St Edward's Academic Review 2025

ACADEMIC REVIEW 2025

that is additions into a pagan poem, deliberately placed by a monastic scribe as they copied out an original pagan text, in an attempt to make the poem more of a “Christian paper” than the original “pagan paper”? Was Beowulf therefore once an entirely “pagan paper” which contained no reference to the Christian perspective at all? Or was the poem always a hybrid work, written during the transition period from paganism to Christianity in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and representing this hybrid state of affairs in its composition. In this interpretation Beowulf would be a “pagan-Christian paper”. Or there is another possibility, that Beowulf is a fundamentally Christian work, written when Christianity was fully established in Britain, but written by a Christian author looking back, with some appreciation and interest, at the pagan world of former centuries in Scandinavia. In that case, Beowulf is a “Christian paper” but one that is sympathetic to, or inspired by, the previous pagan culture in the Anglo-Saxon world. In order to understand the nature of this debate in more depth, I will look initially at the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Christianity. The advent of Christianity in Britain is often associated with the arrival of St Augustine’s mission from Rome in AD 597. However, the influence of Christianity had been present in Britain during Roman times, even as early as the 4th century AD. Roman inscriptions have been found in Britain and there are 5th-century cemeteries containing Christian invocations. The arrival of the Anglo Saxons to Britain, dated to AD 449 by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (written c. AD 731) introduced a powerful pagan influence and perspective to the island. The Anglo Saxons worshipped pagan gods that were also commemorated in the Norse sagas, such as Tiw (also known as Tyr), Woden, Thor, the thunder god, and the fertility goddess Frey. In the 6th century – AD 597 as attested by Bede – Pope Gregory the Great sent his missionaries to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, most notably St Augustine. At the time of Augustine’s arrival, England was divided into mutually acrimonious kingdoms, led by powerful regional kings. Augustine began his mission by converting King Æthelberht of Kent. In c. 598 the abbey of St Peter and Paul (later rededicated to St Augustine) was founded in Canterbury, and Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The overall conversion of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms was not entirely linear and, for example, Kent was sometimes ruled by pagan not

One of the key discussions concerning Beowulf is the question of whether it is a “pagan paper” or a “Christian paper”, or some combination of both. The action of Beowulf takes place in a pre-Christian environment of 4th–6th century Scandinavia, and yet the poem itself contains references to a Christian worldview, and pays repeated homage to God, though as Professor Rory Naismith has pointed out, the divine names are never capitalised. Passages containing references to an apparently Christian god include this one: þæt wæs wundra sum, þæt hit eal gemealt, ise gelicost, ðonne forstes bend fæder onlæteð, onwindeð wælrapas, se geweald hafað sæla ond mæla; þæt is soð metod. (That was a great wonder that it all melted, most like ice when the bonds of frost the father loosens, unwinds water-ropes, he who has control of times and seasons; that is the true creator.) This section presents a single god, controlling the elements, melting the ice and the bonds of frost. This deity seems akin to the Christian God. Are such Christian elements of Beowulf interpolations, ‘ The Anglo-Saxons worshipped pagan gods that were also commemorated in the Norse sagas, such as Tiw (also known as Tyr), Woden, Thor, the thunder god, and the fertility goddess Frey ’ Beowulf ll 1607–11

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