The Old Saxon Baptismal Vow, also called the Utrecht Baptismal Vow, is a 9th-century baptismal vow that was found in a monastery library in Mainz, Germany. The vow mentions three Germanic pagan gods of the early Saxons which the reader is to forsake: Uuôden ("Woden"), Thunaer and Saxnōt. Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the vow is of particular interest because it is the sole instance of the god Saxnōt mentioned in a religious context. One of many baptismal vows, it is now archived in the Vatican Codex pal. 577.
Contents
The language is disputed due to the strong similarities between Old Low Franconian and Old Low German.
The Vow
This is only a part of the vow:
Language dispute
A number of Dutch and German scholars, including German History Professor Marco Mostert who specializes in Medieval writing, have concluded the Baptismal Vow was actually written in the 8th century in Old Low Franconian — commonly known as Old Dutch. It is therefore considered by some to be the oldest text written in (a version of) the Dutch language. The difficulty in establishing whether the text was written in Old Saxon or Old Franconian is that these languages were very much alike; and were in fact considered one and the same in the past.
Comparison to present-day Dutch
To help understand the pronunciation better: