Faith and the Black Death

 

Minette Walters was a highly successful writer of psychological crime novels for years, then she stopped. There was no end of speculation why, although she offered that she'd just had enough of the genre. 

Recently she changed directions altogether, exploring another era in two novels totalling roughly 1,000 pages. In The Last Hours and The Turn of Midnight Walters ventures into the 14th century and what was called The Black Death in Europe, likely the bubonic plague. This scourge wiped out between a third and half of the population of the continent and spare no one. Some villages and town ceased to exist because of a disease which was transmitted by fleas and poor hygiene.

Walters discovered that the plague came ashore not far from where she lives in Dorset and that there are mass graves in proximity to her home. It prompted her to explore further and these novels are the result of her curiosity. They focus on a community which manages to survive and thrive thanks to the leadership of a strong woman.



Thanks to our local library I've read them both, just finishing The Turn of Midnight. I must say that I enjoyed the first of the two more, but I appreciated the exploration of the role of religion in explaining what was an apocalyptic disease. The simple explanation was that the plague was God's judgement, even though if didn't differentiate between the devout and the profane in terms of who it struck down. Priests were often among the first to die as they offered solace and last rites to the afflicted. 

I recall eco-theologian Thomas Berry suggesting that The Black Death caused a monumental theological shift in European Christianity, tilting from God's grace to judgement and from a more communal understanding of the world to individualism. Decades ago Berry maintained that our failure to honour Creation and the threat of environmental catastrophe was strongly influenced by that change of direction.

I would certainly recommend reading them to gain a better understanding of that time in history in a format that is very readable and entertaining. 

Have any of read one or both of them?