic poetry, with alliteration remaining frequent in all forms of Icelandic poetry, but playing

2852-483: The Heliand as an example to encourage translation of Gospels into the vernacular. Additionally, Luther also favored wording presented in the Heliand to other versions of the Gospels. For example, many scholars believe that Luther favored the angel's greeting to Mary in the Heliand – "you are dear to your Lord" – because he disliked the notion of referring to a human as "full of grace." Contention exists over whether

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2944-547: The Heliand is connected to the Gospel of Thomas . The Gospel of Thomas is a Judaic/Christian version of the Gospels found in 1956 that has been attributed the apostle Thomas. Quispel, a Dutch scholar, argues that the Heliand 's author used a primitive Diatessaron , the Gospel harmony written in 160-175 by Tatian and thus has connections to the Gospel of Thomas by this association. Other scholars, such as Krogmann assert that

3036-503: The Heliand shares a poetic style of the Diatessaron but that the author may not actually have relied on this source and therefore the Heliand would have no association to the Gospel of Thomas. Themu gi folgon sculun an sô huilike gardos, sô gi ina gangan gisehat, ia gi than themu hêrron, the thie hoƀos êgi, selƀon seggiad, that ik iu sende tharod te gigaruuuenne mîna gôma. Than tôgid he iu ên gôdlîc hûs, hôhan soleri,

3128-492: The Heliand was authored by the same hand as the Old Saxon Genesis , but scholarly consensus has shifted away from this view; Sievers had already abandoned the hypothesis when Braune published his study. Large parts of that poem are extant only in an Old English translation, known as Genesis B . The portions that have been preserved in the original language are contained in the same Vatican manuscript that includes

3220-544: The Heliand was intentionally and methodically composed after careful study of the formula of other German poems. 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

3312-488: The Heliand was written, there was a revolt of the Saxon stelinga, or lower social castes. Murphy depicts the significant influence the Heliand had over the fate of European society; he writes that the author of the Heliand "created a unique cultural synthesis between Christianity and Germanic warrior society – a synthesis that would plant the seed that would one day blossom in the full-blown culture of knighthood and become

3404-648: The Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach was found in the holdings of the handwriting center. The fragment is housed in a handwriting book of the Domstiftsbibliothek Naumburg and served as bookbinding material in the 15th century. The Leipzig University Library owns parts of the Codex Sinaiticus , a Bible manuscript from the 4th century, brought from Sinai in 1843 by Constantin von Tischendorf . The Codex contains large parts of

3496-544: The Society for Creative Anachronism , it also appears in poetry collections published by a wide range of practicing poets. The poetic forms found in the various Germanic languages are not identical, but there is still sufficient similarity to make it clear that they are closely related traditions, stemming from a common Germanic source. Knowledge about that common tradition, however, is based almost entirely on inference from later poetry. Originally all alliterative poetry

3588-505: The 14th Century, Icelandic alliterative poetry mostly consisted of rímur , a verse form which combines alliteration with rhyme. The most common alliterative ríma form is ferskeytt , a kind of quatrain. Examples of rimur include Disneyrímur by Þórarinn Eldjárn , ''Unndórs rímur'' by an anonymous author, and the rimur transformed to post-rock anthems by Sigur Ros . From 19th century poets like Jonas Halgrimsson to 21st-century poets like Valdimar Tómasson , alliteration has remained

3680-1054: The 18th Century, but were criticized by modernizing poets such as Jonas Hallgrimsson, and dropped out of later usage. The following poem in kviðuhattr meter by Jónas Hallgrímsson with translation by Dick Ringler illustrates how the rules for Icelandic alliterative verse work. For convenience, lines starting with a head stave are indented and both props and headstave are bolded and underlined. Íslands minni     Þið þekkið fold með b líðri b rá,       og b láum tindi fjalla,   og s vanahljómi, s ilungsá,       og s ælu blómi valla,   og b röttum fossi, b jörtum sjá       og b reiðum jökulskalla —   d rjúpi' hana blessun d rottins á       um d aga heimsins alla. A Toast to Iceland     Our l and of l akes forever fair       be l ow blue mountain summits,   of s wans, of s almon leaping where      

