 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello and welcome to The Authority where today we'll be looking at the author of the bear wolf poem. In other words the bear wolf poet and that's the first mystery we'll be dealing with here. Who was the bear wolf poet? And obviously when we're going further back in time so when we're looking at Homer not much is known about the great Greek poet Homer. Not much is known about the bear wolf poet either. We don't know who wrote this great epic of Anglo-Saxon England. We know he almost certainly had to be a monk because the only people doing any writing at that time were monks so probably a Benedictine monk but beyond that we don't know anything else except most people seem to think that he was writing about the same time as St. Bede and we'll get to St. Bede the venerable fairly soon. In other words we can date it around the early eighth century but before as we don't know too much about the bear wolf poet and we do want to try to see these works as far as possible from the perspective of the author. Obviously that's difficult and don't know much about the author but we can see something of the way the author would have seen the work by knowing something of the culture in which he lived. So we're going to begin by looking at what was Anglo-Saxon England and first of all the Anglo-Saxon England is the England that existed before the Norman conquest in 1066 and after the leaving of the Romans from England in the fifth century, the middle of the fifth century. So it's a period from about the 450s through to 1066 so a period of about 600 years. Now the vast bulk of that time Anglo-Saxon was a profoundly Catholic country. It was certainly by the time that the bear wolf poet is writing it's profoundly Catholic. So basically England what we now call England that wasn't even called England in those days became largely Christian during the Roman occupation. So the Romans came to England only about 20 years or so after the crucifixion and the first English missionaries according to tradition arrived at 63 AD so only about 30 years after the crucifixion and established the first chapel as a chapel to the Blessed Virgin in Glastonbury in Somerset in Southwest England during the first century. Certainly the chapel at Glastonbury was considered to be ancient by the third century so this all sounds reasonable. We know that the Catholic faith was spread by missionaries with the empire as the empire spread the Christianity spread with it. So when the empire crossed over into England Christianity crossed over with it. So it's entirely likely that the first Christian missionaries arrived within the first few years of the Romans arrived. So 63 AD is an absolutely realistic date. By the time the Romans left almost 400 years later England was largely a Christian country. The empire had been Christian for some time by this point. So when the Roman soldiers left obviously the inhabitants didn't leave so Christianity is already established in England by the fifth century. What happens then is that Anglo-Saxon tribes start moving in from the Germanes, the Germanic speaking tribes and many of these were pagan because the evangelization hadn't reached those parts of Europe at this time and so this often thought that Anglo-Saxons in England became pagan. Now that's an over-simplification because I say the English Christians that lived there continued to live there. Also the Saxon shore as it was called round England at the coast of England the south coast and the east of coast of England was largely already populated by Germanic tribes that's why it's called the Saxon shore before the Romans left. So before the pagan Saxons started moving in and these many of these would presumably have been Christian. So we already have this sort of mixture of the new paganism coming in and the old Christianity but definitively when Saint Augustine of Canterbury comes over to the country at the end of the sixth century that's when the pagan Saxons are evangelized and become Catholic Christians. By the time that the Beowulf poet is writing say we don't know for certain but 150 or so years later that England is profoundly Catholic. There are so many saints in fact in Anglo-Saxon England we couldn't even really begin to start listing them. The first English poetry in other words the first poetry written in old English which was the language the Germanic language that was spoken in in England at the time was written by a monk called Cademon and he wrote a very famous hymn to creation in praise of God for creation itself and I think that poem is actually referenced at the beginning of Beowulf as we shall see fairly soon. Now if it's correct that the Beowulf poet is a contemporary of Bede so just shortly after Cademon and the fact that the poet's poem might be referenced in Beowulf would suggest that then we know that Saint Bede when he writes his ecclesiastical history of England so we have a history of the Catholic presence in England going back to the earliest Roman times being written at the time the Beowulf poem is being written. So this is a golden age of Catholicism it's also the age not just of Saint Bede this great scholar but of Saint Boniface the Anglo-Saxon monk who goes across and evangelizes the Germanic pagan tribes of Germany Saint Boniface is the patron saint of Germany for for being the one who converted the Germans he was an Anglo-Saxon so this profoundly