Don
Yarbrough
2
Oct 2017
Beowulf:
The Original Epic Transubstantiated
Emerging from the fog of ages past
stands a gallant warrior bold and true.
A hero not of flesh and blood but of ink and parchment. The hero of old, born of legend and song
reconstituted into page and writ, withstood the test of time. Diligent and determined, the ancient script triumphed
in the face of destruction displaying the battle scars of its flame-singed
edges and scars of lost lines; the epic poem of Beowulf is rewarded with immortality. However, there is a strangeness to this
ancient literary piece as it describes a Pagan, Pre-Christian society behaving,
believing and practicing in the obvious Christian fashion. The two, Christianity and Paganism, could not
be more diametrically opposed in doctrine, yet so suspiciously similar in
practice, as subtle elements of Paganism lie sequestered underneath, carefully
tucked within folds of Catholic/Protestant robes as the poetry of Beowulf proves.
The story of Beowulf in its originality was an oral tale of the adventures and
heroic deeds of a mighty warrior passed from the tongue of bards and retold
wherever the Anglo-Saxon peoples gathered in the ancient world of the 5th
to 8th century. Long before
the advent of Christianity, Old-World heathenry dominated and had always been
the way of life. The Germanic tribes of
the Anglo-Saxons were a pagan people with belief in gods such as Odin,
goddesses such as Freya, and worship and practice of the elements of nature. In fact, before the arrival of Beowulf and
his band of thanes on Dane shores, the reader will find King Hrothgar and his
subjects in the mead-hall of Heorot calling upon and beseeching their gods (not
the Abrahamic God) for help against Grendel's nightly devastations. If the
Danes were a Christian people, they would have sought the protection of God of
the Bible. The fact they did not is
proof that the Danes were first and foremost a Pagan people who may not have
even known of the Christian God until the Christian poet much later placed it
upon them. Karl P. Wentersdorf also
confirmed the fact that the Danes of Heorot could not have been the dedicated
Christian people that the poet portrays them to be in his work, “Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar’s
Danes”, by stating, “Hrothgar’s references to the deity as evidence that the
poet conceived of Heorot as a Christian or at least a monotheistic society”,
and furthermore, “finds the excursus at odds with the whole thrust of the poem
. . .” (95-96). The poet also portrays
the Danes singing praises to and glorifying the God of the Bible while reveling
merrily with the over-indulgent flasks and tankards of mead and wine – a
definite inconsistency since the Christian faith deems the excessive imbibing
of alcohol as a sin. Rather, to expect a
rugged, war-like race of the Dark Ages to sing praises to a Christian God in
this fashion would be akin to expecting a modern battalion of Marines to sing
religious hymns while running in company formation instead of off-color
cadences. As narrator Michael Wood in
his BBC video documentary entitled, “In Search of Beowulf” confirmed it, “So
the poem’s world and its honored heroes were Pagan”. Wood identified another major mainstay of
Pagan belief in his documentary while interviewing blacksmith Hector Cole as
Cole reported that the blacksmiths of Beowulf’s time may have been respected as
practitioners of sorcery as the forging process of the weapons and armor
required all four elements of nature that were, and still are, essential and
integral aspects of Pagan nature worship: fire, water, earth, and air. Weapons such as Unferth's sword, Hrunting and
the giant's greatsword used by Beowulf at the beheading of Grendel's mother
were believed to be forged by such enchanting powers. The four elements of nature are an essential
and integral aspect of Pagan nature worship.
It was not until the 10th
century AD that the Danes of Denmark and the Geats of Sweden were wholly
converted to Christianity. It was during
this era that an unknown Christian scribe first penned the epic tale of Beowulf into the form of prose we know
today, imbuing it so deeply with Christian ideology within the poem as to
almost entirely transubstantiate the original Pagan elements that embodied the
Anglo-Saxon peoples for centuries. In
this later age, Wood called it, “a world caught between the Pagan and the
Christian”. The Christian world and the
Pagan world are two in direct defiance of one another. Therefore, when the two are thrown together
in a work of literature, the result is a misshapen, mish-mashed, and
uncomfortable coalition that produces various contradictions and
inconsistencies that must be carefully crafted and manipulated so that all the
jagged pieces can fit together. The
Christian author of the poem found this task very easy to accomplish by making
the poetry of a Pagan Beowulf mirror the story of a Christian Christ by
introductory comparisons of the chosen hero tested and proven worthy, the
hero’s malevolent enemy, the inevitable battle between the hero being against
the enemy, and the final defeat of the enemy and consequent death and
“ascension” of the hero. Therefore,
after hearing a story like Beowulf,
the heathen peoples of the time would more likely understand and respect the
story of Jesus in a similar manner and thus, become instrumental in their
conversion. The answer to the question
of how one would know for certain that the 5th to 8th
century Anglo-Saxons would come to understand an alien religion such as
Christianity lies in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon culture.