3772-458: The 4th century, bear this Runic inscription in Proto-Norse : This inscription contains four strongly stressed syllables, the first three of which alliterate on ⟨h⟩ /x/ and the last of which does not alliterate, essentially the same pattern found in much later verse. The core metrical features of traditional Germanic alliterative verse are as follows; they can be seen in

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3864-595: The Eddaic poetry appears in the Poetic Edda . Skaldic poetry was associated with individual poets or skalds, typically employed by a king or other ruler, who primarily wrote poems praising their patron or criticizing their patron's enemies. It thus tends to be more elaborate and poetically ambitious than Eddaic poetry. The inherited form of alliterative verse was modified somewhat in Old Norse poetry. In Old Norse, as

3956-753: The Finnish independence movement. This led to poems in Kalevala meter becoming a significant element in Finnish literature and popular culture. Alliterative verse has also been revived in Modern English . Many modern authors include alliterative verse among their compositions, including Poul Anderson , W.H. Auden , Fred Chappell , Richard Eberhart , John Heath-Stubbs , C. Day-Lewis , C. S. Lewis , Ezra Pound , John Myers Myers , Patrick Rothfuss , L. Sprague de Camp , J. R. R. Tolkien and Richard Wilbur . Modern English alliterative verse covers

4048-528: The Gallehus inscription above: Some of these fundamental rules varied in certain traditions over time. For example, in Old English alliterative verse, in some lines the second but not the first lift in the a-verse alliterated with the first lift in the b-verse, for instance line 38 of Beowulf (ne hyrde ic c ymlicor c eol gegyrwan ). Unlike in post-medieval English accentual verse , in which

4140-516: 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 . James E. Cathey wrote Heliand: Text and Commentary (2002) (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, ISBN   0-937058-64-5 ), which includes an edited version of

4232-555: 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

4324-502: The Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand (1989) (New York: Oxford University Press). Alliterative verse While alliteration is common in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form. However, structural alliteration appears in a variety of poetic traditions, including Old Irish , Welsh , Somali and Mongol poetry. The extensive use of alliteration in

4416-485: The Pious (king from 814 to 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) transcribed a fragment in 1587. It was not printed until 1705, by George Hickes . The first modern edition of

4508-546: The Saxons who continued in their original home. It contained when entire about 6000 lines, and portions of it are preserved in two nearly complete manuscripts and four fragments. The Cotton MS. in the British Library , written probably in the second half of the 10th century, is one of the nearly complete manuscripts, ending in the middle of the story of the journey to Emmaus. It is believed to have an organization closer to

4600-554: The Versus, is of no importance, as their statements are not credible. 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 according to some scholars, 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. Other historians, however, argue that

4692-462: The companion article, Old Norse Poetry . Icelandic is not only descended from Old Norse, it is so conservative that Old Norse literature is still read in Iceland. Traditional Icelandic poetry, however, follows somewhat different rules than Old Norse, both for rhythm and alliteration. The following brief description captures the basic rules of modern Icelandic alliterative verse, which was the dominant form of Icelandic poetry until recent decades, and

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4784-452: The critical last alliteration in the line, or headstave ) are indented and alliterating consonants are bolded and underlined. Nús h ersis h efnd       við h ilmi efnd;   gengr u lfr ok ö rn       of y nglings börn;   flugu h öggvin h ræ       H allvarðs á sæ;   grár s lítr undir       ari S narfara. 'For

4876-427: 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

4968-545: The first half line had to contain four, and the second half-line, three syllables, while in ljóðaháttr ("song" or " ballad " meter), there were no specific syllable counts, but the lines were arranged into four-line stanzas alternating between four- and three-lift lines. More complex stanza forms imposed additional constraints. The various names of the Old Norse verse forms are given in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson . The Háttatal , or "list of verse forms", contains

5060-469: The foundation of medieval Europe." The 9th-century poem on the Gospel history, to which its first editor, J. A. Schmeller , gave the name of Heliand (the word used in the text for Savior, answering to the Old English hǣlend and the modern German and Dutch Heiland ), is, with the fragments of a poem based on the Book of Genesis , all that remains of the poetical literature of the old Saxons , i.e.

