Goldgyfan or Goldwlance: A Christian Apology for Beowulf and Treasure

The debate as to what extent Beowulf is a Christian poem often centers on the poet’s struggle to understand and reconcile its obvious pagan elements with its religious values.¹ One such area of concern is the hoard of references to treasure. While commentators have recognized the important presence of gift-exchange in Beowulf, they invariably disagree about what treasure represents and how it functions within the poem, especially in the final one third of the poem (lines 2200 to 3182) where Beowulf eagerly exchanges his life for the dragon’s buried treasure. A host of critics, including Kemp Malone, E. G. Stanley, Margaret Goldsmith, Eugene J. Crook, and Alan Bliss, question Beowulf’s motives for seeking the gold and conclude that he is guilty of avarice. Other critics, such as Willem Helder, Patricia Silber, Robert Creed, Henry Woolf, and Wade Tarzia, grapple with the dubious nature of the dragon’s hoard and offer a variety of explanations for its curse, plundering, and reburial. This article offers, in response to critics’ accusations of avarice and their uncertainty about buried treasure, a renewed investigation of the Beowulf-poet’s distinction between distributed treasure and unused treasure, for the former seems to be a metonymy for lordship and the Christian ideal, while the latter seems to be a perversion of them both.

Beginning in the early 1960s, commentators began to question Beowulf’s motives and behavior in the final section of the poem. One of the earliest critics to raise doubts was Malone, who despite proclaiming Beowulf “an ideal hero,” acknowledges that Beowulf seems particularly fond of the dragon’s hoard; for Malone, it symbolizes “the vanity of worldly goods.”² Two years later Stanley proposed that Beowulf is guilty of “avarice” because he not only takes solace in the fact that he has acquired the hoard but also desires to see the hoard before he dies.³

The next, most prolific condemnations of Beowulf came from Goldsmith, who first raised concerns about Beowulf’s avarice in her article “The Christian Theme of Beowulf.” In her first examination into the allegorical meaning of the poem, she asserts that “young Beowulf was humble and not covetous,” for he “did not desire Grendel’s gold,” nor did he retain any “royal rewards he gained at Heorot.”⁴ The older Beowulf, she claims, becomes covetous. After quoting biblical passages, such as Matthew 6:19–21 and 1 Timothy 6:10,⁵ as well as examining Beowulf’s behavior, Goldsmith concludes that “Beowulf, like Hygelac before him, was tainted with the sins of the dragon, arrogance and love of treasure” and ultimately sacrifices his soul and the lives of the Geats “for the sake of the gold.”⁶ A few years later, Goldsmith once again concluded that Beowulf, “the deluded old man,” has bartered “his life for the gold, [as] he has committed the dire folly of buying what is worthless at the greatest price.” Goldsmith continues, “Beowulf, blinded by arrogance and desire for the treasure, exchanges the remainder of his length of days for short-lived possession of the dragon’s gold.”⁷ The most comprehensive of Goldsmith’s attacks, however, appears in her book The Mode and Meaning of “Beowulf,” in which she sets out to prove that Beowulf is “lured as he nears death by the illusory solace of personal glory and great wealth.”⁸ Goldsmith’s conclusion, namely that Beowulf yields to the temptations of avarice, has convinced and invigorated even more scholars.

Following Goldsmith’s example, Crook continued the assault on Beowulf’s character by reproving the king for his “cursed course of action” in fighting the dragon.⁹ To support his claim, Crook reintroduces the fact that Beowulf once refused treasure in Grendel’s mere and now eagerly seeks it in the dragon’s barrow. This change in behavior leads Crook to conclude that Wiglaf, not Beowulf, shows “the promise of Christian nobility in the rejection of the things of this world which are the roots of greed and corruption.” Besides the poem, Crook also cites passages from St. Gregory...