John Chorazy



John Chorazy

William Paterson University

December, 2005

Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Christianity, Paganism,

And the Influence of Religion Upon the Heroic Quest

“I have pursued mine enemies, and overtaken them: neither did I turn again till they were consumed. I have wounded them that they were not able to rise: they are fallen under my feet...”

Psalm18, A Psalm of David

His Table, his idea of Chivalry, his Holy Grail, his devotion to Justice: these had been progressive steps in the effort for which he had been bred… But the whole structure depended on the first premise: that man was decent.

The Once and Future King, T.H. White

In as much as they are tales in the order of the lyrical Epic handed down through generations of singers and poets, Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight both are informed by a Christian faith persistent enough to have penetrated the farthest corners of Pagan thought and practice throughout Medieval Europe. Though its warrior-hero Beowulf is a pagan, the Beowulf epic is imbued with such biblical allegory as to make the narrative and its maxims palatable to a Christian audience. The chivalric knight Sir Gawain is presented as a devout Christian; there can be no mistaking the epic’s very particular religious concerns and motivation. Both heroes then, to a greater or lesser degree, fall under the influences and consequences of their religious systems and can be seen as responders to quests not merely for earthly treasure and fame, but for self-realization via spiritual conquest or death of the flesh.

While Sir Gawain and the Green Knight begins in the relative tranquility and safety of

Arthur’s court, Beowulf is set in motion by events that might be viewed as a direct consequence and continuation of post-Fall strife, particularly the exodus from Eden and the slaying of Abel by Adam’s firstborn son, Cain. Grendel, the monstrous descendent of Cain (a tiller of the ground by trade), cannot tolerate the Danes’ retelling of the creation story and is “harrowed” (plowed, or dug into) by the words of Genesis I; the murderous nature of the creature, who is the fruit of Cain’s sin, is necessarily provoked to the point of deadly cruelty against Herot Hall. The Old Testament reference informs the poem with the supposition that a primal struggle – the definitive conflict of Good against Evil – continues to shape the strivings of mankind. Eventually, the uncommon strength of a tried and true champion will be required to shatter the bonds of terror brought about by Grendel’s implacable wrath.

Beowulf, the epic’s hero, is comparable to several important biblical persons who overcome great odds in their quests for victory and, maybe more importantly, for righteousness. Though a few comparisons to Moses may be fleshed out, plentiful similarities between Beowulf and David abound throughout the text; the killing and beheading of the giant/monster Goliath by a youthful, unproven David in I Samuel XVII: 50-51 is plainly echoed by Beowulf’s slaying and beheading of the giant/monster Grendel (Orchard 142). Although Beowulf, as a pagan, cannot fully embody for the Beowulf poet the righteousness of a Christian model, he can at least be a powerful instrument in the hands of Providence: “Now Holy God has, in His goodness, guided him here to the West-Danes, to defend us from Grendel” (Beowulf 35). Using the historical person of David as a frame for the character of Beowulf demonstrates for the Christian audience God’s ability to exploit even paganism (and its eager-to-be-famous hero) for His greater and incontestable purpose – the death of Grendel, vis-à-vis the triumph of Good over Evil. By considering Beowulf first as a model of David, who is seen as a pre-incarnate type of Christ, one can soon after view Beowulf too as a form of savior and a redeemer of men, albeit on a temporal plane. His downfall is a necessary reminder that no warrior, no idolized hero, no mortal character can ever wholly be a replica of Christ and, with inherent sinful human nature in tow, is incapable of gifting any person (beginning with himself) with eternal life. Consequently, whether Beowulf himself is ultimately saved by noble deeds from the “fire’s embrace” that awaits the unredeemed heathen is a question broached only through scrupulous interpretation of the text.

