Happy Tuesday, reading friends. It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday post, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is a Hallowe’en Freebie, but 31 October also happens to be Reformation Day, when Martin Luther is purported to have nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, protesting against the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences. And since I don’t generally celebrate Hallowe’en (or read books that are likely to qualify for a Hallowe’en Freebie list), I’ve come up with a list of ten books that in some way feature the religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants.
It’s actually quite a difficult topic to find fictional novels on, and I didn’t want to double up on novels that I featured in a Reformation Reads post from a few years ago, so I had to do a bit of searching to round out my numbers to ten. As it happens, I’ve also increased my TBR by ten, because I haven’t read any of these novels! Oops… (not!) 😉
Pursuing the family name as the finest silk producer in Lyon, the young Huguenot Rachelle Dushane-Macquinet is thrilled to accompany her famous couturier Grandmere to Paris, there to create a silk trousseau for the Royal Princess Marguerite Valois. The Court is magnificent; its regent, Catherine de Medici, deceptively charming … and the circumstances, darker than Rachelle could possibly imagine. At a time in history when the tortures of the Bastille and the fiery stake are an almost casual consequence in France, a scourge of recrimination is moving fast and furious against the Huguenots—and as the Queen Mother’s political intrigues weave a web of deception around her, Rachelle finds herself in imminent danger. Hope rests in warning the handsome Marquis Fabien de Vendome of the wicked plot against his kin. But to do so, Rachelle must follow a perilous course.
Heinrich Ritter is a law student at the University of Wittenberg, studying under Dr. Martin Luther. Heinrich is on a path to a career that will provide the income necessary for the welfare of himself and his sister. However, his interest – his passion – is theology, sparked by Luther’s lectures and by the Word of God.
Heinrich’s life is further complicated by his host family’s eldest daughter, Marlein, who has caught his eye but refuses to consider his courtship. Yet his immediate concern is Brigita, his sister, who arrives unexpectedly – hungry, hunted, frightened – and puts their future in jeopardy.
This rich, authentic novel is set against the backdrop of the Reformation, showing how the reverberations of this religious reform echoed throughout the world and in the lives of ordinary people. A Flame in the Dark brings to life characters who lived not only during one of the most tumultuous times in history but also alongside one of its greatest figures, Martin Luther.
See how God’s Word works in all of life’s messy complications, no matter our place in history, to spread the fire of His love, mercy, and salvation.
A wealthy English girl committed to a life of chastity, prayer, and service when she joined a Roman Catholic convent. But she is forced to return home when Edward VI closes her convent. Her domineering father demands that she abandon her vocation and marry a man of his choosing. Challenged and inspired by a fiery Scottish preacher, she converts to the Protestant faith and falls in love with him. When a Roman Catholic becomes queen and begins to imprison Protestants, her betrothal to the preacher is broken, and the preacher flees to Europe. Will she remain in England and renounce her new faith? Or will she choose love and her new faith and marry her preacher?
This is historical fiction based on the lives of John Knox and Marjory Bowes. It is a story of love and hope against the backdrop of conflict between rich and poor, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and England and Scotland.
A powerful, beautifully written novel of loss, finding and being found, set in a very traumatic time in European history–the Protestant Reformation. The turbulent sixteenth century saw the disintegration of medieval Christendom as it was split into sovereign states. This was particularly destructive in Tudor England, where rapid switches in government policy and religious persecution shattered the lives of many.
Especially affected were the monks and nuns who were persecuted by the wholesale dissolution of the monasteries carried out under Henry VIII. One of these monks, Robert Fletcher, a Carthusian of the dismantled priory of Mount Grace in Yorkshire, is the hero of this novel.
The story of this strong, vulnerable man is told in counterpoint with the story of one of the most interesting men in all of English history, Reginald Pole, a nobleman, scholar and theologian who was exiled to Italy for twenty years. He was a cardinal of the Church and a papal legate at the Council of Trent. As the archbishop of Canterbury, with his cousin Queen Mary Tudor, he tried, in too short a time, to renew Catholic England. This man, in the tragic last months of his life, becomes in the novel the friend of Robert Fletcher, condemned as a heretic.
Readers will learn much from this novel of the anguished period that gave birth to Tridentine Catholicism, the Anglican Church, and other Protestant churches. This same period saw the martyrdom of Thomas More, Thomas Cranmer, John Fisher and many others. The profound issues raised in this novel, which contains no altered historical facts but more human truth than facts alone can deliver, have not gone away.
