2024-12-12
Two unlikely candidates are sent on a dangerous mission by the Pope to Constantinople at the dawn of the 13th century in Cycon’s historical novel.
Pope Innocent III, obsessed with recapturing Jerusalem from Muslim rule and unifying a schismatic church, sees an opportunity to do both: A mysterious and powerful king, Presbyter John, offers to commit his considerable forces to a new round of Crusades, but emissaries must be sent to find him. Cardinal Orisini recommends two men for the job: Brother Mauro, a bookish and borderline-heretical scholar who teaches logic and rhetoric at the new university in Bologna, and Nicolo diCarlo, a young and ambitious Genoese merchant looking to make his mark. (Both characters are memorably drawn in this action-packed drama.) The Pope can’t help wonder what Cardinal Orsini’s angle his—he is a master manipulator, and his “unctuousness and humility mask sinister intent.” Orsini strikes a side deal with Nicolo—anxious to grab his own cut, he encourages him to find the source of the spices so highly prized in Rome, stoking the ambitions of the young man. The Pope reluctantly agrees with Orsini’s recommendations, and the unlikely pair head to Constantinople in search of Presbyter John, but the journey is a perilous one, made more so by Nicolo’s foolhardy imprudence, which is reliably exacerbated by greed, beautiful women, and an excess of drink (“How could he be so stupid and brash? Too much wine”). In this historically rigorous and dramatically absorbing tale, Brother Mauro, the quintessential intellectual, turns out to be surprisingly resourceful, and Nicolo, for all his worldly intelligence, callowly gullible. The author’s writing is consistently clear (if absent sparkling style), and the plot is gripping and brimming with suspense. An inconclusive ending suggests a sequel, one the reader is likely to anticipate enthusiastically.
A captivating adventure filled with both danger and astute theological inquiry.
