As mentioned above, the "Heliand" was probably written at the request of emperor Louis the Pious around AD 830 to combat Saxon ambivalence toward Christianity. The Saxons were forced to convert to Christianity in the late 8th to early 9th century after 33 years of conflict between the Saxons under Widukind and the Franks under Charlemagne. Around the time that the "Heliand" was written, there was a revolt of the Saxon "stelinga," or lower social castes. Murphy depicts the significant influence the "Heliand" had over the fate of European society; he writes that the author of the "Heliand" "created a unique cultural synthesis between Christianity and Germanic warrior society – a synthesis that would plant the seed that would one day blossom in the full-blown culture of knighthood and become the foundation of medieval Europe."