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 HELINAND

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HELIOGABALUS

birth to His ascension in accordance with the Gospel narrative. Just as the atmosphere of the master- pieces of the great Christian painters of Italy is Ital- ian, so the atmosphere of the Ileliand is purely Ger- man. The marriage at Cana takes place in the great banqueting hall of a German lord. The guests are seated on long rows of benches and there is an impos- ing display of tankards and viands. St. Thomas and St. Peter are bold German warriors who cannot re- strain their valour and their loyalty, when their Liege- Lord is assailed by the traitorous Jews. The Saxon minstrel seems to have been a skilled seaman, for he revels in the description of the storm on Lake Genesa- reth. He is throughout animated with the warmest devotion to his Lord. He respects, honours, but above all loves Him. For St. Peter, too, he entertains a feeling of deep loyalty and admiration, and beholds in him the God-given chief of Christendom. The per- sonality of Christ gives unity to the long epic. To secure the needful movement he confines the didactic side of Christ's career to one or two cantos, the nu- cleus of which is the Sermon on the Mount. The poem is composed in the alliterative verse in which the pagan Saxon lays were probably written, and he handles this instrument with considerable skill. Even without the statement found in the " Pra'fatio", that Louis selected a bard well known among his people for poetic genius, to sing for his countrymen the wonder- ful story of the Old and the New Testament, the versi- fication, the poetic language, and the frequent use of poetic formulae, some of which still betray their pagan origin, convince the reader that the old Saxon Homer must have been a popular bard. His recital is charac- terized by simplicity and the absence of grandilo- quence. Modern critics have judged the work vari- ously. Some, like Scherer, approach it with the feel- ing that it was primarily a kind of Sa.xon tract in verse, and condemn it because of its didactic charac- ter. Others, like Behringer and Windisch, regard it as a perfect work of art. Vilmar declares it to be the finest Christian epic in any language. The interest aroused by the poem may be measured by the fact that since its publication in 1830 two hundred and seventy-three books and pamphlets on the Heliand, including some ten editions of the text, have been pub- lished in Germany and elsewhere.

RecKERT, Ileliand (Leipzig. 1876); Piper, Heliand (Slutt- gart, 1S97); Heyne, Heliand (Paderborn. 1905); Cook, Studies in the Heliand; Gibb, Heliand, n ReHainiin Poem of the Xinth Ce7l- tttry in Fraser's Maqazine (ISSfl), ('11, 6.")S; Stephen-, The "He- liand" and the "Genesis" in Ariiflimi/ nS76), 1409; Herber- MANN, The Heliand in Am. Calh. Quarterly Rev. (Philadelphia, Oct., 1905).

Charles G. Herbermann.

H^linand, a celebrated medieval poet, chronicler, and ecclesiastical writer; b. of Flemish parents at Pronleroi in the Department of Oisc in France c. 1150; d. 3 February, 122,3, or 1227, or 1237. His talents won the favour of King Philip Augustus, and for some time he freely indulged in the pleasures of the world, after which he became a Cistercian monk at the Monastery of Froidmont in the Diocese of Beauvais about the year 1190. From being a self-indulgent man of the world he became a model of piety and mortification in the monastery. Whatever time was not consumed in monastic exercises he devoted to ecclesiastical studies and, after his ordination to the priesthood, to preaching and WTiting. The Church of Beauvais honours him as a saint and celebrates his feast on 3 Februarv. Many of his wTitings are lost. The extant ones (published in P. L., CCXII, 4S2-1084) are the following: twenty-eight sermons on various Church festivals; two ascetic treatises, viz. "De cognitione sui" and "De bono regimine principis"; one epistle entitled " De reparatione lapsi", in which he exhorts a renegade monk to return to his monas- tery; a pii.t.-^io of Gcreon, Victor, Cassius, and Flor- entius, martyrs of the Theban Legion (reprinted by

the Bollandists in "Acta SS.", October, V, 36-42); a chronicle (from the beginning of the world to 1204) of which everything up to a. d. 634 has lieen lost; a poem on death, in the French language, of which only four incomplete .stanzas remain. His sermons, writ- ten in a neat Latin style, give evidence of a remark- able acquaintance with the pagan poets as well as with the Fathers of the Church. His chronicle is not suffi- ciently critical to be of much historical value. It is still undecided whether Helinand of Froidmont is a different person from the Cistercian Helinand of Per- seigne, the author of a commentary on the Apocalypse and glosses on the Book of Exodus.

Delaukeux, L' .\bhaije de Froidmont (Beanvais, 1871), 54-61 ; Delimle, La ehronique de Helinand in .Xuti. es et documentu puhl. pour la 80C. hist, de Franee (Paris, 1S84) ; De \'isch, Bibliotheca Scriplorum Ord. Cist. (Cologne, 1656), 140, 142.

Michael Ott.

Heliogabalus (El.\gabal), the name adopted by Varius Avitus Bassianus, Roman emperor (218-222), born of a Syrian family and a grandnephcw of Julia Domna, the consort of Emperor Septimius Severus. When Emperor Caracalla had fallen a victim to a

conspiracy of his

officers at Carrhie in 217, the pra-- torian prefect, M. OpeUius Macrinus, seized the reins of power. Empress JuUa Domna com- mitted suicide;lH'r sister, Julia Ma'sa, was exiled to Emesa with her daughters and her eldest grandchild, Avitus BassianiLs. The latter was ap pointed priest of the sun-god Elaga- bal, whose name he adopted. A report was then spread among the soldiers in Syria, that Elagabalus was a son of Cara- calla, and by ap- pointment the fifteen - year - old

L.MPEIIOR HEI.IOGABALra

Capitoline Museum, Rome

youth betook him.self to the Roman camp in 218, and allowed himself to be elected emperor on 16 May by the soldiers. He received the official name of M. Aurelius Antoninus in recognition of the general desire to pay a tribute to the memory of the glorious Antonine. A rising in favour of Ma- crinus failed, as well as his attempt to win over the soldiers and the inhabitants of Rome by bribery. An important battle, fought on the borders of Syria and Phcrnicia to the east of Antioch, was decided in favour of Heliogalialus; the troops of Macrinus, bribed by money and promises, joined the army of his opponent, wliile Macrinus himself was put to death during the flight. Heliogabalus lived in Rome as an oriental despot and, giving hini.self up to detestable sensual pleasures, degradcil the imperial office to the lowest point by most shameful vices, which had their origin in certain rites of oriental naturalistic religion. His mother Sosemias and his grandmother Julia Ma?sa, who also took part in the sessions of the Senate, exercised a controlling influence over Helio- gabalus. A conical, black, meteoric stone from Emesa served as the idol of the sun-god, which Heliogabalus married to the Syrian moon-goddess Astarte, intro- duced from Carthage, and whose high-priest became ponlifex maximus of Rome. This led to the greatest