Sulpicious Severus And Einhard: A Literary Analysis
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Sulpicious Severus, Bede, and Einhard are authors who each have a different opinion on how Christianity should affect a man. These three authors each write about different men who are all different but act enormously different. In Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Christianity's role was to revitalize the church and to eliminate the pagans, which Bede considered to be the largest threat to Christianity at the time of the book's writing. Contrarily, Christianity functions in Sulpitius Severus's work, Life of Saint Martin, as a way to promote peace, and a catalyst for numerous miracles. Saint Martin refuses to fight and by doing so is able to stop massive wars in addition to performing countless other miracles. In comparison,…show more content… There were lots of pagans in England where Bede spent his life, and his view on the role of Christianity was that it should inspire people to fight and drive off the evil pagans. In this way, Bede viewed the relationship of the church and the state as one where the church convinced and pressured the state to rid the land of the unbelievers. This view was, however, different than that of Sulpitious Severus who, as a man growing up in the 5th century in Aquitaine, believed that the function of Christianity in the temporal world is one in which the Christian man works many miracles. From Severus's work, we can see that he believes that a good Christian is one who converts many others through his miracles. Einhard, on the other hand, did not have the similar grand ideas about the role of Christianity. Instead, he believed that its function was simply to help out those in need and provide a basis for how good people should live. He writes ideal Christian man, Charlemagne, as one who is a good and respectable man. One who helps the poor, donates to the churches, and goes out of his way to provide aid to Christians in need. Throughout these three works, we can see that the idea of the function of Christianity changes based on the circumstances of the people who wrote the