Romantic Values in Christianity

            In Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Britain, romance played a large role in literature.  I find it interesting to note how it also expanded into Christianity, endowing the faith with ideals of lost-ness, knighthood, and love. 

The Norton introduction on Romance states that romance is characterized by “a tripartite structure: integration… disintegration; and reintegration.”  That is, it deals with lost-ness and found-ness.  Sometimes, though, it says, “the desired pattern can… be frustrated” (141).  Such is certainly the case in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  In this romance, Christian values are at play throughout.  Gawain prays and attempts to live by Christian virtue as he sets out on his spiritual quest.  However, he fails.  Because of that, he returns home feeling irrevocably stained by sin, and certainly lost in the romantic sense. 

Even more intentionally Christian works demonstrate the impact of the romantic ideal. The impact of the ethic of knighthood shines through in “The Dream of the Rood.”  Christ climbs the cross to conquer death, and then “was victorious in venturing forth, / mighty and triumphant  when he returned with many” from the storming of Hell (150-1).  Here, as well as in “Corpus Christi Carol” where Jesus is explicitly called “a knight” (9), the romantic ideal of knighthood has found a foothold in Christian poetry.  The Biblical Jesus is not a warrior, at least during his life on Earth, but these poems identify him as a knight in the Anglo-Saxon style.

In Anglo-Saxon writing, even stories where Jesus himself is not made a knight invoke the Anglo-Saxon value of battle.  In Judith, the saintly maid wins glory through an act of war, and she receives spoils of war just as a warrior would do. 

Even the value of romantic love has an expression in Medieval Christianity.  The “Guide for Anchoresses” discusses suffering for the sake of love for Christ by comparing it to romantic love, saying “What do men and women suffer for false love and for unclean love?  And how much more they would still be willing to suffer!” (140).  The text uses romantic love as a metaphor for love for Christ.  Indeed, the practice of wearing wedding rings upon entering monastic life demonstrates the way that romantic love found a counterpart within Christianity, devalued though marriage was at the time.

This integration of surrounding cultural values into Christianity could be seen as corruption of the faith.  However, it could also be seen as an attempt (intentional or not) by the Church to make the story of faith relevant within the new cultural context.  Such has been the practice throughout the history of Christianity, and it takes place in our own time too.  It is helpful to consider how Christian writers used their cultural values, such as the romantic ideal, and shaped them in a new way to express their faith.