Beowulf Christianity
Beowulf - ChristianityWhen missionaries first introduced the Christian ideology to the Anglo-Saxons, they left the
people with a clear choice; Pagan deities could not coexist with the Christian God. Therefore,
they must abandon these ancient icons in order to hold a more monotheistic view. Unfortunately,
most of their culture is built around upholding a heroic code instead of a single deity. Rather than
completely forsake the standards that they had lived by for so many generations, they
incorporated their old ideals into the new Christian beliefs. In a similar fashion, the poet’s task was
to apply this same transformation to a story deeply rooted pagan society. The Beowulf poet “was
concerned to extol the virtues of ancient Germanic heroes while acknowledging regretfully that
the were deprived of the Christian revelation enjoyed in [the poet’s] own era” (Robinson 1). Many
flaws originate from this change, however. The burning of the dead is one of the most overt
among these flaws and is evidence for the Anglo-Saxon ideas surrounding death. Cremation as a
pagan rite seems necessary to the characters in Beowulf. Similarly, the glorification of a corpse
through the...
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