2021-07-08
In this historical novel set in the 12th century, a priest attempts a major reform—a call for canons to adopt an austere life of poverty and celibacy.
Pons de Baucio is piously devout as a young boy, and, at the tender age of 10, he is given to the canons at the Cathedral of Arles—a council of ecclesiastics who advise the archbishop—for religious training. He becomes a canon, too, and takes his vows, but despite an unshakable faith in God, he’s plagued by doubt regarding the exact nature of his calling. The archbishop sends Pons to help suppress a heretic some see as a prophet, Peter of Bruys, who passionately preaches for a return to the simple life of the original apostles, one that embraces poverty and celibacy. Pons witnesses Peter’s murder at the hands of an angry mob, but his message leaves a powerful impression on the canon. Eventually, Pons becomes convinced that radical reform for the canons is, in fact, necessary, specifically a rededication to the vita apostolica, a life of “simplicity, austerity, and humility,” one that demands not only communal living, but a renouncement of property, marriage, and sex as well. He ardently believes this is the calling from God for which he’s been looking, but the reform’s dictums are exceedingly difficult for his fellow canons to accept. Schneider’s research is simply magisterial—her accounts of the historical period, the theological disputes of the time, and the minute details about Pons, a real figure, are scrupulously rigorous. And since Pons’ life was a cinematically dramatic one, it is ideally suited for novelization. But she buries readers under mounds of information—her scholarly thoroughness can be pulverizing—and the book’s 388 pages begin to feel like a trial. In addition, she has a tendency to gravitate toward the melodramatically overwrought. Consider Pons’ reaction after his first sexual experience: “Oh, she is a lovely creature! Such a lovely creature. And she is, after all, only a woman, a lesser creature, a weak creature with base, physical urges. But I am a man, a higher order of being, who should have been able to control such urges. How did I fall into this? How did this happen?”
A theological tale that offers marvelous historical scholarship and an excess of melodrama.
