Between Two Worlds: How Medieval Writers Saved the Pagan Past While Preaching Christianity

In early medieval England and Ireland, Christian writers faced a dilemma that feels uncomfortably familiar today. They were charged with spreading the Christian faith, yet they inherited a world saturated with pagan stories—gods, heroes, monster-slaying warriors, and funeral pyres. Church doctrine labeled these traditions false or even demonic. The question was unavoidable: do you erase the past, or do you preserve it—knowing it contradicts your beliefs?

This tension shaped some of the most important texts of the early Middle Ages. Three distinct strategies emerged, each revealing not only how medieval writers navigated faith and history, but how we still do the same—often less honestly.

Bede: Preserve the Framework, Reverse the Judgment

The Venerable Bede (673–735) wrote the first comprehensive history of the English people. His solution was subtle. Paganism is preserved in full—genealogies, warrior values, even month names honoring old gods—but its meaning is reinterpreted. In Bede’s account of King Edwin’s conversion, the pagan high priest Coifi publicly declares his own religion worthless and destroys his temple without consequence. Pagan belief is shown not as evil, but as empty and foolish.

The structure remains intact; the moral verdict changes. Bede never pretends neutrality. He openly writes Christian history, even while relying on a pagan cultural skeleton to do it.

The Beowulf Poet: Moral Ambiguity Without Resolution

The anonymous Christian poet who composed Beowulf took a different approach. He celebrates a pagan hero in lavish detail, opening with a ship burial explicitly forbidden by Christian teaching. Yet the monsters Beowulf fights are interpreted through Christian theology—Grendel is descended from Cain. When Beowulf dies on a funeral pyre, the poet refuses to explain his fate. “Heaven swallowed the smoke.” Salvation or damnation is left unresolved.

This strategy preserves the nobility of pagan heroes without declaring them saved or damned. The tension is visible and unresolved, deliberately leaving space for moral complexity.

The Irish Monks: Radical Preservation with Honest Doubt

Ireland’s conversion occurred without Roman imperial enforcement, allowing its monasteries to become unparalleled centers of preservation. Irish monks copied everything: Christian texts, pagan myth, genealogies, heroic epics, and supernatural legends. They did not reconcile contradictions—they annotated them. In the margins they wrote things like, “I do not believe this,” or “The Church does not accept this.” Then they copied the text anyway.

Their solution was radical honesty. Preserve all of it. Admit your doubts. Let future generations decide.

The Modern Failure

We still use all three medieval strategies today—strategic reinterpretation, moral ambiguity, and selective preservation. But we largely abandon the Irish monks’ honesty. Instead of stating our biases openly, we claim objectivity. We revise textbooks, remove uncomfortable material, and pretend we are simply showing history “as it actually was.”

We aren’t. Every generation reshapes the past to serve the present. That’s inevitable. The real failure is pretending we don’t.

Five hundred years from now, readers will see our blind spots as clearly as we see those of medieval monks. The question is not whether we shape history—but whether we are honest about the shaping.

Perhaps the best model remains the Irish monks: write it all down, state your doubts in the margins, and let the future judge.

Episode 2: Writing Under the Emperors

Augustus commissioned Virgil's Aeneid to legitimize empire through mythology. Aeneas's divinely-destined founding of Rome made Augustus's rule seem inevitable and holy. Yet Virgil embedded darkness—Dido's suicide-curse, Turnus's brutal killing—showing empire's cost even while celebrating it. The bargain: write what the emperor wants, preserve complexity, achieve immortality.

Ovid learned that under autocracy, even love poetry is political. His Ars Amatoria—a witty seduction guide—contradicted Augustus's moral legislation. Exiled to the Black Sea's frozen edge for "a poem and a mistake," Ovid spent his final decade writing heartbreaking pleas for mercy that were ignored. His punishment demonstrated that empire controls culture completely, punishing independence as harshly as rebellion.

Seneca embodied intellectual compromise under tyranny. Advising the teenage Nero, he wrote beautiful Stoic philosophy about virtue while enabling a murderer. He justified Agrippina's assassination to the Senate, accumulated massive wealth while preaching simplicity, and discovered that trying to moderate tyranny from within only leads to complicity. Nero eventually ordered his suicide—Seneca died in a bath, offering water "as libation to Jupiter the Liberator," performing Stoic virtue to the end. His life proved empire makes integrity impossible.

