I watched a couple more movies on DVD over the weekend. First I rounded off the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. The last movie was quite a mishmash, wasn’t it? In a way, in contrast to most viewers, I actually liked the last two more than the first.

Oh, Pirates III was a mess. No question. Whatever possessed the people at Disney to start the movie the way they did, knowing that lots of children would see it? I have to assume they got a really bad shipment of cocaine in Beverly Hills that week. And how were we supposed to build sympathy for a bunch of characters who kept betraying one another?

On the other hand, I loved the visuals. I thought they finally used the ships to good effect. And I appreciated the effort to allow Jack Sparrow to grow, and even to have heroic moments.

I also watched Beowulf for the second time. I still find it impossible to actually like the film much, but I do have to give the writers (including Neil Gaiman) credit for leaving the warrior some dignity. They start out with a predictable, postmodern deconstruction of the hero as being essentially a blusterer and a liar. Yet they give him credit for real courage, and in the end they allow him to sacrifice himself in a way that even they recognize as genuinely heroic.

Heroism, as you’ve doubtless noticed, is one of my hobbyhorses. I’m not a hero myself, but I cherish it and promote it. I think of myself as a sort of skald (court poet) for men who deserve to be remembered better than they have been.

I spoke slightingly of Olaf Haraldsson’s (St. Olaf’s) sainthood yesterday, noting that he fathered an illegitimate son. I don’t exactly regret it, and I’ll certainly do it again, because when it gets down to it, I’ve never liked the man much. But there’s more to it than I implied.

The standard image of St. Olaf, as displayed in thousands of Norwegian churches prior to the Reformation, was of a crowned king on a throne, with an axe and orb in his hands. Very often he was shown with a dragon under his feet, and the dragon had a man’s head.

The best picture of such an image I could find in Wikimedia Commons is, alas, badly painted. Some restorer seems to have missed the point on this one. The dragon’s head is supposed to look just like Olaf. The dragon Olaf is treading under his feet is himself.

The Church wasn’t stupid. They knew that Olaf’s early life had been carnal in all kinds of ways. The message of the Olaf-headed dragon under his feet was that Olaf had fought against his nature and overcome it. His greatest act of heroism was defeating himself.

And that’s what real heroes always do, saints or not, Christians or not. In that lonely place of life and death, where they stand between the helpless innocent and the monstrous evil, they have to thrust down their natural, human hunger to preserve their own lives at any cost. They have to die to themselves.

By extension, that makes the whole Christian life a heroic adventure, in small and large ways.