Beowulf and The Intent of Christians to Convert Pagans Into Christianity

Before England was the superpower it is known to be today, it was a small country inhabited by many groups of people over time. First to England came the Celts, then the Romans, and then the Anglo Saxons. The Anglo Saxon’s traveled to England from the northern countries of Germany Norway and Sweden. When they arrived, they brought their gods with them. The Anglo Saxon’s religion consisted of multiple gods and goddesses and their own view of Heaven and what it would be like. The Anglo Saxon’s also loved poetry, and they used it to keep track of the history of their people. Beowulf is an epic poem that was past down by the Anglo Saxons from generation to generation. The poem is infused with multiple elements of their pagan religion. However, when they immigrated to England and began to tell the tale of Beowulf, the local inhabitants began to listen and put their twist on it. Douglas Wilson states:

Through a heroic poem about pagans that never mentions Christ, Beowulf is the opposite of syncretistic compromise. It is written to highlight the treachery as a way of life that afflicted these pagan societies from within, and the greed and plunder as a way of life that afflicted them from without (whether they were the marauders of the victims.) (30)

In an attempt to convert the Anglo Saxons, the Christians of that time changed Beowulf and incorporated many elements of Christianity into the poem. By incorporating elements of Christianity such as portraying Grendel as a descendent of Cain, mentioning the one true God’s name, and portraying the hero Beowulf as a Christ figure, the Roman Catholic Christians hoped to convert the Anglo Saxons to Christianity and instill in them the power and hope of the one true God.

First, the Christian...

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...nd phrases into the characters mouths, and relating the hero, Beowulf, to the Christian hero, Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic Christians hoped to convert the pagans to Christianity and lead them toward what they believed to be the one and only truth, Jesus Christ.

Works Cited

Beowulf. The Longman Anthology British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. 4th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 36-107. Print.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Guides Beowulf. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. Print.

Fry, Donald. The Beowulf Poet. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Print.

Streissguth, Thomas. Understanding Beowulf. Farmington Hills: Lucent Books, 2004. Print.

The MacArthur Study Bible. Ed. John MacArthur. Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006. Print.

Wilson, Douglas. “The Anglo-Saxon Evangel.” Touchstone. July/August (2007). 30-34. Web.