Review: THE BRETHREN by Robert Merle

Hankering for fiction set in sixteenth century France? I recently discovered THE FORTUNES OF FRANCE by Robert Merle, a series of thirteen historical novels that span the years 1547 to 1661. Written in French from 1977 to 2003, the books follow the Siorac family of Périgord through the tumultous Wars of Religion and into the reign of the Bourbon kings. The first three novels (THE BRETHREN, CITY OF WISDOM AND BLOOD, and HERETIC DAWN) have recently been translated into English by Professor T. Jefferson Kline and published by Pushkin Press. Having just ripped through the first volume, I fully understand why this captivating series has sold over five million copies in France.

Pierre de Siorac, a Huguenot doctor turned spy, narrates the first six books; his son picks up the thread in the remaining volumes. In Book I, THE BRETHREN, Pierre recounts the establishment of the Siorac family in remote southwestern France. Consulting his father’s Book of Reason, a combination diary and account book, for information on events that occured before his own birth, Pierre describes the arrival of his father Jean de Siorac and his comrade in arms, Jean de Sauveterre, in Périgord after successful service in the French army. The pair, close as real brothers (hence, “The Brethren”), pool their plunder to buy the castle of Mespech, a neglected property they soon coax into a thriving estate. Staunch Protestants, they work to establish Mespech as a reformed stronghold, but the resistance of Jean’s wife Isabelle, a devout and unwavering Catholic, complicates their plans and threatens their allegiances. Furthermore, as soldiers and wealthy landowners, the two Jeans must constantly weigh their loyalty to Catholic king and country against steadfast devotion to their new faith.

The clash between Catholicism and Calvinism--strife that plunges France into an era of long and bloody wars--not only defines the novel's political landscape but colors the characters' interactions. The religious impasse between Pierre's parents affects their children’s relationships with them and with each other, as well as the servants’ and retainers’ relationships with their overlords. Many of the servants continue their Catholic practices in private, and the two Jeans often disagree on how strictly to punish infractions against the Protestantism they impose on family and estate. Moreover, Mespech’s adherence to the Reform, long undeclared, causes friction with neighbors and municipal authorities. In recounting the events of his childhood, Pierre finds his loyalty torn between respect and admiration for his Protestant father and attachment to his Catholic mother and the female servants who raise him. His engaging voices captures the tone of a difficult era, one which forced people to make difficult choices between the demands of heart and mind and soul. With great finesse, author Robert Merle chanels the religious strife fracturing the kingdom into the specific personal conflicts that power the narrative, showing how the abstractions of competing religious philosophies play out in concrete fashion within intimate circles of family and friends.

Despite its theological underpinnings, however, THE BRETHREN reads like a swashbuckling novel reminiscent of an Alexandre Dumas. A master at creating original and memorable characters, from defiant gypsies to doting wetnurses to disabled veterans to blustering butcher-barons, Merle embroils his large cast in an endless series of entertaining and cleverly interwoven escapades. Quick-paced and wide-ranging, the novel unfolds with delightful Rabelaisian exuberance. At the end of this first volume, with Mespech secure and flourishing, young Pierre, as second son, sets out for Montpellier to take up medical studies. Ready and eager to follow, I look forward to his continued adventures. With twelve more volumes to read, I'm certain to be busy for quite some time!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Merle (1908-2004) was born in French Algeria and moved to Paris at the age of eight after the death of his interpreter father. He graduated from the Sorbonne and served as a professor of English Literature at several universities. During World War II, he was conscripted as an interpreter in the British Expeditionary Force and was captured by the Germans. After the war, he won the Prix Goncourt for a novel based on his experiences at Dunkirk. Another of his novels was translated into English and filmed as The Day of the Dolphin (1973) starring George C. Scott. He wrote numerous novels, a biography of Oscar Wilde, and several translations, including one of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His major achievement was the thirteen volumes of the Fortune de France (1977-2003), whose popularity have made him a household name. The first three books of the series have recently been translated into English by T. Jefferson Kline. For further information, see this article in The Guardian.

