REVIEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: CITADEL OF GOD BY LOUIS DE WOHL

Abstract: Despite potential difficulties in keeping track of historic names and events, and despite the absence of scenes directly featuring the novel’s titular figure, this is Christian fiction worth reading.  Political and personal conflicts drive tension, and the tone is not preachy or cheesy but engaging and at times inspiring.

Content Warning [Highlight to view]: Physical violence, allusions to fornication, occasional gore, some language, lots of people doing terrible things

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I generally avoid explicitly Christian novels.  You know, the kinds found in Christian book stores and labeled on Amazon and library searches as “religious fiction.”  I don’t have a long list of grievances or detailed critiques about them.    I can’t since I didn’t really read them.  After I entered my teen years, I just got bored after a few poorly done Christ figures and preachy stories, so I stopped reading the genre.  I‘ve never read more than a chapter of Frank Peretti.  I’ve never read Christian romances.  My only experience with the Left Behind series is the first movie.  Even now I often feel a bit suffocated when a novel or movie written by a Christian gets to the “lesson” parts.  Added onto all of that, I’ve heard too many well-argued critiques of the Christian sub-culture to approach the “religious fiction” section with much gusto.

Thankfully, I’m part of a reading group in my parish that pointed me to Louis de Wohl’s Citadel of God.  The novel recounts and embellishes the historic story of St. Benedict and the culture he left behind in Rome during the late 5th to mid 6th century in order to find “‘a shorter way a more direct one… to God’” (de Wohl 86).

One of the difficulties to writing historic fiction is creating a believable setting for the past in which the author can still incorporate his own fictions without breaking the suspension of disbelief.  Citadel of God is strong in this regard.  De Wohl thoroughly researched the events and locations he writes about.  Places, people, events, cultural references, they burst from the pages with such density it can be hard to keep track of them, let alone figure out which thing is made up and which is historic.  However, he doesn’t come across as shoving factoids into the story in order to demonstrate this research.  Rather there’s an ease with which he’ll mention a character or an idea or an event, as if we the readers should be familiar with it ourselves.  He then weaves together the characters and events is such a way that it can be hard to tell the seams between history and creative license except in very obvious cases, like the detail of the dialogue.  It’s almost like a challenge by de Wohl to the reader to investigate to see who or what was real.  It’s a pretty fun experience if you’re into the game, but for those who struggle to keep names to characters or who don’t enjoy hyperlinked rabbit trails through Wikipedia or off-camera references to events and the like, it can be a frustrating experience.  Like listening to a philosopher lecture without the definitions for words like epistemology and metaphysics.  There is so much incorporated that it can be overwhelming, but more in a baroque sort of way, where the pieces still fit together, than anything else.  He still builds a world that holds together.

What really drives the story, though, are the characters.  The people in this story, whether made up or actual historic figures, are highly engaging.  There’s a lot of politics, personal politics, personal goals, vendettas, sin, a whole mess of believable motives and actions executed by pretty well-done characters.  Even minor characters, like the Byzantine emperor and his wife, have enough fleshing out to be different people from Peter, Rusticiana, Amalaswintha, or St. Benedict.  Again, it can be hard to keep the names straight, and there are a ton of names, but when characters interact, they are still different personalities playing off of each other and influencing each other.  You don’t see the same character talking to himself, and the intrigues of the Christian world during this time are riveting.  Tensions between the East and West, tensions between the Romans and their Gothic rulers, tensions within the Church, and the tension between the World and the man who left it all behind.

My two biggest complaints for this book are that the writing is okay but not great and that there isn’t enough Benedict.  I like all the stories and side stories involving Rome and the Byzantine empire and the political play in a time of moral degeneracy and the collapse of the West.  It’s engaging, and it’s important as a contrast.  I just wish there was more Benedict and his monks.

For a book subtitled “A Novel about Saint Benedict,” he’s almost a side character.  He isn’t.  In fact, all the other stories are necessary because Benedict is their foil.  For perhaps 60-70% of this novel, people fight for power, love, wealth, etc.  But in the end, the ones who are happy are those who lived for virtue, and the ones who are most joyful are those who lived for God.  And St. Benedict is the figure that embodies that.  We need to focus so much on the politics and decay of Rome and the culture of Europe at the time because against all of that stands a man who gave up everything and for it gained everything and more.  He because powerful.  He was given gifts of great wealth.  He was loved by so many around him.  And he is the one, he and those in the story who seek virtue, they are the ones who left behind a lasting legacy.  Boethius and his Consolation of Philosphy, Marius and his name still taken by benedictine monks, and St. Benedict and his Rule, the rule that defined a culture, the rule that saved Western civilization and protected the way for the eventual majesty of the High Medieval period.

Even with his rather sparse physical presence in the book, this novel is about St. Benedict.  It’s about what he left behind, what he left behind when he gave up his noble lineage, his chance for education, his chance at a high priesthood, and what he left behind for those who followed him.  The life he embodied.  The search for a “more direct [way]… to God.”  And the way he gave that still lives within his monasteries.

This isn’t an amazing book.  Its writing is okay but not great.  There are lots of names and events and cultural things to try to keep track of.  Benedict himself is strangely absent.  Even so.  I enjoyed it.  I never felt preached to.  There weren’t forced Christ allegories or saccharine Jesus figures or heavy-handed angels.  There was talk of spiritual warfare.  There were miracles.  There were definitely talks about God.  But it worked.  It wasn’t forced.  I was never bored.  And in a few places, I might have even felt inspired by the life of this single man whose main goal in life was to love God and help others to do the same.  And that’s not something I expected from a piece of religious fiction.  So, thank you to my parish reading group.  I’m glad I read this book.  I might not have tried it without you.

References:

de Wohl, Louis.  Citadel of God. Ignatius Press, 1987.  Print.