THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FIGURE in the early history of German literature is the Benedictine monk Otfrid (sometimes Otfried) of Weissenburg, author of the Evangelienbuch (Gospel Book). He lived from around 800 until around 875 and completed his major work toward the end of his life between 863 and 871 in the monastery at Weissenburg, now known as Wissembourg, in the northeast of France. His poetic retelling of the gospel story consists of 7,104 lines of Old High German, packaged in sections with Latin headings taken mainly from the Bible, and provided with additional introductory pieces, one in Latin prose and three in Old High German verse. The dialect he used is known as South Rhenish Franconian, a variety that he himself would call theotisce (German[ic]) or frenkisgon (Frankish). The fact that the poem is free composition and paraphrase rather than a direct translation from the Latin Vulgate Bible or any other source makes it particularly interesting for philologists studying the beginnings of the German language and its literature. Its considerable length provides a useful range of vocabulary and grammatical features, showing how the early German language had begun to integrate new Christian terminology and concepts into its traditions, sometimes using the old heroic words with slightly different meanings, and at other times adopting new words from the Greek or Roman Christian domains. Moreover, the Evangelienbuch has also survived intact in several well preserved manuscripts, which makes textual study comparatively straightforward when one considers the precarious and often fragmentary state of most other contemporary vernacular texts.

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT of Germanic languages and literature has been much studied, even though the amount of surviving evidence on which to base such studies is quite limited. It must not be forgotten that the language of formal, official and academic communication was still predominantly Latin, and the volume of surviving Latin texts from this period exceeds that of the vernacular pieces many times over. The decline of the Roman Empire and the rise in power of the so-called barbarian tribes of northern and western Europe had resulted in a corresponding decline in the classical purity of the Latin language. In the western part of the Frankish empire it was becoming difficult to distinguish where Latin ended and the new local dialects began. The beginnings of modern Romance languages such as French, Italian, and Spanish can be traced back to this period. In the spoken language particularly the structures of classical Latin were being stretched to the limits. People on the western fringes of the Carolingian empire spoke a very different language from Latin used for writing, but at least they could see connections with their daily usage and follow the gist of texts read aloud. In the central and eastern areas, where Germanic dialects and languages prevailed, there was far less similarity between the languages of daily life and the classically inspired language of written records. Educated people in these realms needed to be bilingual if they were to operate equally well in spoken and written contexts.