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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Reflective Englishmen of the seventh and eighth centuries, living under the transforming influence of classical and Christian ideas, must have satisfied a special need by revaluating their Germanic patrimony in terms of the new culture. In that process the Teutonic heritage naturally took on an added lustre wherever it lent itself to Christian interpretation. Beowulf more fully than any other English poem reflects that effort to assimilate and reappraise whereby the Germanic tradition from the Continent was ennobled by the new theology, as by a light flashed backward into the heroic past. Thus the career of the Danish king Heremod becomes an exemplum for a Christian homily on pride; Grendel, creature of northern fantasy, is placed in a Biblical lineage of evil reaching back to the first murder. The poet probably recognized, however, that his illumination of the past stopped short of perfect fusion of new and old, to say nothing of historical fidelity. Doubtless he was less disturbed than we are by vestiges of his pagan sources that lie awkwardly in the matrix of his Christian prepossessions. He had the advantage of knowing what he meant when, for example, he used terms of various and elastic connotation like wyrd. Also, if I am not mistaken, he saw his divergent materials in relation to a great central truth, an underlying principle which enabled him to recognize a larger unity in his fabulous tales than appears on the surface, and which made them in his eyes more worthy to survive in a reflective poem of epic magnitude.
1 “Beowulf … stands like Hervör at the tomb of Angantýr, ‘between the worlds‘” (R. W. Chambers, Beowulf, An Introduction, rev. ed., p. 489).
2 F. Klaeber, Beowulf, 3rd. ed., p. cxxi., n. 28.
3 Beowulf, 3rd. ed., pp. 1-li; cf. “Die Christlichen Elemente im Beowulf,” Anglia, xxxv, 111-136; 249-270, 453-482; ibid., xxxvi, 169-199.
4 Gerald G. Walsh, Medieval Humanism, pp. 45-46.
5 The “sophisticated style” and “respectable scholarly attainments of the author” are no longer matters for debate, and these, of course, presuppose a ‘fit audience.‘ (Cf. J. S. P. Tatlock, “Layamon's Poetic Style in Its Relations,” Manly Anniversary Studies, pp. 3-4; F. Klaeber, Beowulf, pp. lxviii, cxxi; W. W. Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition, pp. 3-4; C. W. Kennedy, The Earliest English Poetry, p. 14, etc.)
6 Cf. Klaeber, Beowulf, p. cx, on “the Old Testament atmosphere” of the poem.
7 Ibid., p. cxx.
8 Ibid.
9 Among witnesses to the essentially Christian character of Beowulf, such as Chambers, Rankin, Pizzo, Klaeber, Batchelor, a recent spokesman is Professor C. W. Kennedy, who describes the transmutation of pagan materials as “a deeply pervasive infusion of Christian spirit coloring thought and judgment, governing motive and action, a continuous and active agent in the process of transformation” (Beowulf, the Oldest English Epic [1940], p. xlix; The Earliest English Poetry [1943], p. 87).
10 See J. D. A. Ogilvy, Books Known to Anglo-Latin Writers from Aldhelm to Alcuin (670-804), p. 95, who concludes that English education was in better case than has been assumed before the coming of Hadrian and Theodore in 668 (pp. 103-104), and places the golden age of Anglo-Saxon libraries between the arrival of those scholars and the death of Benedict Biscop (p. 95). Ogilvy is convinced that not a great many books were added to English libraries between the years 735 and 790 (p. 94), probably because the English already “had possessed themselves of a large proportion of the works then current in Western Europe” (p. 96).
11 Ibid., p. 97.
12 King Alfred practically equates these Fathers with Biblical writers when he refers to heaven as “the everlasting home which He hath promised us through Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory, and Saint Jerome and through many other holy Fathers” (King Alfred's Old English Version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies, tr. by H. L. Hargrove, Yale Studies in English, 22.1). For a statement regarding the influence of Augustine, Gregory, and Jerome on Anglo-Latin writers of the eighth century, see Ogilvy, pp. 13-14, 40-43, 49-55, and his summary, p. 97: “In the last analysis, … the importance of the eighth-century English for their immediate successors (and perhaps for us) was very largely due to their study of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church.”
