“Dream of the Rood” Marketing for Christianity

The poem “Dream of the Rood” is an example of dream/vision poetry that was intended to persuade people (pagans) into Christianity, salvation, and acknowledging that God is omnipotent. In Anglo-Saxon culture, it was very important that they followed a hero in this case that “hero” is God, in the poem he is depicted as a hero who is making “with haste” his death because he wasn’t afraid of dying. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator is having a dream where he is talking to the cross in which Jesus Christ was crucified, and he is in awe of the beauty of the gems that decorated the cross. As he continues to dream he notes how glorious the tree is but then notices the cross is stained with blood as he remembers the crucifixion of Christ whose blood was seen as a treasure. Pagans didn’t believe in God and were reluctant to, they believed that when you died you would be welcomed to dine and have supper with the Gods this was also promoted by Christianity. The poem talks about how we will feast with God but it is the God of Gods who in their eyes was only the best, this was used to “lure” in pagans into listening to the good news that came from God which is what the poem asks the reader to do in the end. The Dream of the Rood is basically introducing “pop culture” of the time into a religious passage, pop culture being Christianity because they were trying to popularize it. The poem is written in a way that will appeal to the common man aka a pagan/a sinner where there is a hero who overcomes death and a warrior, heroism was popularized and allowed Christianity to spread through most of the Western World.