With the hero’s eternal destination thus in question, the present-day reader is caused to construe from the tale the same Christian spiritual principles recognized by a 16th Century religious culture by and large familiar with the works of Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin: the eternal will of God is an immutable force; the pride and passions of man are a hindrance to the spiritual life; salvation is not of works or human efforts, but by God’s grace alone. Even brave Beowulf, the honorable warrior, cannot be immune to these truths and so is employed by the Beowulf poet as the emblem of the story precisely because of his terminal flaw: self-reliance. Although warned by King Hrothgar to choose “the better part, eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride” (Beowulf 65), Beowulf’s heroic quest remains driven by a need to fulfill an autonomous agenda. His pagan life, albeit a noble and praiseworthy one in the flesh, becomes the principle example of an existence spiritually separated from the salvation of Christ – a point purposefully established by the Christian-influenced tale.

And so it would seem that Beowulf’s final conflict, the battle with the dragon, is necessarily from the start an ill-fated venture (Orchard 260). Sensing his imminent doom the aged warrior-king, thrown by circumstance into “deep anguish,” chooses to face a foil equal to him not in its physical strength but in its relentless greed for earthly treasure. Beowulf is obliged to act by his pagan honor code and must destroy that which proves to most closely resemble his self, and he must perish in the process. If the hero who resolves to “win the gold” through his courage alone is sufficiently justified in this action, as George Smithson suggests, by the pagan-based “fundamental conception” of the poem, then indeed Beowulf’s death may serve as “the final purification of that character” (Smithson 18). Arguably, Beowulf’s ultimate refinement remains suspicious. The consequence of the accomplishment causes even Beowulf’s heir to question the hero’s impulse:

“Often when one man follows his own will many are hurt. This happened to us. Nothing we advised could ever convince the prince we loved, our land’s guardian, not to vex the custodian of the gold, let him lie where he was so long accustomed, lurk there under the earth until the end of the world. He held to his high destiny. The hoard is laid bare, but at a grave cost; it was too cruel a fate that forced the king to that encounter” (Beowulf 92).

The Beowulf narrator in lines 3062-3064 summarizes the essentially tragic ending of epic: “Famous for his deeds a warrior may be, but it remains a mystery where his life will end” (92). Not coincidentally, Proverbs XIV: 12 asserts an analogous truth: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but in the end thereof are the ways of death.” Fervor for God or Christ is not the impetus for even one of Beowulf’s actions (Smithson 20). Seen in this light the heroic quest of Beowulf the Geat warrior exemplifies to an extreme, in the Christian paradigm, the fruitless pursuits of man acting in his own strengths and outside the provisions of divine Grace.

For Gawain and his fellow Knights of Arthur’s Round Table, the “most noble knights known under Christ,” religious zeal is not only a primary motivator of the Court but is the force that eventually initiates Gawain’s self-realization and demands the confession of his sin nature. The quest undertaken by Gawain to bear an axe stroke “as God may direct” is a spiritual path divergent from Beowulf’s and yet the knight is, as a human being, subject to similar temptations and faults. What ultimately sets apart the Christian knight from the pagan warrior is the admission of guilt – an insight that necessarily precedes repentance, forgiveness, restoration, and salvation. Consequently, Gawain’s sin at the hands of the Green Knight is the felix culpa, the fortunate fall which brings back to Camelot a humbled but rejuvenated knight in possession of the green girdle – an emblem of God’s restorative grace (Haines 124). It is this theme – the sinner’s return to favor through grace – that clearly delineates Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a distinctly Christian poem written in the tradition of the heroic epic.

