Christianity offered to the Anglo-Saxon world the new certainty, to the Anglo-Saxon awareness that man is absolutely mortal it offered the hope of rebirth through Christ. Instead of the world of constant fights, war and violence it offered peace and harmony. And of course it offered Paradise.
The warrior heroes are now substituted with a new hero -Christ. And while the pagan would understand the death of Beowulf as a victory of WYRD, the Christianity treats this theme as the necessary sacrifice for the wealth of one’ fellow men.
In Beowulf monsters were created to challenge human power, to fight him and by being defeated to show the triumph of humanity. They were not created as evil fiends but as representatives of the natural forces. Their dwelling below waters points out to us that they were closely connected with chthonic powers, with mysteries of the universe and they mostly represented the destructive power of Nature-the one that we recognize as dangerous and frightening.
Of course Christianity dealed differently with Nature – it denied it. And this denial was done through physical extinction – killing of the monsters but also the death of earthly heroes. At the downing of Christian era, the pagan world perished b
It is Christianity that kills them all. It brings about completely different system of values. Dragons and monsters are no more. The old polytheistic world parishes before our eyes. The monsters are extinguished. There is no more speculation about the outcome of man’s life. God rules all.
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