To understand the Anglo-Saxon
peoples of Beowulf’s time is to understand their way of life, a warrior
culture. In times before large urban
civilizations, small tribes abounded and were scattered across the land. The land was harsh and its people more
dangerous. The constant struggle for
survival was the order of the daily life.
Very few communities lived in peace.
Death was ever present and threats of foreign invasion were always at
their doorsteps. Life expectancies were
very short and only the strongest among them knew a long life. Warriors emerged to defend the people. The best of them were raised into champions,
said to be sent by the gods, or were even elevated to god status. For some warriors, those ablest, determined
and dedicated in the practice and study of the art of war, while aspiring to
stand on the highest pedestals of honor and glory also sought the love and
honored loyalty of the "ring-bearers,” their beloved kings and his most
bejeweled rewards of treasure. To these
warriors, honor, glory, and the pursuit of riches were their goal, life-blood,
and their wild hunt. They held stations
of authority and importance in their kingdoms.
They honored and defended their kings and rulers while opposing the
tyranny of others. After success in
battle, the rewards bestowed by their rulers were great in both value and
practicality. Pritha Kundu, in her
academic International Journal of the Huma entitled, “The Anglo-Saxon
War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal”, also describes
the Pagan Anglo-Saxon warrior culture in like manner as she writes:
The
pagan Germanic warriors, as in several other ancient war-like cultures, sought
to win glory by doing great deeds in battle. What was interesting about the
Germanic ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon warriors, that winning glory for them was
not merely personal, but corresponding to the community-virtue and bonds of
duty and kinship, in their service to the community and mainly to the chief.
The Anglo-Saxon ideal of kinship between a lord and his warrior-thanes bears
obvious resonances of the Germanic heroic ethos. (3)
This
kind of status was always sought after by the warrior of both standings of and
for good and malice. Kundu also points
to an example within the Beowulf poem itself that presents a glaring specimen
of the Anglo-Saxon warrior culture stating, “Beowulf fights Grendel, his
mother, and the fire-dragon, but the different strategies and ethics behind
these three battle-sequences are real and convincing military affair, which
speaks volumes about the war-culture to which the Anglo-Saxons actually belonged”
(5). Thus, was the variance of the warrior that lies at the very heart of
Anglo-Saxon culture.
Their warrior culture follows their heroes
and reveres them such as the man Beowulf.
On the other hand, the Christians follow and rever their hero in the man
of Jesus Christ. Therefore, to convert
the Danes to Christianity, it was easy to portray Jesus Christ as another of
these warrior heroes. It would not have
been beneficial to the church to depict the true Jesus of Nazareth as a thin,
meek, priestly, conflict-avoiding, armorless and weaponless messenger who
suffered and died without a fight. They
would only follow and respect a man of societal warrior culture who was renown
and bold, hard, strong and powerful, an action taker, an armored destroyer with
elite prowess in battle. Therefore, in
the early works of British Literature, the church made efforts to blend the two
personalities together to win over the pagan converts. Christianity took these pagan concepts and
restructured them into a new religion by interpolating, transposing and
usurping pagan belief and practices, and events by renaming and re-labeling
keywords and titles to Christian names and phrases making them seem to be exclusively
Christian ideas much like modern manufacturing does when part products are made
by a company in one country then shipped to another company in another country
to be assembled into a whole unit and the part makers label replaced by that of
the assembler or distributor. The author’s
replacement of Pagan belief and ideology in the poem Beowulf is likely to be evidence of the work of the early church catechumenate,
a rigorous Christian training program, acting as a way of winning and
“re-programming” Pagan converts to the new faith. Christianity has often built their religion
on Pagan foundations. In fact, as one
particular example, the practice was a law.
Wentersdorf gave one example concerning the
Church’s regimen for seizure of Pagan properties by stating, “Instead of
attempting to destroy the heathen high places, the missionaries in England
adopted a policy, suggested by Pope Gregory I, of converting heathen places to
Christian usage” (99). Further proof of
Christian takeover of Pagan place and practice is still evident today such as
most American holidays and church ritual practices. Like cultural appropriation, this is
spiritual transubstantiation.