Juvenal survived by waiting. His savage satires attacked corruption brilliantly—but only about dead emperors. "I'll only speak about those whose ashes rest along the Appian Way," he wrote. His strategy worked; he survived. But Rome lost the ability to criticize power in the moment, developing a culture of self-censorship and delayed truth-telling.

The Lesson: Four writers, four strategies for navigating autocracy—collaboration, defiance, compromise, delayed resistance. Each paid differently. Together they show that under empire, all writing becomes political. You can control people's words, but not what they read between the lines. That ambiguity—survival with hidden meaning—may be the only victory writers get under tyranny.

The Roman Republic didn’t fall to an army. It fell to a story. And Julius Caesar wrote it.

This is the first episode exploring how Roman writers wielded language as a weapon during the Republic’s collapse. Next week: poets and philosophers navigating imperial Rome. Today: four voices that shaped power itself.

CAESAR: THE GENERAL WHO WROTE HIS OWN MYTH

Picture Rome, 52 BCE. Rumors swirl about Caesar’s growing power in Gaul. Then his *Commentaries* arrive—not gossip, but Caesar’s own account. Written in third person.

“Caesar decided to attack.” “Caesar showed mercy.”

Brilliant. It sounds objective, like a neutral historian documenting his greatness. But Caesar controls every word.

When describing the Helvetii migration, he writes: “Caesar, fearing devastation, decided it was necessary to prevent their passage.” He frames aggression as defense. Romans see him as protector, not conqueror.

Darker still: when describing massacres, he uses clinical language. “It was necessary.” “No other choice.” Violence becomes inevitable. You finish reading convinced Caesar did what any reasonable commander would do.

He wasn’t writing history—he was making it. By the time the Senate realized his danger, Romans already believed in Caesar the Hero. You can’t fight a legend with a committee.

CICERO: THE VOICE SCREAMING INTO THE VOID

If Caesar built myths, Cicero defended the Republic. With only words.

In 63 BCE, he exposed Catiline’s conspiracy with devastating speeches: *“How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?”* Not a question—an accusation. The Senate erupts. Catiline flees. The Republic is saved by a speech.

But Cicero’s weapon only works if people believe in the system. By the 40s BCE, they don’t.

His 900+ private letters reveal a man watching his world collapse. When Caesar crosses the Rubicon, Cicero is paralyzed: *“If I support Pompey, I risk Caesar’s vengeance. If I stay silent, I betray everything.”*

After Caesar’s assassination, Cicero delivers the *Philippics* against Mark Antony—his final stand. Antony orders his execution. Soldiers display Cicero’s severed head and hands in the Forum. The Republic’s greatest voice, literally silenced.

SUETONIUS: WRITING THE AUTOPSY

150 years later, Suetonius asks: *Why couldn’t the Republic contain Caesar?*

He describes Caesar’s final months—dictator for life, image on coins, golden Senate throne. Then the fatal moment: senators arrive with honors. Caesar doesn’t stand. To Romans, this was kingship. The Republic was founded on overthrowing kings.

On the Ides of March, they stab him 23 times. But killing the man doesn’t kill the myth. Civil war follows. Augustus becomes emperor. The Republic never returns.

Suetonius understands: *Republics die slowly, then all at once, when ambition outgrows institutions.*

MARCUS AURELIUS: THE PHILOSOPHER KING

Centuries later, Marcus Aurelius wrestles with power in his *Meditations*—private journals never meant for publication.

*“If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it.”*

He’s the most powerful man alive, reminding himself power is illusion. *“Soon you will be dust.”*

Yet even he fails. He persecutes Christians. Names his son Commodus as successor—one of Rome’s worst emperors. The philosopher-king couldn’t escape empire’s machinery.

CONCLUSION

Four writers. One question: *Can republics survive their own success?*

Rome’s answer was no. But their tool—political writing—is still ours. Every campaign memoir, every tweet follows their 2,000-year-old playbook.

**After the New Year: Virgil’s propaganda epic, Ovid’s dangerous poetry, Seneca advising tyrants, Juvenal’s savage satires. If today was how writing shaped politics, next week is how politics shaped what could—and couldn’t—be written.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​