13 For a convenient statement of this commonplace see, e.g., Harnack, A History of Dogma 5.3, or Cushman, A Beginner's History of Philosophy 1.335-337.
14 The statement appears in a summary by Cushman (pp. cit., 1.335) of philosophical trends in Western Europe for the entire period between the years 476 and 1000. “The intellectual world,” he writes, “was dominated by Neo-Platonic idealism, and the all important topic in men's minds was that of God's grace. Augustine stood at the beginning of the period and organized its conception of grace for it.”
15 Ogilvy, p. 14.
16 For the suggestion that the Beowulf-poet was influenced by Aldhelm, see A. S. Cook, “The Possible Begetter of the Old English Beowulf and Widsith,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, xxv, 281-346; and his briefer articles: “Beowulf 1422,” MLN, xxxix, 77-82, and “Aldhelm and the Source of Beowulf 2523,” MLN, xl, 137-142.
17 Ogilvy, p. 14 and n. 26.
18 Ibid., n. 26.
19 De Civitate Dei 15.1, ed. by Welldon. Here, and in most other quotations, my English renderings follow Healey's translation.
20 Ibid.
21 Since this fact is seldom noted, I append a list of allusions to grace in the theological sense, compiled from a partial survey of pertinent O.E. poems and of the O.E. Bede (i.e., Eccl. Hist. and Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert). The terms for ‘grace’ in these passages are ár, ést, giefu and its compounds, gifnes, hyldo, liss, milts (cf. Bosworth-Toller):
For a survey of Aelfric's view of grace see N. O. Halvorson, Doctrinal Terms in Aelfric's Homilies, University of Iowa Humanistic Studies, 5.1, pp. 53-63. See also A. Keiser, The Influence of Christianity on the Vocabulary of Old English Poetry, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 5.1, pp. 75-76, under “Gifts.”
22 The works of Gregory, who accepted Augustine's views of predestination, election, and grace (F. H. Duddon, Gregory the Great, 374, 400-403), would alone have insured the currency of the doctrines in England. They are assumed in The Pastoral Care, which was used by the English clergy from the time of Augustine's mission (H. Sweet, Gregory's Pastoral, E.E.T.S., 45, 50, p. 8). For references to election and grace see ibid., pp. 50, 218, 219, 237, 381, and more especially, pp. 465, 467-469. I have made no survey of allusions to election in O.E., but see Bede, Eccl. Hist., O.E. version 2.110, and mentions of the elect in Christ 1635; Daniel 150, 735; Gloria 42; Guthlac 59, 769; Juliana 16-17, 605; Phoenix 593-594.
23 Cf. the evolution of the term wyrd. A. Keiser, discussing its use in O.E. poetry, says: “In the case of wyrd we observe that the mythological force has been lost almost completely. The word takes a two-fold development under Christian influence, being used in the sense of God and predestination, and in that of the fallen angel or devil” (The Influence of Christianity on the Vocabulary of Old English Poetry, p. 11; cf. pp. 52-53, 80, 87).
24 The transfer to Teutonic history and legend may have been aided by the current belief that the Germanic peoples were descended from Japheth. Aelfric says of Noah's sons: “Of Japhet Ðám gingstan, Ðe wæs gebletsod Ðurh Noe, cóm Ðaet norÐene mennisc be Ð
ære norÐsæe” (De Veteri Testamento, ed. by Grein, p. 4).
25 See also Beowulf, 1610-11, 1724-27, and cf. Civitas Dei 2.22, 4.33, 5.11-12, etc.
26 O. F. Emerson, “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English,” PMLA, xiv (1906), 909.
27 See S. J. Crawford, “Grendel's Descent from Cain,” MLR, xxiii, 207; xxiv, 63, for the earliest suggestion that the poet had this Scriptural passage in mind in describing Grendel's abode.
28 Migne, Patrología Latina 23.1509.
29 Ogilvy, p. 42. The Moralia, he says, probably came to England not much later than the mission of Augustine (ibid.).
30 Vir qui erraverit a via doctrinae in coetu gigantum commorabitur (Vulgate). The comment by Gregory is in Moralia 17.21.