Hans Holbein and The Dance of Death

For centuries, the short, gray days of November, heralds of winter, have prompted Christians to remember and honor their beloved dead and to reflect upon their own inevitable end. The Middle Ages embodied this heightened awareness in visual depictions of The Dance of Death (Danse macabre). In this vivid allegory, a personified Death summons individuals from all walks of life to join a chain of frolicking skeletons. Adorning churches and private chapels, such paintings reminded viewers that death spares no one and all, status notwithstanding, share the same ultimate fate.

St. Nicolas's Church, Tallin

The visual tradition of the Dance of Death continued well into the seventeenth century. In the early sixteenth, the German painter Hans Holbein modified the tradition in a way thought to reflect burgeoning Reformation theology. Instead of depicting Death's victims united in an unbroken chain after their passing, he fashioned a stunning series of sketches wherein Death snatches victims away in the midst of their normal daily activities. Pope, king, nobleman, merchant, old woman, priest, peddler, child: a grisly skeleton comes for each at the moment he or she least expects it. Death is as likely to arrive during the performance of sinful actions as charitable ones; good works provide no protection from its ravages.

Hans Lützelburger of Basel cut Holbein's sketches into wood blocks sometime between 1523 and 1526. The woodcuts soon appeared in proofs with German titles. It wasn't until 1538, however, when 

the drawings were published in book form by the Treschsel brothers in Lyon, France, that Holbein's vision reached a wider audience.

Les Simulachres & historiees faces de la mort, autant elegamment pourtraictes, que artificiellement imaginées (Images and Illustrated Facets of Death, as elegantly depicted as they are artfully conceived) features forty-one of Holbein's woodcuts. An illustrative Bible verse crowns each engraving; below the picture follows a short quatrain in French by the poet Gilles Corrozet. The book was intended to help Christians of both persuasions prepare for death by meditating on the vanity of status and possessions, which offered no protection from Death's violence.

Here are a few of Holbein's more striking engravings:

The King (Note the fleur-de-lys and the marked resemblance to François I)

The Young Child

The Physician

The Abbess

The Ploughman

The Drunkard

The Soldier

You can view the entirety of the Simulachres with their Bible verses and accompanying poems here. The work was published at least six times in French by 1562. Innumerable copies in various languages followed through the nineteenth century. The popularity of the work attests to Holbein's genius. By rendering the horror of sudden death visible and viscerally palpable, he reminds viewers to take not a single moment of life for granted. A valuable lesson, even today.

Memento mori. Death comes for all--don't let it catch you by surprise.

Review: THE CHALICE by Nancy Bilyeau

Nancy Bilyeau's THE CHALICE (Touchstone, March 2013) offers an engrossing and original take on aspects of the Tudor era that historical fiction seldom explores. The novel presents an enticing blend of history, romance and page-turning suspense that invigorates the discussion of religious turmoil in England and provides an entertaining and convincing escape into an important yet often overlooked stretch of Henry's reign.

When Henry VIII closes religious houses across England, novice Joanna Stafford, daughter of an English nobleman and one of Katherine of Aragon's Spanish ladies-in-waiting, hopes to supplement her meagre pension by establishing a tapestry-weaving business. The day she lugs home the first piece of her new loom, her life changes--but not in any way she'd expected. Her cousin Henry Courtenay, a trusted relation of the king, and his wife Gertrude arrive to invite her to spend time with them in London. A high-ranking family loyal to the Catholic faith, the Courtenays secretly scheme to place the Princess Mary on the throne and restore the true faith in England. Joanna finds herself swept up in a plot targeting King Henry, a plot that hinges on Joanna herself. Years earlier, a seer who tried to prevent Henry VIII's divorce had declared Joanna to be "the one who would come after"--the one who, after hearing the entire prophecy as revealed by two additional seers, would set in motion events that would alter England's history. Joanna's involvement with Gertrude Courtenay, and through her, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain, propels Joanna to embrace her fate and race to uncover the prophecy before Henry fathers the sons that will ensure the supremacy of the Reformed Faith in England forever.