Her only chance of getting home is trusting the man she hates.
With the protestant Elizabeth on the throne of England and her family in shambles, Catholic maiden Gwyneth seeks refuge in the Low Countries of Holland, hoping to soothe her aching soul. But when the Iconoclastic Fury descends and bloodshed overtakes her haven, she has no choice but to trust the rogue who arrives, promising to see her safely home to her uncle’s castle. She doesn’t dare to trust him…and yet doesn’t dare to refuse her one chance to preserve her own life and those of the nuns she rescues from the burning convent.
Dirk Godfrey is determined to restore his honor at whatever cost. Running from a tortured past, Dirk knows he has only one chance at redemption, and it lies with the lovely Gwyneth, who hates him for the crimes she thinks he committed. He must see her to safety, prove to the world that he is innocent, prove that her poor eyesight is not the only thing that has blinded her—but what is he to do when those goals clash?
The home Gwyneth knew is not what she once thought. When a dark secret and a twisted plot for power collide in a castle masquerading as a haven, the saint and the sinner must either dare to hold to hope…or be overcome.
France, 1685. Jeanne is the wife of a wealthy merchant, but now she risks losing everything.
Louis XIV’s soldiers will stop at nothing to forcibly convert the country’s Huguenot “heretics” to the “true” faith. The men ransack Jeanne’s belongings and threaten to take her children.
One by one, Jeanne watches her neighbors cave under the constant harassment. She and her husband resolve to hold fast to their Protestant principals of liberty of conscience, but Jeanne wonders if the punishment for their defiance is more than she can bear…
If Jeanne can’t find a way to evade the soldiers’ clutches, her family will face a fate worse than poverty and imprisonment. They may never see each other again…
The King has lost his sanity, and intends to root out the Huguenots… forever.
Young Theodore is seemingly on the peaceful end of things, studying theology diligently in Geneva, Switzerland. But when adventure beckons from war-torn France, he can’t help but heed the call. Thus unfolds one epic tale that ranges from the rural countryside and forests of France, the stately towers and cathedrals of Paris, the battlements and bastions of La Rochelle, the dark chambers of the Inquisition, and the steaming jungles and rivers of New World Brazil. Through it all, Theodore learns much about himself, his faith, and… his true identity.
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
Power and Prejudice: France, 1562. War sparks between the Catholics and Huguenots, dividing neighbors, friends, and family―meanwhile, nineteen-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at her father’s bookshop. Sealed with a distinctive family crest, it contains just five words: She knows that you live.
Love and Betrayal: Before Minou can decipher the mysterious message, she meets a young Huguenot convert, Piet Reydon. Piet has a dangerous task of his own, and he will need Minou’s help if he is to stay alive. Soon, they find themselves on opposing sides, as forces beyond their control threaten to tear them apart.
Honor and Treachery: As the religious divide deepens, Minou and Piet find themselves trapped in Toulouse, facing new dangers as tensions ignite across the city―and a feud that will burn across generations begins to blaze. . .
When Jessica regains consciousness in a French hospital on the day after the Paris attacks, all she can think of is fleeing the site of the horror she survived. But Patrick, the steadfast friend who hasn’t left her side, urges her to reconsider her decision. Worn down by his loving insistence, she agrees to follow through with the trip they’d planned before the tragedy.
“The pages found you,” Patrick whispered.
“Now you need to figure out what they’re trying to say.”
During a stop at a country flea market, Jessica finds a faded document concealed in an antique. As new friends help her to translate the archaic French, they uncover the story of Adeline Baillard, a young woman who lived centuries before—her faith condemned, her life endangered, her community decimated by the Huguenot persecution.
“I write for our descendants, for those who will not understand the cost of our survival.”
Determined to learn the Baillard family’s fate, Jessica retraces their flight from France to England, spurred on by a need she doesn’t understand.
Could this stranger who lived three hundred years before hold the key to Jessica’s survival?
You’ve read Wolf Hall. I knew I liked you.
I had no idea that Halloween is also Reformation Day. Very interesting. I haven’t read any of these books, but I’ve heard lots of good things about WOLF HALL. I hope you enjoy all these when you get to them.
Happy TTT!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
The Time Before You Die sounds interesting.
My post.
What an interesting topic! I learned some things from your post.