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The Burning Time
By Robin Morgan
Melville House Publishing, 2006. 347 pages.
Green, such defiant green! At the bleak heart of winter, this brazen, shameless green! No wonder they call it the Emerald Island, he thought, peering through light fog at the emerging coastline, verdant even in January, though as veined with snow as gemstone faceted with light.
The Inquisition, or the Burning Time, comes to Ireland in the year 1324 in the person of Bishop Richard de Ledrede, late of the papal court in Avignon, a man who is despite himself impressed by the view of “brazen, shameless green” that greets him. His target, he soon ascertains, is Lady Alyce Kyteler, a noblewoman in the Kilkenny environs who clings to the old pre-Christian ways, is highly educated, treats her serfs as human beings, and has no patience for the outsider’s intrusion: “Best to return to Avignon or Rome or wherever you keep your pope these days, Bishop, and tell him to leave the Irish in peace.”
Alyce is a self-described “Daughter of Celtic Queens, Healer of the Sick, High Priestess of the Craft of the Wise,” and she is no light adversary. Neither, of course, is de Ledrede, and the trajectory they bring to this fact-based novel makes it compelling, hard to put down, and anything but predictable.
The Burning Time is at once epic and intimate. Though it takes place largely within a span of several months, it offers the reader the wide sweep of time, manifest in the pre-Christian traditions of the Irish colliding with the new way imposed by the church, a collision that is centuries in the making and will have centuries of ramifications. It also gives the reader the privilege of a close-up view of the rituals, stories, poems, and potions of the Wiccan community and of the women and men who populate it — Alyce herself, Petronilla de Meath, and Annota Lange and others. Morgan’s extended portrayal of the celebration of Lugnasad Eve, from the high priestess’s self-anointing before the gathering to the final feast, is remarkable, spirited, celebratory writing. Her careful development of her characters, including de Ledrede, puts flesh and bones on a tale drawn from the historical record left by Hollinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (a source, the author reminds us in an afterword, drawn upon as well by none other than William Shakespeare).
Morgan, the noted feminist and author of many books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, deftly draws the picture of a woman- centered social structure at odds with the male-centered Catholic church. There are dangers inherent in this sort of writing, those of didacticism and seeming to push too hard on a contemporary agenda. But anytime Morgan seems to be drifting in this direction, her characters and plot bring The Burning Time back to the fourteenth century and its joys and perils. Morgan’s peasants and serfs are three-dimensional human beings who grow and change under Alyce’s tutelage to the point that they become their own masters. In lesser hands Bishop de Ledrede would have been a mere straw man, but despite a fanaticism that could have been easily caricatured, he is a man of intellectual and emotional power and prowess who is fearsome even apart from his connection to the dominant power structure. The inevitable clash of wills leads to a heart-wrenching outcome that few readers will anticipate.
Intriguing parallels between Alyce Kyteler’s times and our own are plentiful — encroaching fundamentalism and intolerance, the institutionalization of everything from healthcare to faith to ideas, the ongoing struggle between church and state. But the story is the thing in The Burning Time. The unstoppable course of events that makes this sophisticated book a genuine page-turner also makes it indelible, and the puzzling out of connections between our times and the Burning Time is an activity that is sure to follow this most entertaining and edifying read.
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