Multiple theological symbols visible throughout the epic serve as an indication of the Gawain poet’s paramount concern for Christian piety. Among the most significant of these symbols is the personage of the Knight, a nobleman who is defined by the chivalric ideal and is a model of perfection framed by his imitation of Christ (Green 121). Gawain is at all times soberly fixed upon the figure of Christ, forever “faithful five-fold in five fold fashion… devoid of all villainy, with virtues adorned in sight,” “faultless in his five senses,” his fealty “fixed upon the five wounds that Christ got on the cross” (Gawain 134-135). The number five also coincides with the tests Gawain endures: the initial contest with the Green Knight at Camelot, the three visits by the Lady, and the contest at the Green Chapel. These patterns of fives, the biblical number symbolic of judgment, the books of the Pentateuch, and represented in the Temple (five pillars prop up the Holy Place), are embodied in the pentangle brooch worn by Gawain for protection. The knight’s inability to fulfill the standards of the emblem, however, necessitates an exchange in symbols; the green girdle and the redemption it brings will forever remind Gawain that chivalry and the virtues of knighthood are not enough to emulate Jesus Christ.

This illustration of the failure of courtliness (or any other mode of human ethics) to bring about perfection is made significant by the New Testament salvation polemic reiterated through the Reformation: redemption is by grace through faith without which it is impossible to please God (Ephesians II: 8-9; Hebrews XI: 6). As seen in Beowulf, neither a man’s battle prowess nor his individual conduct can facilitate liberation from his fatal flaws. Once again, human weakness is a condition essential to the author’s overarching motif. In the case of Gawain, however, grace is endowed in the place of certain death. The earthly wisdom proffered to him through the “magic” pendant is flawed, as was Solomon’s wisdom represented by the pentangle (Green 130). Gawain can in the end manage little of his own accord and must accept the Green Knight’s offering of redemption which echoes the declaration of Christ to the apostle Paul: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made great in weakness” (II Corinthians XII: 9). The forgiveness Gawain receives from the Knight is complete: “I hold you polished as a pearl, as pure and as bright as you had lived free of fault since you were first born” (Gawain 170). In this passage the entirety of the Christian message is made alive, from Isaiah I: 18 – “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool,” through David in Psalm 103: 12 – “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us,” – to the very words of Christ in Luke V: 20 – “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.” The fortunate fall that initially incurs judgment ultimately produces an outpouring of mercy and of grace – the unmerited favor of a forgiving God.

In the flesh, Beowulf and Gawain face the consequences of their faults armed with imperfection, unable to render a means of deliverance from their own selves. Christian orthodoxy suggests that neither is (yet) justified; even if beneficial ends are achieved by evil actions the actor remains a sinner until confessing his fault (Haines 33). This is where the knight differs from the warrior, and the Christian from the pagan. Whereas Beowulf’s fall and death precedes the demise of the Geat tribe (and arguably the symbolic end of the Anglo-Saxon warrior culture), Gawain’s fall and “resurrection” establishes the Order of the Garter – the knights’ recognition of their own similar frailties. Gawain’s confession brings the promise of immortality, while Beowulf can only hope to memorialize his name in songs handed down through his pagan society (Jokinen). The final destinies of both men imply distinct spiritual principals at work within the texts, as the denouements of both offer a lucid inspection of the wide-ranging impact of Christianity upon Medieval literature and its culture at large.

Works Cited

Beowulf. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Volume A, Seventh

Edition. M.H. Abrams, General Editor. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY. 2001.

Green, Richard Hamilton. “Gawain's Shield and the Quest for Perfection” ELH,

Vol. 29, No. 2. June, 1962. pp.121-139. 28196206%2929%3A2%3C121%3AGSATQF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7. December 8, 2005.

Haines, Victor Yelveron. The Fortunate Fall of Sir Gawain: The Typology of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. University Press of America, Inc. Lanham, MD. 1982.

Holy Bible: Authorized King James Version. Thomas Nelson Bibles, USA. 2001.

Jokinen, Anniina. “Heroes of the Middle Ages.” medlit/medheroes.htm. December 2, 1996. . lumina.htm. November 26, 2005

Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to Beowulf. D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, U.K.

2003.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Volume A, Seventh Edition. M.H. Abrams, General Editor. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY. 2001.

Smithson, George Arnold. The Old English Christian Epic. Phaeton Press, New York, NY. 1971.

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