There are a plethora of examples concerning
Christian transubstantiation throughout the epic poem of Beowulf. One only needs to
view the similarities between Beowulf, the chosen champion of the gods, and
Jesus Christ, the prophet of God. In early
literary works such as the poem Beowulf,
the gods set their chosen champion to a foreign nation among the people as a
mighty protector or even a demigod sometimes having supernatural strength and
abilities. Very early in the poem, the
poet recounts the lineage of the Spear-Danes founder and king, Shield Sheafson,
the best of the war-like Germanic society and a champion sent from God. Line 12 of the Beowulf poem reads, “Afterward a boy-child was born to Shield, a
cub in the yard, a comfort sent by God to that nation” (“Beowulf”, 41). Furthermore,
in line 16, “so the Lord of Life, the glorious Almighty, made this man renown”
(“Beowulf”, 41). The very beginning of the poem introduces
God’s chosen, born of man, and sent until the peoples of his own nation and God
bestowed upon him enhanced fighting capabilities when He made the progenitor of
King Hrothgar “renown”. In comparison, Jesus is also a man and
prophet chosen and sent by God to the Israelites to point them toward the
Abrahamic God and to save their souls from sin.
So, at the beginning of the poem, the stage is set by introducing and
identifying both the god's champion and God's prophet that will later morph
indirectly and suggestively into the Swedish Geat warrior Beowulf.
The chosen champion of the gods (God), a
man of renown, needs to face an enemy threat equal and opposite in powers and
strength. In the case of Beowulf, a creature of dark natural
magicks is labeled a demon, a word unheard of until the advent of Christianity,
as line 86 in the Beowulf poem
introduces and describes the monster Grendel, "Then a powerful demon, a
prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance" (“Beowulf”, 43). Furthermore,
the concept of Satan, devil, demon, as Grendel was defined, even angels, Heaven
and Hell are all Christian created concepts and were never Pagan concepts. This is the champion’s enemy and quarry. In Pagan culture, creatures of this sort are
mortal flesh and blood, born of the magic of nature or come up from the
Underworld and can be fought and killed by physical means. Grendal, in this story, springs from a living
and corrupted human bloodline, the lineage of the Biblical Cain and Abel, as
lines 106 to 108 states that Grendel is derived from, "Cain's clan whom
the Creator outlawed and condemned as outcasts.
For the killing of Abel, the Eternal Lord had exacted a price . . .” (“Beowulf”, 43). In Christianity, demons, devils and the like
are ethereal unseen forces of Hell and not of flesh and blood and cannot be
fought by physical means. Therefore,
Grendel as a demon does not fit the profile.
The champion and the enemy prepare for
battle. For both Beowulf and Jesus
Christ, to prove their worth and find favor among their respective senders
there must be a test, a quest, a deed, or a battle. Beowulf’s quest into a foreign land with his
fourteen most trusted thanes sail out to Denmark to face his enemy Grendel was
much like Jesus' retreat into the wilderness (a foreign place) for forty days
and nights to be tempted and challenged by Satan. Both Beowulf and Jesus emerge victorious over
their enemy. Jesus begins his ministry acquiring
twelve disciples in the land of the Jews.
Beowulf is recognized as the gods’ champion and likewise continues his
“ministry” in the land of the Danes.
Satan is sent back to Hell and likewise, Grendel retreats to his lair to
die. Jesus finds favor in God and Beowulf
finds favor in his king. At the end of
Jesus' ministry as well as the end of Beowulf’s story comes the death of the
heroes. Jesus is resurrected from the
dead and ascends to Heaven on a cloud and Beowulf triumphantly enters death,
his body sent off on a floating burning funeral pyre, and his legend is
resurrected in song and story. Both
bodies are consumed never again to be found.
There is much the modern reader of Beowulf
can take away from the understanding of the poem, but the most obvious is the
consistent Christian glossing-over of Pagan themes. The consecutive chain of events: the
champion’s coming, the confrontation with a creature from the damned, the
battle between good and evil, and the champion’s victory and retribution mirrors
that of the story of Jesus as well as countless other stories of Pagan gods of
the past. The true hero is the
unaltered, oral heroic tale of the 5th century. The current written version of Beowulf appears to be the Christian
author’s way of sending Christianity back in time to a pre-Christian era and
staking its claim to a vulnerable and defenseless Pagan oral tradition,
supplanting Pagan names, concepts, elements, and ideologies with that of
Christian doctrine and to make it as though Christianity was always present in
the land and has always been the original religion of man.
Works Cited
Beowulf. The
Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 9th ed. New York, 2013, 36-106. Print.
Kundu,
Pritha. "The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and the Lord of the Rings: Legacy and
Reappraisal." War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of
the Humanities, vol. 26, Jan. 2014, pp. 1-16. Print.
Wentersdorf,
Karl P. "Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar's Danes." Studies in
Philology, vol. 78, no. 5, Early Winter81, p. 91-119. Print.
Wood,
Michael. “In Search of Beowulf.” YouTube,
narrated by Michael Wood, British Broadcasting Company, 11 Oct. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C0sFXU0SLo.
