Heroism and Saxon Achievement: The Old English poetic kian pishkar In 797, the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin, resident in the Frankish slant of Charlemagne, inquired of Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne, Quid Hinieldus cum Christo (Dümmler 183) (What has Ingeld to do with Christ?), raising issues frame the relationship between Christianity and Germanic society and culture explored by numerous modern commentators, from J. R. R. Tolkien to Michael D. Cherniss and others. By his question, Alcuin declared succinctly his protestation disapproval of the fondness displayed by the monks of Lindisfarne (and doubtless elsewhere) for listening to brave song and poetry rather than to sacred wisdom. Ingeld was a imposing figure from Germanic tradition whose renown is attested by the bareness of the allusion to his story in the Beowulf poem (lines 2020 ff.) and the weight of ascendant legend with which Alcuin burdened him (Tolkien, Beowulf 22).1 Christ was of course the proper ideali stic for Christian monks. Alcuins rhetorical query stands in a long tradition initiated by St. Paul in his bet Epistle to the Corinthians: [W]hat concord hath Christ with Belial? (6:15). The paradox was perhaps expressed adept clearly by the early perform Father Tertullians What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

What has the Academy to do with the church? or St. Jeromes three-fold query What does Horace have to do with the Psalter? Maro with the church doctrine? Cicero with the Apostles? (Brown 482). As Maro was Virgil, the pagan poet of the heroic epic on the initiation of Rome, Jeromes question most closely parallels that of Alcuin in the face-off of pre-Christian heroism to Chri stian teachings. It is obvious from the lite! rary and historic stage setting that for Alcuin the pagan and human beingly nature of the songs entertain the Lindisfarne community do them utterly unsuited for recitation in the monastic refectory where attendance should be given not to the concerns of this world but to the next. In the...If you want to get a across-the-board essay, order it on our website:
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