Finnesburg Fragment - Religious Elements

Religious Elements

Though the Finnesburg Fragment itself has little mention of religious elements the text of Beowulf does. In recent times several critics have offered explanations for the Christian elements of the poem. Christopher M. Cain specifically suggests that the Christian author wrote the poem with parallels to the Old Testament to show the pre-Christian world that the epic takes place in. This unique approach highlights the fact that the characters such as Beowulf and Hrothgar act in a way that is still moral without being explicitly Christian.

In contrast C. Tidmarsh Major took a different approach and examined the state of religion at the time the poem was likely written. In the Middle Ages he asserts that Christianity was not at all as uniform as it is now, and neither was Germanic paganism. In fact he simply argues that it is a literary example of the overlapping and melding of pagan and Christian beliefs as they encountered one another.

Both arguments are compelling and offer possible insight into why the seemingly conflicting theologies are seen in the poem and description of the heroes but absent from the purely historical account of the Finnesburg Fragment.