Chapter XXI: Section IV: Are the Christian Elements Incompatible with the Rest of the

POEM?

Later students (like the man in Dante, placed between two equally enticing dishes) have been unable to decide in favour of either of the rival theories of Muellenhoff and ten Brink, and consequently the unity of the poem, which always had its champions, has of late years come to be maintained with increasing conviction and certainty.

Yet many recent critics have followed Muellenhoff so far at least as to believe that the Christian passages are inconsistent with what they regard as the "essentially heathen" tone of the rest of the poem, and are therefore the work of an interpolator[279].

Certainly no one can escape a feeling of incongruity, as he passes from ideas of which the home lies in the forests of ancient Germany, to others which come from the Holy Land. But that both sets of ideas could not have been cherished, in England, about the year 700, by one and the same poet, is an assumption which calls for examination.

As Christianity swept northward, situations were created which to the modern student are incongruous. But the Teutonic chief often had a larger mind than the modern student: he needed to have, if he was to get the best at the same time both from his wild fighting men and from his Latin clerks. It is this which gives so remarkable a character to the great men of the early centuries of converted Teutonism: men, like Theodoric the Great or Charles the Great, who could perform simultaneously the duties of a Germanic king and of a Roman Emperor: kings like Alfred the Great or St Olaf, who combined the character of the tough fighting chieftain with that of the saintly churchman. I love to think of these incongruities: to remember that the warrior Alfred, surrounded by _thegn_ and _gesith_, listening to the "Saxon songs" which he loved, was yet the same Alfred who painfully translated Gregory's _Pastoral {122} Care_ under the direction of foreign clerics. It is well to remember that Charles the Great, the catholic and the orthodox, collected ancient lays which his successors thought too heathen to be tolerated; or that St Olaf (who was so holy that, having absent mindedly chipped shavings off a stick on Sunday, he burnt them, as penance, on his open hand) nevertheless allowed to be sung before him, on the morning of his last fight, one of the most wild and utterly heathen of all the old songs--the _Bjarkam['a]l_.

It has been claimed that the account of the funeral rites of Beowulf is such as "no Christian poet could or would have composed[280]." Lately this argument has been stated more at length:

"In the long account of Beowulf's obsequies--beginning with the dying
king's injunction to construct for him a lofty barrow on the edge of
the cliff, and ending with the scene of the twelve princes riding round
the barrow, proclaiming the dead man's exploits--we have the most
detailed description of an early Teutonic funeral which has come down
to us, and one of which the accuracy is confirmed in every point by
archaeological or contemporary literary evidence[281]. Such an account
must have been composed within living memory of a time when ceremonies
of this kind were still actually in use[282]."

Owing to the standing of the scholar who urges it, this argument is coming to rank as a dogma[283], and needs therefore rather close examination.

Professor Chadwick _may_ be right in urging that the custom of burning the dead had gone out of use in England even before Christianity was introduced[284]: anyhow it is certain that, wherever it survived, the practice was disapproved by ecclesiastics, and was, indeed, formally censured and suppressed by the church abroad.

The church equally censured and endeavoured to suppress the ancient "heathen lays"; but without equal success. Now, in many of these lays the heathen rites of cremation must certainly have been depicted, and, in this way, the memory of the old funeral customs must have been kept fresh, long {123} after the last funeral pyre had died out in England. Of course there were then, as there have been ever since, puritanical people who objected that heathen lays and heathen ways were no fit concern for a Christian man. But the protests of such purists are just the strongest evidence that the average Christian did continue to take an interest in these things. We have seen that the very monks of Lindisfarne had to be warned by Alcuin. I cannot see that there is any such _a priori_ impossibility that a poet, though a sincere Christian enough, would have described a funeral in the old style, modelling his account upon older lays, or upon tradition derived from those lays.

The church might disapprove of the practice of cremation, but we have no reason to suppose that mention of it was tabooed. And many of the old burial customs seem to have kept their hold, even upon the converted. Indeed, when the funeral of Attila is instanced as a type of the old heathen ceremony, it seems to be forgotten that those Gothic chieftains who rode their horses round the body of Attila were themselves probably Arian Christians, and that the historian who has preserved the account was an orthodox cleric.