THE CHALICE places the religious turmoil unleashed by Henry VIII in an international context, capturing the turbulence of a time when Henry seemed to waver in his religious convictions and his opponents nurtured high hopes that Charles V might set things right. The prominence of the Emperor and his representatives in THE CHALICE is a splendid addition to standard Tudor fare. Despite being one of the three preeminent monarchs of the Tudor era, Charles seldom features in historical fiction. Although he does not appear in person in THE CHALICE, his constant menace finds expression through the machinations and relentless persistence of his wily ambassador Eustace Chapuys, with whom Joanna forges a reluctant alliance. THE CHALICE dramatizes how Henry's decision to break with Rome upset the balance of power in Europe and not only placed England in danger of being invaded by Spain and France, but encouraged France to flirt openly with an Ottoman alliance. Joanna's involvement with Imperial agents in an international plot underscores how Henry changed not just the course of English history, but that of all Catholic Europe. I have been immersed in research about Charles V for my own novel, set in France during the same years as THE CHALICE (1538-40), and it is exciting to see another author evoke the complicated contours of this era.

Bilyeau balances this broad political focus with attention to the effects of Henry's actions on the lives of individual believers. The novel's principal characters all confront decisions that pit their personal beliefs against the will of the king. Powerful noblemen must choose between allegiance to their faith or to their anointed monarch; dispossessed nuns must betray their vows and marry in order to survive; defrocked monks consider violence in order to protect holy relics; servants must decide whether to protect or reveal the activities of their recusant employers. Joanna's personal conflicts are many and involve her heart as well as her head. Looming foremost is the question of whether to pursue the prophecy despite her aversion to such practices and what to do with the knowledge once she gains it. With courage and great personal sacrifice, Joanna follows a course of action that offers her Catholic brethren in England continued hope yet does not betray her principles. Convincing in her faith and endearing in her loyalties, Joanna is a heroine to admire. I look forward to following her on further adventures. In THE CHALICE, a stand-alone novel that may be read in conjunction with the author's debut, THE CROWN (2012), Bilyeau has crafted a deft novel that will appeal to readers of suspense as well historical enthusiasts looking for a unique take on a popular era.

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Come back tomorrow to read my interview with Nancy Bilyeau about THE CHALICE. To learn more about Nancy and her books, visit her website.

This review is part of the Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tour for THE CHALICE. To read the other reviews and interviews that are part of the tour, see the tour schedule. 

Pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts: Social Media and Revolution

Much has been written in recent months about the role social media has played in fomenting and facilitating the Arab spring, allowing revolutionaries to express their views and coordinate their actions. According to a detailed feature article in the 17 December 2011 issue of The Economist, social media, albeit of a different kind, played an identical, pivotal role in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. "How Luther Went Viral" traces the spread of the German ex-monk's ideas through quickly-printed, widely-circulated pamphlets, crude and graphic broadsheets, and re-worded popular songs. Just as modern digital media fan the simmering discontent of those opposed to authoritarian regimes, the sharing of print media in sixteenth-century markets and town squares helped precipitate the Protestant revolution. Today's "[s]ocial media are not unprecedented; rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition." A fascinating and worthwhile read.

Mary Sharratt: The Crucible of Faith, Part 2

Here is the second half of Mary Sharratt's guest post on resistance to the Reformation in northern England:

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The Crucible of Faith: Reformation and Resistance in Northern England

by Mary Sharratt

[Mary Tudor's] successor was her half-sister, Elizabeth I, whose private religious convictions remain nebulous. Publicly Elizabeth had little choice but to embrace the Protestant cause. As Anne Boleyn’s daughter, the Catholic Church regarded her as illegitimate and this would have left her unfit for the throne, since her father’s many illegitimate sons would have taken precedence. A female monarch who elected not to marry and produce an heir of her own religion, Elizabeth relied on support from hardline Protestants whose views may have been far more extreme than her own. Still, at the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth appeared to tolerate Catholics as long as they attended Anglican services and kept a low profile. However, her stance became increasingly aggressive in reaction to a series of Catholic plots to dispose, and even assassinate her, and place her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, on the throne.

The Northern Rebellion of 1569, the first of several such plots, left law-abiding English Catholics in a very difficult place, especially after Pope Pius V issued his 1570 Papal Bull, which excommunicated Elizabeth and proclaimed that it was her Catholic subjects’ duty to overthrow her. The pope’s uncompromising stance made English Catholics traitors to the crown by default. Far more politically astute than her half-sister, Elizabeth used this Papal Bull as an excuse to end her policy of religious toleration. She told her subjects that they must choose between her and this foreigner. By the 1570s, being Catholic was regarded as traitorous and subversive, whether one took part in plots or not.

