Written with reverent attention to historical accuracy, this intense story reflects Heinrich's youth, his desperate pursuit of his children through the Alps, and his soul's despair - until he is rescued by Truth.
Review by Guy Marshall:
Quest for Hope is a fascinating historical novel set in the early 13th century, in which we learn how the ordinary people lived and the ties of ownership which bound them to their overlords. In the case of the peasants in the village of Weymer it was to the church and the nearby Abbot of Villmar to whom they owed fealty.
We learn of life in the village, the crops they grew in the Abbot's fields, the effect of the seasons, the taxes they had to pay, the priests who guarded their souls and the armies who guarded their boundaries. Life was hard. Most lived in one-room wattle and daub hovels (from where we get our word 'house'), with its smoke hole in the thatch roof, hard earth floor and straw to sleep on. A man was considered old at 35.
Heinrich cannot choose a wife, his arranged marriage is to a girl he dislikes for her hard and unloving ways. As was the custom children provided a continuation of the family line and support in old age, Heinrich and his wife had five. The eldest dies at the age of six in an accident at his grandfather's mill, one is still-born and the other three go on the 'Childrens' Crusade' of 1210.
Much of the story revolves around church politics, mostly concerning the raising of money to build bigger and better monasteries and churches, and feeding the clergy. Heinrich is trained at the local abbey to be a baker and becomes a good one. After establishing himself he is released from his duties and sent away (for 40 days, so he is told) as baker to the Emperor’s army, on an expedition to force taxes out of some troublesome people in the north.
Heinrich is a loving, caring man, but all through his life his soul is much tormented and he worries about the penalty he has to pay for sins committed. His dilemma epitomises the teaching of the church at the time, when every minor indiscretion had to be accounted for to a priest and the appropriate penance paid. As a boy Henrich commits the sin of releasing a tethered dog that had been brutalised by its cruel owner night after night. The whole village is delighted when the howls of the animal no longer keep them awake at night, but no one will speak up for him when it is discovered he is to blame. The owner insists on the priest giving Heinrich a severe punishment; besides being made to crawl to work and go everywhere barefoot for a month, he has to take a vow never again to raise his eyes above the height of a church steeple, to do so would be committing another sin, only pardoned by another penance.
The church kept tight control over its people and perpetuated myths and practices that exerted threats of eternal damnation for misdemeanors of what it saw as indiscretions. Over a thousand years after Jesus Christ died on the Cross for the salvation of the world, the church was still failing to get across the message of God's love and forgiveness to all people. It would be another 300 years before a movement erupted in Europe that would overturn the church and bring about the Reformation, which, linked to the advent of printing would reveal the truth of the Gospel to ordinary people.
For lots of reasons, the forty days promised to Heinrich, turned into 12 years and the cleverly constructed story ends at exactly the same place as did Crusade of Tears.
ISBN: 9781589190115
Catalogue code: N/A
Publisher: RIVEROAK PUBLISHING - published 15/04/2005
Format: Paperback