The Appeal of Power

The drive between Belleville and the south shore of Nova Scotia is 1800 kilometres and we accomplished it in two days, each way. We listened to an audio book on the way there, and got half way through the 18 CDs of another on the return trip. The latter was the award-winning Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and it is a brilliant but challenging novel set during the reign of Henry VIII. Ruth wisely printed a list of all the characters and their roles to take along and referred to it regularly to keep us from descending into total onfusion.

As you likely know, Henry was not content with his first wife. Katherine of Aragon, because she couldn't provide a male heir. Nothing to do with his swimmers, of course. Henry moved heaven and earth to annul that marriage and manipulated the Roman Catholic church to do so, eventually breaking away from that institution altogether to create the Church of England.

The story is brilliantly told with the common thread of Thomas Cromwell, an actual person who served first Cardinal Wolsey, a Henry loyalist, then the king himself. We are also introduced to William Tyndale, the "seditious" translator of the bible into English, Thomas Cranmer, a leading theologian of the day, and Thomas More, a lawyer who acted as Lord High Chancellor of the realm. More was a staunch opponent of Martin Luther's reformation and was eventually beheaded by Henry for his opposition to the king's dodgy marriages and break with Rome.



Are you keeping up here? Mantel is remarkable in her ability to imagine the personalities of all these players and keep us engaged. Cardinal Wolsey is an obsequious delight, and More a cold and creepy figure who doesn't appear to have deserved the sainthood eventually bestowed upon him It did help our concentration that we were driving on excellent and largely quiet highways, not to mention the superb narration.

At one point I turned the story off and commented that 500 years later we are reliving all this drama and intrigue in the United States. There is a capricious and self-absorbed leader with thinks he is king, who has fawning courtiers and religious minions who are far more concerned with proximity to power than the risky work of living the gospel of justice and truth.

Lusty Emperor Donald has been compared to a wide range of unsavoury characters from the past, but Henry VIII sure works for me. All this is a reminder that the counter-cultural call of Christ has always been a tough sell. In these days of the rise of strong-arm leaders around the world, many of whom are making alliances with established religion, we might all do a Wolf Hall tutorial.

Now, do we drive around aimlessly, so we can finish the second half of the novel?

Have you read, Wolf Hall, or listened, or watched the series? Can you see the comparisons?