Christianity Came Earlier to Britain and to Beowulf Essay

Christianity Came Earlier to Britain and to Beowulf Christian references/allusions appear in Beowulf on six dozen occasions. Some scholars of the Anglo-Saxon period express erroneous notions regarding the arrival of Christianity into Britain. Janet Backhouse in her book The Lindisfarne Gospels, says that these gospels, written about 700AD, were made in north-east England â€Å"less than a century after the introduction there of Christianity† (Backhouse 7). Her view of dating Christianity in Britain to the time of Pope Gregory the Great in the 590’s is a popularly held misconception. The truth of the matter is that Christianity, which later Christianized Beowulf, arrived into Britain very many years earlier than this. The†¦show more content†¦This seems reasonable according to what is written by the historian Eusebius Pamphilus, bishop of Caesarea, in His Ecclesiastical History written in the 300’s. The Ecclesiastical History is a history of the primitive church from the time of the apostles until the 300’s when Eusebius died. Eusebius quotes the then-existent works of earlier writers like the Jewish historian Josephus, the philosopher Philo, Clement, Papias, and church writers like Dionysius of Corinth and Caius who lived before the year 100. In Book2, chapter14 of the Ecclesiastical History Eusebius recounts how the anti-Christian Simon Magus encountered Peter the apostle in Rome: He [Simon Magus] undertook a great journey from the East across the sea and fled to the West, thinking that this was the only way for him to live according to his mind. Entering the city of Rome, by the cooperation of that malignant spirit which had fixed its seat there, his attempts were soon so far successful as to be honored as a god with the erection of a statue by the inhabitants of that city. This, however, did not continue long; immediately under the reign of Claudius, by the benign and gracious providence of God, Peter, that powerful and great apostle, who by his courage took the lead of all the rest, was conducted to Rome against this pest of mankind. He, like a noble commander of God fortified with the divine armor, bore the precious merchandise of the revealed light from the East to those inShow MoreRelatedReconciling Ingrained Traditions with Newly Emerging Christianity1203 Words   |  5 Pagesmarred in idolatry and polytheism. The intermingling of Christian and pagan elements in Beowulf are consistent with the attitudes toward religion that are found in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Beowulf was written in the Middle Ages (500-1000) on Scandinavia, which was a highly pagan society, however the narrator is telling this story within the timeframe of medieval Anglo-Saxon Britain, which was undergoing Christianization. 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