31 For a convincing argument that Beowulf 1724-68 was inspired by Gregory, see Cook, “Cynewulf's Part in Our Beowulf,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, xxvii, 385-406.
32 Beowulf, 111-114; see 1687-93 for another reference to the giants of Genesis, gigantas.
33 Emerson, pp. 888-929; also De Civitate Dei 15.23 and Bede, Commentaria in Scripturas Sacras, ed. by Giles, i, 92.
34 Beowulf, 106-107.
35 J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, British Academy Lecture, (London, 1936), p. 27.
36 See Emerson, pp. 915-916. The legend that Cain's descendants originated weapons is, of course, to be traced to the mention in Genesis 4.22 of Tubal Cain as “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”
37 Beowulf, 104-114.
38 Ibid., 1688-93.
| Đanon untýdras | ealle onwócon |
| eotenas ond ylfe | ond orcneas, |
| swylce gígantas, | Ðá wiÐ Gode wunnon |
| lange Ðráge (111-114). |
40 Đanon wóc fela
geó-sceaftgásta; wæs 
Grendel sum,
heorowearh hetelíc (1265-67). See note 73 below for my rendering of geó-sceaftgásta.
41 Vita Guthlaci, c. 19, quoted by Klaeber, Anglia, xxxv, 262.
42 Venerabilis Bedae Commentaria in Scripuras Sacras, ed. by J. A. Giles, i, 67, 70-71, 74-75, 78-79.
43 Ibid., i, 74-75, 77, 78-79.
44 Ibid., i. 78-79. “With the blood of Abel,” says Gregory, “began the passion of the Church, and the Church of the elect before and after Christ is one” (F. H. Duddon, Gregory the Great, ii, 293-294). Aelfric also speaks of the slaying of Abel as betokening the Crucifixion (De Veteri Testamento, p. 3).
45 Bede, Commentaria, 1.80.
46 Emerson, pp. 885-887, quotes line 23 of this excerpt and also the three quotations that precede it here. He frequently speaks of Grendel as one of “Cain's devil descendants,” or “the devil kin of Cain.” Emerson, however, never relates the metaphor Cáines cynne to the most elaborate development thereof, Book 15 of The City of God.
47 Piers also calls the elaborate minsters of the friars “here hyghe helle-hous of Kaymes kynde” (i, 559). Cf. Wyclif's name for friars' dwellings: “Caymes castle” (English Works Hitherto Unprinted, pp. 129, 211, 420).
48 E.g., in Political Poems, ed. by Wright, i, 266.
49 William Wistar Comfort, “The Literary Rôle of the Saracens in the French Epic,” PMLA, lv (1940), 629, 652.
50 Grendel's eye flames with an ugly light (Beowulf, 726-727), whereas the eyes of the Saracen giants are “red as coals of fire” (Comfort, pp. 650-651).
51 Comfort, pp. 650-652. See also C. M. Jones, “The Conventional Saracen of the Songs of Geste,” Speculum, xvii (1942), 205 and n. 2, 218-219.
52 Emerson, pp. 835-837, 916-926.
53 Oddly, Emerson, in his “Legends of Cain,” mentions the Civitas Dei only in relation to unimportant details, and never alludes to the rôle of Cain as founder of the Satanic City.
54 Civitas Dei, 15.1.
55 Ibid., 15.7.
56 Ibid., 15.2.
57 Ibid., 15.17.
58 Ibid., 15.20, 16.1-3.
59 Ibid., 16.3; cf. 16.4-5, 10. Ishmael, who is likewise mentioned in the Chansons de geste as an ancestor of the Saracens, is described by Augustine as a spiritual descendant of Cain, “a son of the bondwoman, born of the flesh,” as opposed to “the sons of promise” (ibid., 15.2). The influence of the Civitas alone was great enough to account for the tradition that both Cain and Ishmael were progenitors of Saracens and other infidels.
60 According to a list of citations which Professor Ogilvy graciously sent me, as a supplement to those mentioned in Books Known to Anglo-Latin Writers, p. 14, n. 26.