5152-508: 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

5244-519: The glossary and grammar, appeared in 1840. The standard edition is that of Eduard Sievers (1877), in which the texts of the Cotton and Munich manuscripts 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

5336-430: The heroes, over ringmail   when they to that fight rode. The Heliand , line 3062:   S âlig bist thu S îmon, quað he, s unu Ionases;   ni mahtes thu that s elbo gehuggean   blessed are you Simon, he said, son of Jonah;   for you did not see that yourself (Matthew 16, 17) This leads to a less dense style, no doubt closer to everyday language, which has been interpreted both as

5428-550: The ina salingna an thesan middilgard modar gidrogi so quad he that ostana en scoldi skinan huit, sulic so wi her ne habdin er undartuisc erda endi himil odar huerigin ne sulic barn ne sulic bocan. (VII, 582-92) Then he spoke and said there would come a wise king, magnificent and mighty, to this middle realm; he would be of the best birth; he said that he would be the Son of God, he said that he would rule this world, earth and sky, always and forevermore. he said that on

5520-480: The interlibrary loan. Central technical facilities such as bookbinding and restoration works are also located in the Bibliotheca Albertina. The collection currently comprises over 5.5 million volumes, with 8,700 manuscripts and 3,600 incunabula, and some 25,000 prints dating from the 16th century, and around 6,500 journals. Approximately 3.5 million of the total stock is now stocked in the magazines,

5612-561: The is bihangen al fagarun fratahun. Thar gi frummien sculun uuerdscepi mînan. Thar bium ik uuiskumo selƀo mid mînun gesîđun." Thô uurđun sân aftar thiu thar te Hierusalem iungaron Kristes forđuuard an ferdi, fundun all sô he sprak uuordtêcan uuâr: ni uuas thes giuuand ênig. tho sagda he that her scoldi cumin en wiscuning mari endi mahtig an thesan middelgard bezton giburdies; quad that it scoldi wesan barn godes, quad that he thesero weroldes waldan scoldi gio te ewandaga, erdun endi himiles. He quad that an them selbon daga,

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5704-409: The lift. Rarely, even a proclitic can be the lift, either because there are no more heavily stressed syllables or because it is given extra stress for some particular reason. Lifts also have to meet an additional requirement, involving what linguists term quantity , which is related to vowel length . A syllable like the li in little , which ends in a short vowel, takes less time to say than

5796-460: The magnificent Neo-Renaissance Bibliotheca Albertina building. Three famous librarians worked at the institution: Joachim Feller (from 1675), Christian Gottlieb Jöcher (from 1742 to 1758), and Ernst Gotthelf Gersdorf (from 1833). Since 2005 Ulrich Johannes Schneider has been director of the library. The Bibliotheca Albertina is the center for the media acquisition with a central business operation for numerous branch libraries as well as for

5888-465: The middle of a line rather than at the beginning of a line to help with alliteration) that occur in the Heliand seem awkward as written text but make sense when considering the Heliand formerly as a song for after-dinner singing in the mead hall or monastery. 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

5980-632: The monastery buildings with 1,000 books and around 1,500 manuscripts from the stocks of four secularised Leipzig city monasteries and other dissolved monasteries in Saxony and Thuringia . Its land and buildings fell in 1543 by donation of the Albertiners Duke Moritz of Saxony to the University of Leipzig . In one of these buildings, the Central Paleum, the library collections of several monasteries were brought together. Due to

