SECOND PERIOD ( 800-1100). The new temper shows itself in visions of judgment (Muspilli), lives of saints, epic Gospel narratives (Ileliand) or harmonies (Otfrid), with an occasional mo nastic excursion into the political field (Ludteigs lied). But already under the Ottos the national spirit was reviving, and Frederick Barbarossa made the people once more conscious of a national mission that found a literary impulse in contact with the culture of the West and South through military expeditions and of the East through the Crusades. This appears first in the religious epics of the eleventh century (Judith, Exodus), legends of the various Marys, and episodes in the life of Christ. The German writing of this period hardly equals in interest or literary value that produced in contemporary England or France, but there are signs, especially at the close of the eleventh century, of a refining of the national taste. Of political ballads we have first the Ludwigslied, written late in the ninth century to celebrate a victory of Louis III. over northern tribes, and a song celebrating the reconciliation of Otto I. and his brother Henry, and there are also clear traces of others on the romantic adven tures of the rebellious Duke Ernst of Swabia, a popular hero for his resistance to Conrad II. A long Latin epic on Walter of Aquitania, telling of his flight with his bride from the Court of Attila and his combat with King Gunther at Worms, attests a German original. In all these the na
tive spirit dominates, as the old pagan supersti tions do in a few incantations, such as the Meise burg songs. But, as is natural, the chief survivals of the writings of this time are from the poems with which churchmen sought to supplant the older sagas and to tame the national spirit. Best of these is the Low German or Old Saxon Helfand ( Saviour), written in alliterative verse, appa rently by a Saxon and at the request of Louis the Pious. The Gospel narrative is followed, but Christ becomes a German prince, the disciples are His thanes, and the local color is often naively Teutonic. Otfrid's Krist, with the same theme, is High German, and therefore more sophisti cated, more didactic also. It is the first German rhymed verse. Muspilli, which is Bavarian, is of a more independent fancy in its apocalyptic vision; it retains the alliteration of the saga-epic, and mingles Christian and pagan elements in a way that strikingly illustrates the popular re ligious conceptions of high Germans of the ninth century. The most noteworthy German writer in Latin of this period was Notker Labeo (d.1022), a philosophic monk of Saint Gall, a translator of Aristotle and Boffthius.