61 Ogilvy, p. 14, n. 26, citing Migne's notes, but the similarities are obvious.
62 Bede, pp. 78-79, more particularly, but see also notes 42-45 above.
63 Ibid., p. 136.
64 Ibid., p. 133.
65 Ibid., pp. 143-145, 146.
66 Ibid., p. 146.
67 
mearcstapa, Beowulf 103. Mearcstapa, usually glossed ‘wanderer in the waste borderland,’ but literally ‘boundary-stepper,’ looks like an equivalent of the Latin ‘transgressor.’ Cf. ‘trespasser.’
68 Beowulf, 1351-52.
69 Emerson, p. 925.
70 However, as Professor Henning Larsen reminds me, orthography may have assisted in the confusion, the in of mss. being similar to the letter m.
71 Tertullian also mentions the tradition connecting Cham with Cain (Liber De Praescriptionibus, Cap. 1; quoted by Emerson, p. 925), but Augustine's treatise was better known. The fact that Augustine and Bede both hold Cham and Cain responsible for the reprobate disposes of the suggestion that English writers were led to confuse the two only through an Irish legend that Cham had inherited the curse and reputation of Cain. On the subject see Klaeber, Anglia, xxxv, 259; Beowulf, note to 1.107; Emerson, p. 925; Cook, “The Possible Begetter of the Old English Beowulf and Widsith,” loc. cit.
72 Heorowearh, ‘savage reprobate’ (Klaeber, Anglia, xxxv, 253).
73 Geósceaftgásta, l. 1266, often translated ‘demons sent by fate.’ However, since geósceaft means something ‘determined of old,’ the most direct meaning of geósceaftgást would seem to be ‘spirit predetermined,’ ‘predestinate soul.’
74 Gummere, I note belatedly, makes this observation in The Oldest English Epic, p. 25.
75 Thus in Christ and Satan, which has many phrases in common with Beowulf, the Saviour denounced the apostate angels and denied them the bliss of Heaven, i.e., “deprived them of joy” (dréamum bedélde, 68). Satan, described like Grendel as atol 
(161), and like Grendel condemned “to tread the paths of exile” (
, 121, 259), is “bereft of glory” (wuldre benemed, duguÐum bedéled, 119-121) and “deprived of everlasting joy” (168). After the Judgment the souls of the Blest will shine “freed from sorrow” (sorgum bedélde, 294-296); but “the adversaries of God” (Godes andsacan) will be sheared of glory, shut out from bliss“ (wuldres bescyrde, dréamum bedélde, 242-243). So also in Guthlac the devil tempters of the saint are ”deprived of bliss“ (dréame bidrorene, 626, 901); ”joy has been far removed from them“ (667-669). Cf. Keiser, pp. 127-128, on dréam as ‘heavenly joy.‘
76 Cf. John, 3.36; Romans, 9.21-22 (Vulgate).
78 Emerson, p. 863, also regards the passage as a reference to the reprobation of Grendel, and translates gifstól ‘throne of grace,’ as in Christ, 572. For gif, gifu (giefu), meaning ‘Divine grace,’ see Bosworth-Toller and note 21 above. Might Beowulf 168-169 be reminiscent of God's rejection of Cain's óffering at the altar?
79 See p. 315 above, for parallels between the abode of the apostate angels and that of Grendel; also Klaeber's notes on Beowulf, 1357-66, and Carleton Brown, “Beowulf and the Blickling Homilies and Some Textual Notes,” PMLA, liii (1938), 905-909. As regards Lawrence's suggestion that the desolate moors were added to the Beowulfian scenery as features in keeping with Grendel's descent from the exiled Cain, cf. the Vulgate version of Job. 30.6, wherein godless outlaws are said to dwell “in the desert places of the torrents and the caverns of the earth,” a fairly accurate description of the site of Grendel's abode, and as figuratively conceived.
80 Moralia, Book 4; Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford, 1845), i, 196.
81 Civitas Dei, 11.19, 33.
82 Ibid., 12.1. Aelfric (Homilies, 1.4.14-16) explains that the Fiend as Antichrist will come, as Christ came, in human likeness, mennisc mann and so i déofol.