6072-473: The names and characteristics of each of the fixed forms of Norse poetry. Old Norse followed the general Germanic rules for alliteration, but imposed specific alliteration patterns on specific verse forms, and sometimes rules for assonance and internal rhyme. For example, drottkvætt ("courtly meter") not only required alliteration between adjacent half-lines, but imposed requirements for consonance and internal rhyme at specific points in each stanza. Old Norse

6164-467: The number of lifts and dips. That depends upon the specific verse form used, of which Old Norse poetry had many. The base, Common Germanic alliterative meter is what Old Norse poets termed fornyrðislag ("old story meter"). More complex verse forms imposed an extra layer of structure in which syllable count, stress, alliteration (and sometimes, assonance and rhyme) worked together to define line or stanza structures. For example, in kvi ðuhattr ("lay form") ,

6256-467: 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

6348-527: 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

6440-609: The original version because it is divided into fitts , or songs. 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 with the last two fitts missing. This manuscript is now retained in Munich at the Bavarian State Library . Because it was produced on calf skin of high quality, it has been preserved in good condition. Neumes above

6532-463: The poem was published in 1830 by Johann Andreas Schmeller . The Heliand was probably written at the request of emperor Louis the Pious around AD 830 to combat Saxon ambivalence toward Christianity. The Saxons were forced to convert to Christianity in the late 8th to early 9th century after 33 years of conflict between the Saxons under Widukind and the Franks under Charlemagne. Around the time that

6624-455: 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

6716-407: The poet was no doubt hampered by the necessity of not deviating too widely from the sacred. 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

6808-597: The possibility that the author may have been illiterate should not be dismissed because the translations seem free compared to line-by-line translations that were made from Tatian's Diatessaron in the second quarter of the 9th century into Old High German. Additionally, the poem also shares much of its structure with Old English, Old Norse, and Old High German alliterative poetry which all included forms of heroic poetry that were available only orally and passed from singer to singer. Repetitions of particular words and phrases as well as irregular beginnings of fits (sentences begin at

6900-532: The project by Arwed Rossbach . Building was complete on October 24, 1891. In honor to King Albert of Saxony , the new building was named Bibliotheca Albertina. In the Second World War, the main building was severely damaged by the air raids on Leipzig on 6 April 1945. The catalogs and stocks, however, had been outsourced and remained largely intact. Approximately 42,000 volumes were lost. Currently some are found in collections of Russian libraries. After

6992-413: The remaining stocks are freely accessible in the three main readings rooms. In addition, the library has a series of special collections, including about 8,700 manuscripts, of which approx. 3,200 in the special collection of oriental manuscripts, approx. 3,600 incunabulae, 16th century prints and approx. 173,000 autographs. There is also a significant collection of Papyrus and Ostracs. Among the collections

7084-480: The right wing were removed entirely, a second cellar floor lifted, and the façade – despite considerable additional costs – was reconstructed in the original way. Renovation, restoration and restoration lasted until 2002. Today, the main building of the University Library, the Bibliotheca Albertina, is one of a total of 15 locations of the University Library. Bombing in 1943–1945 destroyed two-thirds of

7176-489: The same alliterating consonant must carry through across multiple successive lines within a poem. In Mongol alliterative verse, individual lines are also phrases, with strongest stress on the first word of the phrase. Lines are grouped into pairs, often parallel in structure, which must alliterate with one another, though alliteration between the head-stress and later words in the line is also allowed, and non-identical alliteration (for example, of voiced and voiceless consonants)

7268-520: The same day on which the mother gave birth to the Blessed One in this middle realm, in the East, he said, there would shine forth a brilliant light in the sky, one such as we never had before between heaven and earth nor anywhere else, never such a baby and never such a beacon. The first complete edition of the Heliand was published by J. A. Schmeller in 1830; the second volume, containing

