1 (Lat. ol

OTFRID 119
IV
OTFKID
There is hardly a poet in the Old or Middle High German literature
who at the same time is so well known, and yet so unknown as Otfrid.
Almost all biographical works from Trithemius up to modem times,
the annals of the Benedictine Order, the histories of many monasteries,
ihe Chronicles of Elsass, &c., all mention the celebrated ' monachus
Wizanburgensis,' and tell us much about his knowledge and talents, but
we leam from all these sources scarcely more than we are able to
gather from his own work.
So much is, however, certain, that he was a pupil of the renowned
Fulda abbot Rhabanus Maurus: 'A Rhabano Mauro,' says he in his
letter to Archbishop Liutbert of Mainz, ' educata parnm mea parvitas
est.' It is also quite certain from his letter to the two St. Gallen monks,
Hartmuat and Werinbert, that at a later period he lived in the monastery
at Weissenburg in Elsass, where he also wrote, about 870 A. D., his
Evangelienbuch or Evangelienharmonie, containing the Vita et passio
Christi in the Rhenish Franconian dialect, and dedicated the work to
the Emperor Ludwig.
The exact dates of the poet's birth and death are unknown. It has
been shown with great probability that Otfrid's native place was somewhere
in the Speiergau on the Middle Rhine. And with this assumption
also agrees the fact that Otfrid always speaks of himself as being a
Frank, and designates his language as Franconian.
The whole work is divided into five books. Otfrid himself seems to
have felt that it
might seem strange why his poem was divided into five
books since there were only four Gospels and
;
he therefore expresses
'
the reason of this division in the following words : Hos in quinqne
'
ideo distinxi,' says he, quia eorum qnadrata aequalitas sancta nostrorum
quinque sensuum inaequalitatem ornat, et superflua in nobis quaeque
non solum actuum verum etiam cogitationum vertunt in elevationem
caelestium.* From this it follows that Otfrid's poem is by no means to
be regarded as a mere translation of the four Gospels, and that Otfrid
sought to furnish anything but a translation. It was rather his intention
to give an account of the life and teaching of Christ, based partly on
the Gospels, but partly also on other sources, the most important of
which were :