83 Shakespeare displays a similar tact in foregoing historical accuracy as regards the religion of his agents in King Lear. As inhabitants of pre-Christian Britain, in a social order where justice seems to be inactive, they acknowledge only pagan gods; but invoke Roman gods known to Elizabethan audiences, rather than unfamiliar deities of early Britain.
84 See note 23 above.
85 King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius, 39.6, p. 128 in Sedgefield's edition. Cf. n. 91 below.
86 Professor R. J. Menner (The Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, p. 63), who sees in Solomon and Saturn, 364-366, an allusion to the belief that a man must endure his “hour of fate,” refers the notion to Teutonic paganism, and probably rightly. Yet the idea is also Biblical (Job, 14.5). Cf. Guthlac, 1030-32.
87 Nor to the Greeks and Romans, as mediaeval Christians knew when they conceived and nurtured the legends of the Christian King Arthur; and as the Nun's Priest of Chaucer knew when, with an apostrophe to “destinee that mayst not been eschewed,” he pictured the mock-heroic Chauntecleer as a victim of disaster “by heigh imaginacioun forncast.”
88 Beowulf, the Oldest English Epic, p. 1; The Earliest English Poetry, p. 88.
89 In lines 477-479, 569-573 (?), 1055-58; also in 2525-27 if metod here means ‘God,’ as it does elsewhere in Beowulf and almost everywhere else in O.E. writings (cf. Keiser, p. 67). In lines 569-573, the ‘Fate’ that delivers the gallant, undoomed earl actually is the subsiding of the waters and the rising of the sun, beorht beacen Godes. Thus here, too, wyrd may have been associated with Providence, if the utterance is more than a faded proverb. Cf. Beowulf 2291-93, where the unfœge is easily saved from woe and exile through the grace of the Ruler, Waldendes hyldo.
90 The revolt and fall of the angels is here given as the explanation for the presence in the world of “wyrd the mighty”—beginner of evils, scather of the soul, waker of woe, bringer of years, mother of feud, daughter of death, father and mother of every capital sin (frumscylda gehwæs: of every original sin?). Professor Menner doubtless is right in concluding that here wyrd is not identical with Satan; “the implication is rather that the evils men endure are the result of Lucifer's rebellion” (op. cit., p. 139). This conception of wyrd foreshadows the mediaeval notion of Fortune, as set forth in Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum. Cf. Professor Farnham's resumé: “The power of Fortune came into being because of Adam's and Eve's disobedience to God… . Through that first Fall all miseries entered this world of ours, all misfortunes, all of those things by which men post along the road towards an inescapable death: in a word, all the mockery of Fortune” (The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy, p. 85). In keeping with his Christian interpretation of Fate, Solomon in the dialogue with Saturn holds that whereas Wyrd is hard to change, a wise man may meet each blow of circumstance (wyrda gehwylce) by means of prudence, the help of friends, and the power of the Divine Spirit (Solomon and Saturn, 427-433), a solution which Menner (p. 63, n. 4) compares with “the compromises of the Beowulf-poet,” as reflected in Beowulf, 2291, 2574, and 979; 2625-27; 1056. Professor B. C. Williams relates the passage in Solomon and Saturn to Beowulf, 572 (Gnomic Poetry in Anglo-Saxon, p. 65).
91 The system of Boethius does not preclude the narrower view of wyrd as a demon, nor the related conception in Solomon and Saturn. The Boethian Fate, which is but the working out in time of the divine Prescience, may be executed through the various devices of demons, as well as by divine spirits, the human soul, and the instrumentality of nature (De Consolatione Philosophiae, 4. Pr. 6.36-65). Here Alfred's rendering follows the Latin rather closely, using wyrd to signify both Fortune and Fate, foreÐanc for providentia, and foretíohhung probably in a reminiscence of the predestinatio used earlier by Boethius (4. Pr. 6. 12-13). After explaining that the fickle Fortune we call wyrd merely follows the Providence of God, as he has ordained, Alfred continues: SiÐÐan wé hit hataÐ wyrd siÐÐan hit geworht biÐ; 
ær hit wæs Godes foredanc and his foretíohhung. Đá wyrd hé Ðonne wyrcÐ oÐÐe Ðurh Ðá gódan englas, oÐÐe Ðurh monna sawla, oÐÐe Ðurh óÐerra gesceafta líf, oÐÐe Ðurh héofenes tungl, oÐÐe Ðurh Ðára scuccena mislíce lotwrencas; hwílum Ðurh án Ðára, hwílum Ðurh éall Ðá (39.6, pp. 128-129 in Sedgefield's edition).