7360-484: The so-called Kalevala meter , or runic song , of the Finnic languages provides a close comparison, and may derive directly from Germanic-language alliterative verse. Unlike in other Germanic languages, where alliterative verse has largely fallen out of use (except for deliberate revivals, like Richard Wagner 's 19th-century German Ring Cycle ), alliteration has remained a vital feature of Icelandic poetry. After

7452-529: 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;

7544-478: The strong growth in the number of books, as well as the takeover of the Goethe collection by the publisher Salomon Hirzel, and above all due to the increasing production of publishing in the 19th century, a move into a larger building became necessary. Many building designs were submitted to one call, and on 15 and 16 October 1883, a court of appeal discussed the ten proposals selected for the final round and decided on

7636-524: The structural regularity of Germanic-language alliterative verse, but Kalevala meter does have a very strong convention that, in each line, two lexically stressed syllables should alliterate. In view of the profound influence of the Germanic languages on other aspects of the Finnic languages and the unusualness of such regular requirements for alliteration, it has been argued that Kalevala meter borrowed both its use of alliteration and possibly other metrical features from Germanic. Germanic alliterative verse

7728-756: 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. Luther's Heliand: Resurrection of the Old Saxon Epic in Leipzig (2011) by Timothy Blaine Price is a self-published book detailing results of the author's personal research and travels. Perspectives on the Old Saxon Heliand (2010) edited by Valentine A. Pakis contains critical essays and commentaries. G. Ronald Murphy published The Saxon Saviour: The Germanic Transformation of

7820-735: The text in this version reveal that the Heliand may have been sung. A fragment discovered at Prague in 1881 contains lines 958–1006, and another, in the Vatican Library , discovered by K. Zangemeister in 1894, contains lines 1279–1358. Two additional fragments exist that were discovered most recently. The first was discovered in 1979 at a Jesuit High School in Straubing by B. Bischoff and is currently held in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . It consists of nearly three leaves and contains 157 poetic lines. The final fragment

7912-464: 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. Scholars disagree over whether the overall tone of the Heliand lends to the text being an example of a Germanized Christianity or a Christianized Germany. Some historians believe that the German traditions of fighting and enmity are so well pronounced as well as an underlying message of how it

8004-519: The war only the undamaged left wing was used. Reconstruction of the main building was a shortage of financial resources. Because of the damage to the main building, the use of the institutes and section libraries has often been shifted in the following decades. It was not until after the German reunification that the extensive restoration and extension of the main building, including the reconstruction of individual buildings, has begun in 1994. The ruins of

8096-419: Was composed and transmitted orally, and much went unrecorded. The degree to which writing may have altered this oral art form remains much in dispute. Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus among scholars that the written verse retains many (and some would argue almost all) of the features of the spoken language. One statement we have about the nature of alliterative verse from a practicing alliterative poet

8188-526: Was found in Leipzig in 2006 by T. Doring and H. U. Schmid. This fragment consists of only one leaf that contains 47 lines of poetry, and it is currently kept at Bibliotheca Albertina . 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 . Early scholarship, notably that of Braune, hypothesized that

8280-424: 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

8372-420: Was rich in poetic synonyms and kennings, where it closely resembled Old English. Norse poets were sometimes described as creating "riddling" kennings whose meaning was not necessarily self-evident to the audience, perhaps reflecting competition among skalds. The following poem from Egil's Saga illustrates the basic principles of Old Norse alliterative verse. For convenience, the 'b' verses (the lines containing

8464-719: Was uniformly written in alliterative verse, and much of the literature written in Old English, such as the Dream of the Rood , is explicitly Christian, though poems like Beowulf demonstrate continuing cultural memory for the Pagan past. Alliterative verse was so strongly entrenched in Old English society that English monks, writing in Latin, would sometimes create Latin approximations to alliterative verse. Bibliotheca Albertina Leipzig University Library (German: Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig ), known also as Bibliotheca Albertina ,

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