Literature is the most conclusive way to evaluate the past: peoples are overthrown, the grandest of monuments will fall, but literature preserves the spotless mentality of a vanished people for a long time. But even then literature can be lost: their homes are burned or looted, their pages rot, and the language changes. It is often a sad fate that we have only a few pieces left from a bygone era, the only works preserved through the centuries, those translated and passed down. It is therefore our duty to decipher them to understand the minds of our ancestors. This is the condition of British literature. We look at the composite piece and see works such as the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD), Rood's Dream (anonymous author, date unknown), Beowulf (c. 750 AD), and The History of the King of Great Britain (ca 1135-38 AD). Now, these, of course, are only a part of the whole of Old English literature, for example it will do masterfully in examining the progression of English religious tendencies. Around the seventh century AD the English people were largely converted to Catholicism, although their beliefs and traditions still remained largely foreign for several centuries afterwards. Interestingly, one of the earliest pieces of British history, The Dream of Rood, is written with a very Catholic feeling, both in doctrine and style. Although probably theologically unsound, the poem does not appear to have a strong pagan influence. Another similar work, although without as strong a Catholic style, is Cædmon's Hymn (Bede), which has the same doctrinal ideas, but contains little or no obvious pagan influence. Of course The Dream of Rood was an earlier work, but both come from early English Catholicism. The next step in the progression appears to be Beowulf, which draws from mythologies and various pagan sources but still contains strong Christian underpinnings. Although this work occurred only twenty years after the above-mentioned Catholic pious works, it appears to be a notable step forward towards English paganism. And finally we come to Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing his History of the Kings of Great Britain four hundred years later for the purpose of progress in the church. In this work one cannot help but observe the references to the origins of the British inhabitants coming from Troy (as told in Homer's Iliad) - which very well may contain something true - and praying to the goddess Diana who guides them in Great Britain..