Before England became the superpower we know today, it was a small country inhabited over time by many groups of people. First the Celts arrived in England, then the Romans and then the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons traveled to England from the northern countries of Germany, Norway and Sweden. When they arrived, they brought their gods with them. The religion of the Anglo-Saxons consisted of multiple gods and goddesses and their vision of Heaven and what it would be like. The Anglo-Saxons also loved poetry and used it to keep track of the history of their people. Beowulf is an epic poem passed down by the Anglo-Saxons from generation to generation. The poem is imbued with multiple elements of their pagan religion. However, when they immigrated to England and began telling the story of Beowulf, the locals began to listen to it and put their own spin on it. Douglas Wilson states: Through a heroic poem about pagans that never mentions Christ, Beowulf is the opposite of syncretistic compromise. It was written to highlight treachery as a way of life that plagued these pagan societies from within, and greed and plunder as a way of life that plagued them from without (regardless of whether they were the marauders of the victims). (30)In Attempting to convert the Anglo-Saxons, the Christians of that time changed Beowulf and incorporated many elements of Christianity into the poem. By incorporating elements of Christianity such as portraying Grendel as a descendant of Cain, mentioning the name of the one true God, and portraying the hero Beowulf as a Christ figure, Roman Catholic Christians hoped to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity and instill power in them and the hope of the one true God. First, the Christian... in the center of the sheet... and the phrases in the mouths of the characters, which relate the hero, Beowulf, to the Christian hero, Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic Christians hoped to convert pagans to Christianity and lead them to what they believed to be the only truth, Jesus Christ. Beowulf Works Cited. The Longman Anthology British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and Kevin JH Dettmar. 4th ed. vol. 1. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 36-107. Print.Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Guide Beowulf. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. Print.Fry, Donald. The poet of Beowulf. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Print.Streissguth, Thomas. Understanding Beowulf. Farmington Hills: Lucent Books, 2004. Print. MacArthur's Study Bible. Ed. John MacArthur. Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2006. Print.Wilson, Douglas. “The Anglo-Saxon gospel”. Touchstone. July/August (2007). 30-34. Net.