Catholic time is when the poem is being written by a monk that should really automatically tell us all we need to know if you like about where the author of the Beowulf poem is coming from is an Anglo-Saxon monk writing a profoundly from a profoundly Christian perspective one thing we know from Beed's ecclesiastical history of England is Beed's preoccupation with the heresy of Pallagianism. Now Pallagianism is a heresy which began in England of a British monk called Pallagius that's what gives it its name and it's spread to other parts but mostly it was a problem in in Britain and Ireland and it was earlier but but the fact that it's such a prominent part of Beed's narrative would suggest that Pallagianism was still rampant was still widespread in England at the time Beowulf is being written at the time that Beed is writing that's interesting because we will see that there's an aspect of the Beowulf poem poem which is a rebuttal of the heresy of Pallagianism since that is so it probably makes sense for us to say a few words about Pallagianism because most of us are not scholars of church history and a church doctrine and of heresy but Pallagianism is actually one of the most widespread heresies that's still around today it's changed its name but it's the same thing. Pallagianism basically is what we would now call the self-help religion that basically that we can improve ourselves and get to heaven or what we call heaven or what we think heaven is purely by our own efforts by the triumph of our own will and by our own actions we don't need outside help it's about us it's about self-empowerment so if you go to Barnes & Noble you know you'll see shelves and shelves of of self-help books probably more than you'll see christian books so this is a very powerful heresy which I stood the test of time and it's still around we can do it ourselves and what does Pallagianism mean? Our self-help religion means that we don't need grace. Grace is the word that theologians use for the supernatural assistance we need from God to enable us to cooperate with his power and to overcome the power of evil and our own fall on this and brokenness. We need grace well if you're a Pallagian we don't need grace we do it ourselves if we do it ourselves we don't need grace we don't need the sacraments we don't need the sacraments we don't need the church it's just all about me and I listen to what Jesus says in the gospel and I do it and that's all I have to worry about. So this again the fact that this heresy is rampant today shows that bear wolf insofar as it's a rebuttal a repost an answer to the errors of Pallagianism is very relevant today even if it's about fighting monsters in Anglo-Saxon England the message it has is for today and as we discussed last week in the authority with the authority of the Bible we have to learn to read reality as well as reading literature not just literally but literally we have to spot the signs and what they signify the allegories. So let's look at this then structurally the the poem is made up of three consecutive struggles by bear wolf this heroic Anglo-Saxon leader and three separate monsters. So first of all he fights a monster called Grendel and then he fights a monster called Grendel's mother and then finally in old age he fights the final monster and dies in the process of killing the dragon the third monster the dragon. Now this poem like so much of literature is prone to being misread by critics who misunderstand needing to see a work through the eyes of the author. We don't know who the bear wolf poet is but we do know the profoundly Catholic culture that this monk was writing in. We should expect to find Christianity in there but even well-known famous reputable critics such as Harold Bloom get it woefully wrong. Now Harold Bloom says that there's no reference to Christ in the poem that there's no real reference to Christianity insofar as there are any references to the Bible it's all the Old Testament and it's all about fate and not providence. So this basically what Harold Bloom is trying to do and wanting to do because he's a Gnostic who does not like Christianity is to explain the Christianity away or airbrush it out. So we're going to do the opposite we're going to show that it's there and if you don't see it it's because you're blind. So the first thing is we have to understand that when the Anglo-Saxons use a word like weird or veered W-Y-R-D from which we get the modern word weird W-E-I-R-D they don't mean fate the word is normally translated as fate which is something fatalistic right it's all about luck or fortune it's there's no there's no providential design involved that's not what the Christian Anglo-Saxons meant when they use the word weird they did mean something which is profoundly providential profoundly connected with God's presence in reality and they they they spoke about the web of weird this idea that all of us each of us as individuals is connected to every other individual in this sort of weird web weird woven web so it's woven by the weirdness of God right God's providence and so everything we do impacts everybody else in the web and everything else in the web of creation the environment in which we live obviously those closer to us get impacted more with the ramifications of what we do in the web but there's a ripple effect that goes out and out beyond that so we're all connected in this weird woven web so when the word weird is used it's