Nam Virtus Perficitur in Infirmitate: Christian Baptism of the Heroic Tradition and the Battle of Maldon
Open Access
Author:
Babich, Nicholas
Area of Honors:
English
Degree:
Bachelor of Humanities
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. Scott Thompson Smith, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Xiaoye You, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Heroic Anglo-Saxon Old English Christian Catholic The Battle of Maldon Beowulf Epic
Abstract:
This honors thesis addresses the heroic protagonists in Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, particularly in the late fragmentary poem, The Battle of Maldon. The thesis seeks to defend the
Anglo-Saxon heroic persona as compatible in abstract terms with Christian ethics and doctrine,
although the persona originated in the pagan Germanic homelands. I have concluded that the
“Germanic hero” was in large part valued, preserved, and cultivated in the Christian tradition.
Early medieval Christianity had already cultivated a very similar figure in the image of Christ as
a suffering servant and His saints and martyrs, who all suffered for a greater, “heroic” end. This
end, Christian sanctification and perfection, grants the heroic genre a new and spiritually
profound dimension that augments an older, pagan, heroic system that existed in pre-Christian
Anglo-Saxon England.