Bibliography
Helinand wrote a work in Old French called Les Vers de la Mort ("Verses of Death") shortly after entering the monastery, between 1194 and 1197. In fifty stanzas, Helinand asks Death to call upon his best friends and exhort them to abandon the world. Each stanza contains twelve octosyllabic lines; the rhyme scheme is aab aab bba bba. This form was imitated by later poets and is called by critics the "helinandian stanza." In this poem, Death appears as a ubiquitous and hyperactive agent. Helinand does not use macabre elements, except in the title, which puns on the homonymy between "vers" (worms) and "vers" (verses). His lyrical sermon uses various tropes such as anaphora, metaphor, and adnominatio to great effect. Through this unique witness of his poetic talent as a trouvere, Helinand appears as a precursor of Villon, Chastelain, and other French poets of the 15th century.
- As a well-known preacher, he wrote more than sixty Latin sermons. His sermons, written in a neat Latin style, give evidence of a remarkable acquaintance with the pagan poets as well as with the Fathers of the Church.
- He wrote some Latin poems
- A Martyrium of Saints Gereon, Victor, Cassius, and Florentius, martyrs of the Theban Legion used to be attributed to Helinand, but it is unclear whether he is the true author.[3]
Helinand of Froidmont is sometimes confused with the Cistercian Hélinand of Perseigne, the author of a commentary on the Apocalypse and glosses on the Book of Exodus, although there are no arguments for this identification.[4]