meant in a providential Christian sense and not in a fatalistic pagan sense so the first mistake is to translate the word weird as fate because that leads to a misunderstanding of what the the poem's about then we have the the engagement with the heresy of Pelagianism so Beowulf at the beginning of the poem is great deal of time is well let's go back one one step further before we even get to Beowulf Grendel this monster is outraged through envy at the fact that this beautiful poem or him is being sung or recited you know in the mead hall and it's a hymn to God's creation and to the beauty of God's creation and to Genesis the book of Genesis and it's an anger at the book of Genesis that causes Grendel to take to wreak his vengeance on the people and we told that he is a descendant of Cain but demonic descendant of Cain as if Cain's descendants are somehow interbred with demonic monstrous beings to make these monsters so this is something which is effectively demonic a worship of demonic forces a hater of all that's good true and beautiful hater of God's creation so that he's then kidding and he's so powerful that no warriors can withstand Grendel and then this mighty warrior arrives Beowulf and a great deal of time is spent on the fact that he's he's more powerful he's stronger than everybody else as a warrior and an athletic prowess and in order to prove it he says that he will he will not use any weapons he will fight Grendel just with his own physical strength with his with his grip in wrestling and he will not use any weapons whatsoever purely through the power of his own will if you like palagianism and they fight and Beowulf is superior Beowulf does win Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm and Grendel goes off and dies Beowulf is the hero of the moment the hero of the hour is the hero of the people but then Grendel's mother not surprisingly perhaps is angered by the fact that her son Grendel has been killed and she starts uh terrorizing the people and killing the people and nobody can uh can um resist her destructive power so Beowulf is caught upon again this time however he doesn't say i'm going to do it use my own strength i'm he's going to where's armor he also has this sword that's been wielded in battle successfully and and whoever's wielded this sword has won so Beowulf now is not not just the mightiest human person who ever lived he's also has the best technology that human ingenuity can manufacture this this this uh mighty sword which has never failed and so armed armored and strong he faces Grendel's mother and he's powerless the sword doesn't work against Grendel's mother his own strength doesn't work he's doomed he's going to die he's he can't do it through the strength of his own will the Palladian option doesn't work against this demonic power and then is if by magic we might want to use the word miracle this sword appears uh this sword which is a gift a supernatural gift and on the sword our moment on the hilt of the sword are illustrations of salvation history so the the whole connection with the bible uh the covenant the coming of christ it's on the hilt of the sword and it's with this miraculous sword which quite clearly represents grace like divine assistance supernatural assistance against the power of evil it's with this sword that Beowulf defeats Grendel's mother not that not the man-made sword and he makes it clear he states explicitly if he hadn't been for this gift he would have lost quickly so here we see the first uh the first two episodes of the poem illustrating the limits of human strength human will uh that however strong it is even if you're the strongest person in the world with the best technology that humanity can manufacture you cannot defeat the power of evil you need supernatural assistance which is signified by the sword as representing grace so this brings us to uh the third um part of the poem the final part of the poem um which is when Beowulf meets the dragon and again how a bloom seems to miss what to me are very obvious signs yeah once you learn to read literarity so you have your antennae twitching your allegorical antennae twitching so you're looking for signs you're looking for allegories uh because that's the way you read literarily it's the way you go deeper into the meaning of a work well when as soon as we hear and the final part of the poem that Beowulf hand picks 12 warriors right he hand picks 12 warriors immediately we should be thinking okay 12 people are chosen and we should be thinking okay well uh let's see where this is going one of the 12 the traitor raises the dragon's wrath by stealing treasure from the dragon's horde uh therefore the dragon unleashes its fury on the people forcing Beowulf even though now he's an old man to face the dragon uh face to face to facing combat and fight to the death with the dragon so when Beowulf goes to fight the dragon of the 11 remaining hand picked warriors apart from the traitor uh 10 run away and hide in the woods only one has the courage to stand by Beowulf in his fight to the death with the dragon when the dragon is destroyed um the other 10 comes skulking out of the woods and wig laughter the the one courageous one obviously in the the figure of st john uh the divine the one who stands behind beside christ at the cross with with with the women um he he he um basically uh rebukes them for their cowardice Beowulf dies but he dies victorius in the sense that