The alliterative poems Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight unite traditional Celtic mythology with Christian orthodoxy to produce a distinctly :: Essays Papers

The alliterative poems Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight unite traditional Celtic mythology with Christian orthodoxy to produce a distinctly British Christianity The Catholic church in fourteenth century England was undergoing a convulsion. The church was unable to explain why God inflicted the Black Plague on the citizenry, or to conjure up his mercy and end the suffering and death. The Babylonian Captivity saw the papacy in Avignon, under the influence if not the direct control of the hated French. Even when Rome once again became the seat of the Holy See, the Great Western Schism divided the loyalties of Christians between the two rival popes -- who excommunicated each other and all the other's followers. Corruption among the hierarchy of priests and bishops seemed epidemic. As ever, "The obvious alternative, for anyone wishing to withdraw from the ideological and bureaucratic complexities of the Christian empire, was to return to the simplicity of the Church's founder," (Saul 544). We still see this today, in evangelical and fundamentalist Christian sects. Lollardy was one reaction to the church's apparent loss of direction. John Wyclif and his followers disavowed the authority of the papacy, the truth of the sacraments, and the dogma and doctrines of the Catholics church. The alliterative poems Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight also turn away from the orthodoxy of the Catholic church. By the subtle yet simple technique of excluding Catholic doctrines, and by adapting the mythical British past into the Christian present, these poems illustrate the development of a specifically British Christianity. While the poems may seem to approve of Lollardy, we would be in error in believing that. Rather, these heretical views all flow from a common wellspring in the English character that would later lead to Protestantism and the establishment of the Church of England. Veneration of the Virgin Mary was to be scornfully dubbed "Mariolotry" by Protestants, but was at the time (and remains) a central doctrine of Catholicism. Teachings of the church "formed so vital a part of literary backgrounds" (Ackerman 81) that someone unfamiliar with Catholicism would fail to understand the literature of the period. Both Pearl and Gawain treat as normal veneration of the Virgin Mary. This is, however, the only piece of Catholic orthodoxy these poems contain; all the other Christian symbols and allusions are taken directly from the Bible, not the church. Gawain does mention in passing St. Julian (774) and St.