Saxo Grammaticus, ecclesiastic as he was, has left us several accounts[285] of cremations. He mentions the "pyre built of ships" and differs from the poet of _Beowulf_ chiefly because he allows those frankly heathen references to gods and offerings which the poet of _Beowulf_ excludes. Of course, Saxo was merely translating. One can quite believe that a Christian poet composing an account of a funeral in the old days, would have omitted the more frankly heathen features, as indeed the _Beowulf_ poet does. But Saxo shows us how far into Christian times the ancient funeral, in all its heathendom, was remembered; and how little compunction an ecclesiastic had in recording it. The assumption that no Christian poet would have composed the account of Beowulf's funeral or of Scyld's funeral ship, seems then to be quite unjustified.

The further question remains: Granting that he _would_, could he? Is the account of Beowulf's funeral so true to old custom that it must have been composed by an eye-witness of {124} the rite of cremation? Is its "accuracy confirmed in every point by archaeological or contemporary literary evidence"?

As to the archaeological evidence, the fact seems to be that the account is archaeologically so inexact that it has given great trouble to one eminent antiquary, Knut Stjerna. That the pyre should be hung with arms, which are _burnt_ with the hero (ll. 3139-40), and that then a second supply of unburnt treasures should be _buried_ with the cremated bones (ll. 3163-8), is regarded by Stjerna as extraordinary[286].

Surely, any such inexactitude is what we should expect in a late poet, drawing upon tradition. He would know that in heathen times bodies were burnt, and that weapons were buried; and he might well combine both. It is not necessary to suppose, as Stjerna does, that the poet has combined two separate accounts of Beowulf's funeral, given in older lays, in one of which the hero was burnt, and in the other buried. But the fact that an archaeological specialist finds the account of Beowulf's funeral so inexact that he has to assume a confused and composite source, surely disposes of the argument that it is so exact that it must date back to heathen times.

As to confirmation from literary documents, the only one instanced by Chadwick is the account of the funeral of Attila. The parallel here is by no means so close as has been asserted. The features of Attila's funeral are: the lying in state, during which the chosen horsemen of the nation rode round the body singing the dead king's praises; the funeral feast; and the burial (not burning) of the body. Now the only feature which recurs in _Beowulf_ is the praise of the dead man by the mounted thanes. Even here there is an essential difference. Attila's men rode round the dead body of their lord _before_ his funeral. Beowulf's retainers ride and utter their lament around (not the body but) the grave mound of their lord, ten days after the cremation.

And this is perhaps no accidental discrepancy: it may well correspond to a real difference in practice between the Gothic custom of the time of the migrations and the Anglo-Saxon {125} practice as it prevailed in Christian times[287]. For many documents, including the _Dream of the Rood_, tend to show that the _sorhl[=e]odh_, the lament of the retainers for their dead lord, survived into Christian times, but as a ceremony which was subsequent not merely to the funeral, but even to the building of the tomb.

So that, here again, so far from the archaeological accuracy of the account of Beowulf's funeral being confirmed by the account of that of Attila, we find a discrepancy such as we might expect if a Christian poet, in later times, had tried to describe a funeral of the old heathen type.

Of course, the evidence is far too scanty to allow of much positive argument. Still, _so far as it goes_, and that is not far, it rather tends to show that the account of the funeral customs is not quite accurate, representing what later Christian times knew by tradition of the rite of cremation, rather than showing the observation of that rite by an eye-witness.

We must turn, then, to some other argument, if we wish to prove that the Christian element is inconsistent with other parts of the poem.

A second argument that _Beowulf_ must belong either to heathen times, or to the very earliest Christian period in England, has been found in the character of the Christian allusions: they contain no "reference to Christ, to the Cross, to the Virgin or the Saints, to any doctrine of the church in regard to the Trinity, the Atonement, _etc._[288]" "A pious Jew would have no difficulty in assenting to them all[289]." Hence it has been argued[290] that they are the work of an interpolator who, working upon a poem "essentially heathen," was not able to impose upon it more than this "vague and colourless Christianity." I cannot see this. If passages had to be rewritten at all, it was just as easy to rewrite them in a tone emphatically Christian as in a tone mildly so. The difficulties which the interpolator would meet in removing a heathen phrase, and composing a Christian half-line in substitution, would be metrical, rather than theological. For example, in a second {126} half-line the interpolator could have written _ond h[=a]lig Crist_ or _ylda nergend_ just as easily as _ond h[=a]lig god_, or _ylda waldend_: he could have put in an allusion to the Trinity or to the Cross as easily as to the Lord of Hosts or the King of Glory. It would depend upon the alliteration which was the more convenient. And surely, if he was a monk deliberately sitting down to turn a heathen into a Christian poem, he would, of two alternatives, have favoured the more dogmatically Christian.