By the 1580s it became treason to convert to Catholicism. Recusants who refused to attend Protestant services were fined £20, a fortune in that era. It was treason for Jesuits or seminary priests to enter the country—those who knowingly provided them shelter were also guilty of treason. Those convicted of treason were punished by hanging, then being cut down and disemboweled while still alive. In some cases the beating heart was ripped out of the body. By 1593, recusants were restricted to staying within five miles of their homes.

Fearful of a Spanish invasion with local Catholic support, Elizabeth’s government kept close watch of recusant nobility, especially in the North. Lord Burghley’s Map of Lancashire depicts a bird’s eye view of all the gentry estates in the county. The properties owned by recusant families are marked with a cross. The unmarked estates belong to trusted Anglican gentry. Also marked are the beacons where loyal Anglicans could raise the alarm should there be a Catholic uprising.

This was the era of the English martyrs, such as Margaret Clitherow of York, born in 1556. After her family adopted Protestantism, she converted back to Catholicism and offered her home as a secret refuge for traveling priests. Arrested in 1586 on suspicion of harboring priests, she faced trial at the York Assizes where she refused to plead, probably fearing that her young children would be asked to testify and tortured. Margaret received the standard punishment for those who refused to plead—she was crushed to death beneath a door weighted by heavy stones. She died on Good Friday, 1586. In 1970, she was canonized as a saint.

There has been some speculation as to whether William Shakespeare, who may have lived in Hoghton Tower in Lancashire with the recusant de Hoghton family during his “lost years,” was a secret Catholic. We do know that his father was Catholic, as a testament of faith was discovered hidden in his house.

Mary Stuart’s son, James I, separated from his mother and reared as a stern Protestant, ascended to the English throne in 1603. He brought an even harsher set of laws to all Catholics. Convicted recusants who refused to receive Anglican communion were fined and their property was taken from them. They were barred from public office, had no recourse to courts of laws, and if one owed money to a Catholic, one wasn’t obliged to pay it back. Catholic resentment of James I culminated in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

By the time of the English Civil War, 65% of Royalist families in Lancashire were still Catholic. The Restoration brought no relief. In 1678, recusants were barred from Parliament, and in 1692, they incurred double land tax. In 1699, they were barred from purchasing or inheriting land.

The tide only began to turn toward the close of the 18^th century. The First Catholic Relief Act of 1778 permitted Catholics to own land. The Second Relief Act of 1791allowed Catholic clergy to legally exercise ministry. For the first time since Mary Tudor’s downfall, Catholics in England were allowed public worship under license.

The new Catholic churches built at this time were designed to resemble barns and thus remain as unobtrusive as possible, as not to attract too much attention. One such “barn church” still exists today, the Church of Saint Peter and Paul in Ribchester. The crosses were only added in the 19^th century and the stained glass more recently still. When first constructed, the building was meant to look secular and the Mass was conducted behind closed shutters.

The Emancipation Act of 1829 finally allowed people of the Catholic faith to hold public office and to sit in Parliament. English Catholics owe their thanks to Irishman Daniel O’Connell, who was responsible for pushing this law through in order to prevent a violent uprising in his own country.

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Mary Sharratt’s acclaimed new novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To learn more about Mary and the true history of the Pendle Witches and their connection to pre-Reformation beliefs, visit her website: www.marysharratt.com .

Guest Post by Mary Sharratt: Reformation and Resistance in Northern England

Author Mary Sharratt has provided a wonderful two-part guest post on resistance to the Reformation in Northern England. Her articles explain the cultural, political and religious backdrop against which the events of her gripping novel, DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), unfold. Today's portion discusses the years of Henry VIII's reign and the reigns of his son Edward VI and daughter Mary Tudor; tomorrow, the focus falls on Elizabeth I and beyond. Many thanks to Mary for her immensely informative posts!

