- Feb 5, 2002
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Tomorrow, June 20, marks the 2024 summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Nobody really cares about the solstice today except wannabe pagans, but it’s the official start of summer. And summer is an excuse for the kind of escapist reading that (seemingly) has nothing to do with the burdens of modern life, yet can offer some useful lessons. I’ll explain.
Some years ago a priest friend urged me to read the “Shardlake” crime mysteries, set in 16th-Century England and written by the late C.J. Sansom. Creating good historical fiction is hard work. Few authors do it really well, and too many Tudor-era stories are ridiculous bodice-rippers. But my wife promptly read all seven of the Sansom tales. . .twice, and my priest friend was right. They’re terrific.
They’re also instructive. Tudor politics helped shape the modern Anglophone world. Sansom’s historical research is superb. And the Shardlake tales have zero bodice-ripping. The appeal of the stories lies elsewhere.
Matthew Shardlake – a hunchbacked, highly intelligent, successful attorney in Tudor London – is the main character in all seven novels. Unmarried and the butt of frequent derision because of his disability, he has exceptional investigative skills. This makes him a useful, if expendable – and mostly unwilling – tool for leading figures of the Henry VIII monarchy.
What makes the Shardlake stories interesting for Catholics is the portrait that emerges of the peculiarly English Reformation – eccentric, bloody, and rife with intrigue – which vacillated between a kind of “Catholicism without the pope” and more radical Protestant thought.
Continued below.
www.thecatholicthing.org
Some years ago a priest friend urged me to read the “Shardlake” crime mysteries, set in 16th-Century England and written by the late C.J. Sansom. Creating good historical fiction is hard work. Few authors do it really well, and too many Tudor-era stories are ridiculous bodice-rippers. But my wife promptly read all seven of the Sansom tales. . .twice, and my priest friend was right. They’re terrific.
They’re also instructive. Tudor politics helped shape the modern Anglophone world. Sansom’s historical research is superb. And the Shardlake tales have zero bodice-ripping. The appeal of the stories lies elsewhere.
Matthew Shardlake – a hunchbacked, highly intelligent, successful attorney in Tudor London – is the main character in all seven novels. Unmarried and the butt of frequent derision because of his disability, he has exceptional investigative skills. This makes him a useful, if expendable – and mostly unwilling – tool for leading figures of the Henry VIII monarchy.
What makes the Shardlake stories interesting for Catholics is the portrait that emerges of the peculiarly English Reformation – eccentric, bloody, and rife with intrigue – which vacillated between a kind of “Catholicism without the pope” and more radical Protestant thought.
Continued below.
Speaking the Truth with Love - The Catholic Thing
Francis X. Maier: We have an equal capacity for unselfish love and horrific sin, and we need humble and repentant faith in God.
www.thecatholicthing.org
