Alexander Sager. “Thiu wirsa giburd: Cain’s legacy, Original Sin, and the End of the World in the Old Saxon Genesis.” The End-Times in Medieval German Literature. Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse. Ed. Ernst Ralf Hinz and Scott E. Pincikowski. Rochester: Camden House, 2019. 7-26. This essay explores the 9th century Old Saxon Cain poem from Vatican Genesis manuscript (Pal. Lat. 1447) against the background of contemporaneous theological debates over Original Sin. It offers a new interpretation of the text’s seemingly “fragmentary” nature and locates its audience among the post-pagan “converted brothers” (fratres conversi) in the monasteries of Carolingian Saxony.
