The Battle of Tours, 732 ADThe excellent points made in the following reflection are in response to a review of the anti-Christian movie, Beowulf, that appeared on the FrontPageMag blog. The original article points out that this movie is another "hackneyed and predictable" Hollywood "attempt to try to depict pagans as 'open-minded and 'free-spirited' peoples, or, quite anachronistically, as Medieval counterparts to the modern secular liberal. The idea being that pagan peoples -- unencumbered by the suffocating forces of Christianity -- were/are happy, passionate folk, able to live life to the fullest."
Hackneyed, predictable and tiresome. Thanks for the warning!
The Following is from The Brussels Journal
Another depiction ubiquitous to these types of movies is the notion that Christianity, which at one point Beowulf contemptuously calls “the weeping religion of martyrs,” is an effete faith that all “true men” – warriors such as Beowulf – eschewed. […] This in fact is a well entrenched motif, best given intellectual grounding by the many writings of Freidrich Nietzsche, who maintained that Christianity is the religion of the weak, while atheism, paganism, or even “Mohammedanism” – anything, really – is more conducive to the cultivation of manly virtues. […]
But this begs the question: If Christianity was, and is, some sort of un-masculine religion, meant to sap the "aristocratic" class of their manhood and arête – that is, manly virtue and excellence – why then did the ruling warrior class of Europe ever come to accept it in the first place? Why did the warrior emperor Constantine embrace Christianity in the 4th century? Who forced him – the persecuted church and its anchorite fathers? They had no authority; it is only due to Christianity's intrinsic appeal that it spread – to both the people as well as their warrior-leaders. Following Constantine, there have been a number of heroic leaders who chose – not through coercion or any pressing need – to embrace Christianity: such as the Carolingians, including Charles "the Hammer" Martel, who Christian civilization owes no small debt for its existence (battle of Tours 732) and his descendants, most notably Charlemagne. Had these staunch Christians not defended the borders of Christendom from both pagan and Islamic forces, there would be no Western civilization to speak of.