The vagueness which is so characteristic of the Christian references in _Beowulf_ can then hardly be due to the poem having originally been a heathen one, worked over by a Christian.

Others have seen in this vagueness a proof "that the minstrels who introduced the Christian element had but a vague knowledge of the new faith[291]": or that the poem was the work of "a man who, without having, or wanting to have, much definite instruction, had become Christian because the Court had newly become Christian[292]." But, vague as it is, does the Christianity of _Beowulf_ justify such a judgment as this? Do not the characters of Hrothgar or of Beowulf, of Hygd or of Wealhtheow, show a Christian influence which, however little dogmatic, is anything but superficial? This is a matter where individual feeling rather than argument must weigh: but the _Beowulf_ does not seem to me the work of a man whose adherence to Christianity is merely nominal[293].

And, so far as the absence of dogma goes, it seems to have been overlooked that the Christian references in the _Battle of Maldon_, written when England had been Christian for over three centuries, are precisely of the same vague character as those in _Beowulf_.

Surely the explanation is that to a devout, but not {127} theologically-minded poet, writing battle poetry, references to God as the Lord of Hosts or the Giver of Victory came naturally--references to the Trinity or the Atonement did not. This seems quite a sufficient explanation; though it may be that in _Beowulf_ the poet has consciously avoided dogmatic references, because he realized that the characters in his story were not Christians[294]. That, at the same time, he allows those characters with whom he sympathizes to speak in a Christian spirit is only what we should expect. Just so Chaucer allows his pagans--Theseus for instance--to use Christian expressions about God or the soul, whilst avoiding anything strikingly doctrinal.

Finally I cannot admit that the Christian passages are "poetically of no value[295]." The description of Grendel nearing Heorot is good:

Dh[=a] c[=o]m of m[=o]re under mist-hleothum
Grendel gongan--

but it is heightened when the poet adds:

Godes yrre baer.

Yet here again it is impossible to argue: it is a matter of individual feeling.

When, however, we come to the further statement of Dr Bradley, that the Christian passages are not only interpolations poetically worthless, but "may be of any date down to that of the extant MS" (i.e. about the year 1000 A.D.), we have reached ground where argument _is_ possible, and where definite results can be attained. For Dr Bradley, at the same time that he makes this statement about the character of the Christian passages, also quotes the archaic syntax of _Beowulf_ as proving an early date[296]. _But this archaic syntax is just as prominent a feature of the Christian passages as of any other parts of the poem._ If these Christian passages are really the work of a "monkish copyist, whose piety exceeded his poetic powers[297]," how do they come to show an antique syntax and a strict technique surpassing those of Cynewulf or the _Dream {128} of the Rood_? Why do they not betray their origin by metrical inaccuracies such as we find in poems undoubtedly interpolated, like _Widsith_ or the _Seafarer_?

Dr Bradley is "our chief English seer in these matters," as Dr Furnivall said long ago; and it is only with the greatest circumspection that one should differ from any of his conclusions. Nevertheless, I feel that, before we can regard any portion of _Beowulf_ as later than the rest, discrepancies need to be demonstrated.

Until such discrepancies between the different parts of _Beowulf_ can be demonstrated, we are justified in regarding the poem as homogeneous: as a production of the Germanic world enlightened by the new faith. Whether through external violence or internal decay, this world was fated to rapid change, and perished with its promise unfulfilled. The great merit of _Beowulf_ as a historic document is that it shows us a picture of a period in which the virtues of the heathen "Heroic Age" were tempered by the gentleness of the new belief; an age warlike, yet Christian: devout, yet tolerant.

* * * * *

{129}