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The Crucible of Faith: Reformation and Resistance in Northern England

by Mary Sharratt

[This essay is gleaned from a course I took in July 2009 at the University of Lancaster—A Crucible of Faith: the Religious Heritage of North West England. My instructors for the parts of the course dealing with the English Reformation and its aftermath were Adrian Braddon, Dr. Lisa Curry, and Jim Wadman.]

The English Reformation continues to hold an enduring fascination for a modern audience. Hilary Mantel’s Booker Award-winning masterpiece, Wolf Hall, puts forward a traditionalist view that the Reformation heralded an era of enlightenment and progress, in which humanists and forward-thinkers left the ignorance and superstition of the late medieval era behind. However, the reality is much more tangled than Mantel’s excellent fiction would have us believe.

Most of what we were taught about the English Reformation twenty to thirty years ago has been completely turned on its head. Eamon Duffy’s 1992 book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, laid out the thesis that the English clung to their traditional religion and were very reluctant to embrace the reformed faith. By now Duffy’s views have become mainstream.

Nowhere was this truer than in the Northwest of England, which is still the most Catholic region of England—Catholics comprise about 26% of the population compared to 8% in the rest of the country. About half of Liverpool is Catholic and about a quarter to a third of the residents of Preston. There are also rural villages such as Hurst Green, Crosby, and Ribchester that support both Catholic and Anglican churches. The high percentages are due in part to immigration from Ireland and Poland, but also to the survival and revival of Catholicism within the region, largely owing to the resistance of the gentry. Many important landowning families such as the Towneleys, Southworths, and Shuttleworths remained Catholic, despite Elizabeth I’s religious conformity laws.

Why were so many in Northwest England so reluctant to embrace the Reformation? Not only were they a long way from the power center in London, they were a very long way from Rome. Whereas the Catholic establishment in Italy during the Reformation period was rife with corruption, there is no evidence of major corruption or scandal in the English Catholic Church at this time. People wanted reform with a small “r” and it was happening. Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, was closing down monasteries that seemed unproductive and changing them into schools and colleges for laymen. Wolsey also reduced the power of the Church courts. Yet even after Henry VIII sacked Wolsey, stripped him of his bishopric, and appointed himself head of the Church of England, the majority of people, especially in the North, did not want radical religious change thrust upon them.

This became starkly clear during the Pilgrimage of Grace, an uprising of 400,000 armed men in the North who gathered under the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ to oppose Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. They very nearly won! Henry had no standing army. 400,000 was an incredible number when the entire English population at this time was around 2.2 million. But the Catholic nobility in the North intervened and, anxious of opposing the King, negotiated a truce. If they hadn’t, Henry’s reforms couldn’t have gone through. The closing of the monasteries was disastrous for the poor, who had relied on the now outlawed religious orders for charity and medical care. Apart from leaving the poor in the lurch, however, Henry’s reforms didn’t penetrate everyday religion so drastically. Most holidays were still celebrated and the churches retained their saints’ altars and religious images.

The real English Reformation didn’t begin until the reign of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s son and heir. Edward attacked the entire cultural framework of traditional English life. In his banning of the saints’ days and his orders for the destruction of religious statues, rood screens, stained glass, and holy shrines, Edward cut deeply into the lives of his people, destroying the ancient rhythms of the liturgical year and their round of village festivals. Church walls, traditionally covered in religious images to communicate the mysteries of faith to a largely illiterate population, were whitewashed over.

The picture below, of St. Wilfrid’s Church in Ribchester, shows the pre-Reformation fresco discovered beneath the whitewashing. The stained glass is modern.

Most people sincerely welcomed Mary Tudor’s arrival on the throne. Although she couldn’t undo the dissolution of the monasteries, she restored the Mass and the holidays, which provided much-needed recreation for hardworking commoners. When Mary fell from grace it wasn’t because of her religion but because of her unpopular marriage to the Spanish king which inspired fears that the English were to become a Spanish colony. Today “Bloody” Mary is most commonly remembered for burning nearly three hundred Protestant dissenters, Archbishop Cramner among them. She committed these atrocities against the advice of both her husband and her priest-confessor, who were worried that she was becoming a dangerous fanatic.

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Mary Sharratt’s acclaimed new novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To learn more about Mary and the true history of the Pendle Witches and their connection to pre-Reformation beliefs, visit her website: www.marysharratt.com .