One of the more bizarre expressions of Christianity comes from the Early Medieval Carolingian world. It is a poem we call “The Heiland,” probably written in the courts of Louis the Pious or Louis the German in the 800s to an Old Saxon-speaking audience. The Heiland is an epic poem (much longer than _Beowulf_) telling the story of the life of Jesus Christ. But the Heiland’s world-view is that of a Medieval Germanic land of warrior-vassals and battles rather than the first-century eastern Mediterranean. The wise men travel through a forest to find the infant Jesus, and the shepherds in the birthing story become groomsmen. At the Wedding of Cana, there is a Germanic-style banquet hall presided over by a warrior chieftain. And Jesus himself has the Early Medieval qualities of a wise warrior-leader with loyal vassals as disciples.
The historical context of the Heiland explains this Germanic-style Jesus — the Saxon peoples had resisted Christianity and the Carolingian political takeover of their land in a decades-long, ruinous war. Their culture was based on a warrior-elite power structure, and having Jesus and his apostles mesh with this world view might have made the Gospels more appealing to the new converts.
To show you what I mean, read this short passage where Jesus’s disciple Peter swears he would never denounce his friend. It’s part of the New Testament where Jesus says that Peter will deny knowing him three times before the cock crows in the morning:
PETER: “Though all Thy disciples deny Thee, still do I gladly/ Suffer all pain, all sorrow for Thee./ I am ever prepared, if God doth permit me,/ To stand straight and firm as a shield unto Thee./ Though they close Thee deep in their dungeons,/ Though the land-folk lock Thee away, there is no doubt so little/ But that I would bide with Thee in Thy bonds,/ Lie with Thee, my so beloved Lord, if they lie in wait/ To sniff out Thy life with the hate of the sword’s edge,/ O my Master most Good; then shall I gladly give up my life . . .
Shields, swords, dungeons? This is what lordship of Jesus done Medieval style looks like.
Sources: Picture is Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Codex Reg, lat 124, f 4v of Louis the Pious as a soldier of Christ. “Thor’s Hammer and the power of God: Poetic strategies in the Old Saxon Heiland Gospel,” P Augustyn _Daphnis_; Leiden Vol 33, Iss 1/2 (2004), 33-51. Book LVI, p 160 of _The Heiland: Translated from the Old Saxon by Mariana Scott, UNC Studies in Germanic Languages and Literaturas, 52, (Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press, 1966)