the the dragon is vanquished we then have uh the final scene of the poem is of a huge mound burial mound that was the way that the kings and other people were buried in in in those times a huge burial mound on a headland overlooking the sea which would serve as like a lighthouse as a sign to prevent ships from being gate crashed uh for being being crashing on the rocks uh and the last thing we see this burial mound's been been buried in memorial in memorial of Beowulf there are 12 knights uh and going in a circle galloping a circle around the burial mound now think of that as an image as a symbolic image if if the memorial to Beowulf is like the church then the galloping in a circle is like eternity right it's not going to end it's an endless circle uh going around revolving around the center which is the memorial to to Beowulf uh and now is no longer 11 uh the the Judas figure the traitor has been replaced so the 12 apostles are about intact the 12 original bishops of the church so numerically just look at it now should we say algebraically that's the right word mathematically formulaically Beowulf hand picks 12 one of the 12 is a traitor who raises the wrath of the dragon of the of the the demonic force um of the remaining 11 when Beowulf faces the dragon in Mortal Kombat 10 runaway leaving only one the sand beside him out of the 12 and then at the end uh that the the traitor's been replaced and there were 12 again clearly this is an analog an analogy of the of the gospel story particularly the passion of Christ and we see the same thing in other works of literature i'm going to allude to that now to connect to make the connection uh the influence of Beowulf on other works so it's numerical signifiers or signifiers such as dates are ways in which um medieval writers conveyed a christian message uh so we see i'll discuss it when we get there but in Saguen and the green night things happen a certain time of the liturgical year to give deeper theological significance Dante's divine comedy happens a certain time of the liturgical year to give it deeper theological significance uh the uh the number of hens that the Chante clear has in the nun's priest tail uh has a deep theological significance um so um and we're going to discuss all this in future episodes of the authority but in other words the technique here the allegorical technique of significant signifying through the use of numbers or dates uh is is is is common and i'm going to end this discussion of Beowulf with probably the the the greatest expert on the poem uh arguably ever um certainly uh in the 20th century and that's uh someone who'd be known to many of us that jr are Tolkien now Tolkien of course is known to many of us most of us as the author of the Lord of the Rings and of the Hobbit and we will obviously see the definite similarities between uh the Hobbit and Beowulf right that someone steals from the dragon uh the dragon's wrath is right is is is raised in in in consequence so they are clearly you know stealing from a dragon horde clearly similarities but in actual fact and again i'm not going to give the game away because we'll be doing the Lord of the Rings in a later episode the Tolkien translated the Beowulf poem he was an expert in old English he he the language of the Anglo-Saxons he uh translated the whole of the Beowulf poem he gave uh the seminal lecture on the poem called the monster and the critics which is published subsequently as a as an academic essay which if you want to go deeper in the poem then go there and again he does what i do he the monster and the critics right the critics get the monster wrong as i've said Harold Bloom gets the whole poem wrong um so but Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings uses the same uh technique the Beowulf poet does to to draw parallels between his story which uh on a on a literal level seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the gospel but by drawing these analogies based upon dates and numbers um we can we can draw the connection of how there are parallels between the story and the gospel Tolkien used the word applicability that there are things in the story that are applicable beyond the story both to our own lives and also to the gospel and obviously the way the gospel connects to our own lives so here we see this masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon poetry golden age of of Catholicism in England by written by a monk Benedictine uh that we see a refutation of heresies such as the self-help heresy of Pelagianism and we see a reenactment if you like uh an analogous retelling of the story of the passion of Christ in Beowulf's fighting with the dragon so thanks as always for joining me next time we'll be going to an even greater poem uh than than Beowulf in fact arguably and probably the greatest poem ever written join me next time in the authority as we turn to look at the great poet Dante and his divine comedy this has been an episode of The Authority with Joseph Pierce brought to you by Tan for updates on new episodes and to support the authority and other great free content visit the authority podcast dot com to subscribe and use coupon code authority 25 to get 25 off your next order including books audiobooks and video courses by Joseph Pierce on literary giants such as Tolkien, Chesterton, Lewis, Shakespeare, and Bellach as well as Tan's extensive 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