Book Review: "The Mass of Brother Michel"

This is a novel set in 16th century France with a slight backdrop of the religious conflict between Catholics and Huguenots. It's partially a family story and partially a vocation story. The book was originally published in the 1940's and Kirkus Review noted that it was perfect for Catholic readership. According to the current publisher, Angelico Press:

The Mass of Brother Michel, set in the tranquil countryside of southern France during the Reformation, is the story of a young man who “has it all”—until a fateful series of events leads him to a monastery. As Huguenot violence mounts, the characters of the story are pushed to extremes of hatred and love. The reader is swept along by a narrative as twisting and turbulent as a mountain stream, which culminates in a sovereign sacrifice as unforgettable as it was unforeseen. This is a story that shows with utter vividness the power of romantic love to cripple and deform, the power of suffering to undermine illusions and induce the labor of self-discovery, the power of prayer to reassemble the shards of the shattered image of God in the soul, and the power of the priest as the divine Physician’s privileged instrument.

At the center of the novel is the awesome mystery, scandal, consolation, and provocation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. To it some of the characters are irresistibly drawn; against it, others are violently arrayed. Here is a passionately told tale of their inner struggle and outward confrontation. No reader will fail to be astonished at its outcome and touched by its inspiring and miraculous climax.

The trouble I had while reading the novel was that the time period was never very clear--the characters were well-drawn and fleshed out, especially the villains--but I could not really tell that France was torn by religious civil war. The action of the novel is so domestic and insular that the Wars of Religion faded to the background. It also troubled me that the crucial event of the novel, the one action that set all the complications of the family into motion and led to the central conflict of the plot, was reported at second hand. It was a scene that merited a first-hand description in my opinion. The novel was so focused on the interior life of the characters that historical and fictional events were all at a remove. I always expect fiction to show me action, to describe and depict events. Michael Kent focuses so much on the thoughts and internal struggles of the hero and heroine, and to lesser extent, the villains of the story, that it's more of a meditation than a novel. 

The subjects of its meditation, the monastic vocation, marriage, the priesthood, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Eucharist, are all worthy of the detail and care the author takes. As a novel, I'd have to give it three stars; as a religious meditation and exploration of good and evil, I'd gift it four stars.

Are You Making a List? I am. More Books.

G. W. Bernard is going where Eamon Duffy has gone before in this forthcoming book: The Late Medieval English Church Vitality and Vulnerability Before the Break with Rome. From Yale University Press (due out in May in the UK):

The later medieval English church is invariably viewed through the lens of the Reformation that transformed it. But in this bold and provocative book historian G. W. Bernard examines it on its own terms, revealing a church with vibrant faith and great energy. Bernard looks at the structure of the church, the nature of royal control over it, the clergy and bishops, the intense devotion and deep-rooted practices of the laity, anti-clerical sentiment, and the prevalence of heresy. He argues that the Reformation was not inevitable, nor made unavoidable by the defectiveness, corruption, superstition or outdatedness of a church ripe for a fall: the late medieval church had both vitality and vulnerabilities, the one often linked to the other. The result is a thought-provoking study of a church and society in transformation.

And here is a provocative title: Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion, by Susan Ronald due out in August from St. Martin's Press:

Elizabeth’s 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only twenty-five years old, the young queen saw herself as their Protestant savior; aiming to provide the nation with new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary’s reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon. Extravagant, witty, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the ultimate tyrant. Yet at the outset, in religious matters, she was unfathomably tolerant for her day. “There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith,” Elizabeth once proclaimed. “All else is a dispute over trifles.” Heretic Queen is the highly personal, untold story of how Queen Elizabeth I secured the future of England as a world power. Susan Ronald paints the queen as a complex character whose apparent indecision was really a political tool that she wielded with great aplomb.