92 Consolatio 4. Pr. 6.60-65; Alfred's Boethius, 39.6, p. 129 in Sedgefield's edition.
93 Keiser, p. 62, commenting on Elene, 1046-49, says, “One is tempted to identify the word wyrd with foreordination or predestination. Such an interpretation is placed upon wyrd by Old English homilists. In glosses forewyrd has the sense of predestination.”
94 Ogilvy, p. 22. Cf. Earle's contention that Providence and fate in Beowulf are harmonized under the influence of Boethius (The Deeds of Beowulf, p. 144).
95 Beowulf, 2291-93:
Swá mæg  |
éaÐe gedígan |
wéan ond  , |
sé Ðe Waldendes |
| hyldo gehealdeÐ! |
96 Beowulf, 669-670, 685-687, 440-441 and possibly 958-960, where Beowulf speaks of his defeat of Grendel:
| Wé Ðæt ellenweorc | éstum miclum |
| feohtan fremedon, | frécne genéÐdon, |
| eafoÐ uncúÐes. |
Here éstum miclum may signify ‘through abundant grace’ and thus the glory would be God's. Note that Beowulf is replying to Hrothgar's speech of gratitude and congratulation, which repeatedly credits the deliverance of the Danes to divine intervention.
97 On infinitives ending in on, a characteristic of Guthlac, see The Exeter Book, ed. by G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie, p. 265.
98 Cf. Ðéostrum forwylmed, Elene 7626: and under dimscuan, Andreas 140-141.
99 Gregory, Moralia, Bk. 33; Library of the Fathers, iii, 559. The elect may be tempted by “the cunning enemy,” but not fully deceived by him. (Gregory's Pastoral, ed. by Sweet, p. 464.)
| nefne God sylfa | |
| sigora SóÐ-cyning, | sealde Ðám Ðe hé wolde |
| (hé is manna gehyld) | hord openian, |
| efne swá hwylcum manna | swá him gemet Ðúhte. |
101 Klaeber's contention that Beowulf's death is brought about by “a mysterious, hidden spell” (Beowulf, p. xlix) hardly seems justified. The curse may have been represented as the cause of the hero's death in the source used by the poet, but he everywhere speaks of the malediction as limited or made powerless by Divine Mercy, which even seems to have saved the thief of the goblet from “woe and exile” (2289-93). Certainly the specific terms of the curse were not visited on Beowulf.
102 Cf. Lawrence: “he … had very zealously given heed in the past to the grace of the Lord,” as quoted in Klaeber's copious note on the passage.
103 Paradiso, 20.118-119. Cf. St. Erkenwald.
104 Beowulf, 2819-20.
105 Cf. Tolkien, pp. 41-42. At all events, Ðá sóÐfæstan was a familiar kenning for the Blest; hence early English admirers of the Geatish warrior doubtless envisioned him safe among the sóÐfæstan at the right hand of the Saviour, as they appear in Christ and Satan (611-613); or soaring up to Heaven, as in Guthlac (790-796); or at least among the Blessed described in Elene (1289-91) as uppermost in the flame that purges righteous souls for Paradise.
106 Beowulf, 415-424.
107 Beowulf, 3079-84:
Ne meahton wé  , léofne Ðéoden |
|
| ríces hyrde |  ænigne, |
| Ðæt hé ne grette | gold-weard Ðone… . |
| Héold on héahgesceap. |
108 See Lane Cooper, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, p. 30; also The Poetics of Aristotle, Its Meaning and Influence, p. 42.
109 Tolkien, p. 24.
∗ It is a pleasure to record my indebtedness to Professors Lane Cooper and B. S. Monroe, whose fruitful advice midway in the preparation of this study is but one of many similar kindnesses; and to Professor Henning Larsen, whose wise criticism also has saved the essay from various errors of omission and commission.