Priests in Sutcliff

[osprey_archer]

Are there any good priests in Sutcliff? There are a few who are simply ineffective: the fellow who teaches Randal to read in Knight's Fee, and the guy who teaches Minnow to read in Lantern Bearers.

No, wait, Lantern Bearers also has the monk fellow with the bee skeps who helps Aquila. He was awesome. I latched onto him like a bear to honey because he was the only happy person in that whole book.

Plus he had bees. Beekeepers are automatically amazing.

But otherwise, Sutcliff's priests always seem to be whipping people into violent frenzies. (The bee monk never seems to preach to people; possibly that's why he's a good guy.) In Eagle of the Ninth it's the druid priests who drive the locals to their suicidal attack on the Roman fort, and the druid priests stir up trouble again in Frontier Wolf (though of course there's more to it than that). In Knight's Fee, the bad guy dresses up as a priest to rally a nearby village to attack the castle where Randal lives.

It's too bad that Randal didn't catch hold of the villain then, because I bet the church would have happily dropped a cathedral on his priest-impersonating head. And I can't imagine anyone would have trusted De Courcy again after that. It's hard to get less honorable than pretending to be a priest in order to bring a witch hunt down on your enemies.

And of course the action in Sword Song kicks off when Bjarni drowns a priest who kicked his dog. Bjarni and the narrative seem to agree that this was a regrettable but nonetheless justified act, which is a little weird. Not that I'm in favor of kicking dogs, but murdering dog-kickers seems like an overreaction.

(I'm having trouble getting into Sword Song. Bjarni is prickly and self-centered, and not in a fun way. He seems to think it vaguely unjust that he's being punished for committing murder.)

...as so often with these posts, I don't have some grand theory to wrap this up: it's just a pattern that I've noticed. And I think a story from the point of view of one of those trouble-making druids might be interesting.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The bee monk - what is his name? - is supposed to preach to the iron-making residents of a local village, though admittedly we don't see him at it. And later Aquila meets him with a group of refugees.

And there's whatsisname, the Christian martyr in The Silver Branch who sacrifices himself while Justin and Flavius escape, isn't he a priest?

In Dawn Wind, there's a Christian priest who preaches to Priscus and Priscilla and the remnant Roman-British people hidden in the Welsh hills, and that's definitely shown as a positive thing. Oh, and there is St Augustine, though Sutcliff seems to be a little more equivocal about Augustine (and I can kind of see why).

I think pagan priests may be more the frenzy-inducing types in Sutcliff rather than Christian ones?

(Apologies: apparently I am having a Name Fail day... )

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I do not recall the bee monk's name. This is embarrassing, because he was cool.

The martyr in The Silver Branch is Paulinus, the tax-gatherer, and I don't think he's a Christian at all, let alone a priest. Possibly you're remembering the Christian centurion, who quotes "Greater love hath no man..." after Paulinus dies? He's also not a priest.

(And I haven't read Dawn Wind.

Religious belief doesn't drive people to extremities in Sutcliff; it's always the priests. Especially, as you say, the pagan priests.

Is there ever a scene where one her protags gets caught up in one a priest-induced frenzied crowd? Though I think it would be hard to describe something like that - the point of inducing a frenzy is that people stop thinking rationally, or really thinking at all.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Religious belief doesn't drive people to extremities in Sutcliff; it's always the priests. Especially, as you say, the pagan priests.

The narrator in SAS is really not sympathetic to the Christians, even though he nominally is one, I think. Except it's...very nominal. I don't think Sutcliff was more skeptical of pagan priests, so much as Christians don't come into the picture much in most of her novels. Overall I think she was more sympathetic to pagans, actually...

There are lots of sympathetic Christian and other characters with faith of some kind, although generally protagonists seem to be very accepting of other faiths, which I find harder and harder to suspend disbelief on the further the setting gets from the ancient world. I think the skepticism's really about the power of pro religious folks to manipulate people.

...I'm trying to remember now if the male love interest's dad in Flame-coloured Taffeta is a minister....

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The accepting of other faiths thing I *think* is a bit difficult to gauge?

Once you get to about 1000-ish, fair enough, but before that, not so sure, because everything we have about the Dark Ages / early Middle ages comes so comprehensively filtered through the very dogmatic prejudice of the later medieval period.

Alfred the Great, for example, despite being considered a bit of a champion of Christianity and learning, I believe is supposed to have had quite an interest in earlier pagan learning as well? But we don't have his collection of pre-Christian works, because it was destroyed by... oh who was it? Athelstan, if I remember rightly.

(Alfred's pre-Christian literature collection is one of the things on my 'if I could just borrow your tardis for 5 mins' bucket list :-D )

I don't know about views of other faiths in the Roman-British tradition though. Maybe they were more picky earlier.

Artos in SAS is definitely very dubious about the Christian church hogging resources that he could be using for fighting Saxons, but I'm not sure how he feels about Christianity as a faith - I get the impression it's not something he would think about a lot. More Ambrosius's kind of thing maybe.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

CURSES UPON ATHELSTAN.

There are few things in the world as wretched as hearing about the wreck of a library.

I did think it was odd, in Knight's Fee, not necessarily that Randal seemed to take Anhalt-the-Little-Dark-Person in stride - after all, he was raised in a dog kennel, I can't seem him getting too upset about religious distinctions - but that there wasn't more religion in their lives.

I'm more familiar with the later medieval period, not 1100, so perhaps the infusion of Christianity into daily life grew exponentially, but I really expected there to be more references to Bible stories or comments on meat vs. fish days or celebrations of saints' days or something in Randal's life.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I agree that she seems sympathetic to paganism (I haven't read enough of her books set during Christian eras to know how it compares) - the protagonists tend to end up fighting people whipped up by pagan priests because, well, that's the kind of priests who were around to whip people up.

And she seems strangely fond of the Little Dark People - I'm thinking specifically of Anhalt in Knight's Fee, who is very positively portrayed for a non-warrior in Sutcliff. (Of course, she is a healer. Drat, now I'm going to be thinking over all the Sutcliffs I've read to see if there are any acceptable career paths other than warrior or healer.)

Are the Little Dark People in any of her other books? I want to know more about the Little Dark People.

And I agree, it's specifically the priests and their ability to manipulate people she's skeptical about. The religious laypeople just get on with their lives, about as sympathetically as everyone else.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think she really just didn't trust people in a position of telling people what to believe.

The Little Dark People play a pretty big role in Sword at Sunset! The protagonist of Sun Horse, Moon Horse is half LDP. And they show up in some of the short stories...there's a nifty scene with a woman of the LDP working magic (maybe) in The Capricorn Bracelet. They're also in Mark of the Horse Lord. They show up a lot, really, but I think SAS is their biggest role. I'm...not sure how I feel about her treatment of them in SAS.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oh, now isn't that odd? For some reason I had it firmly in my mind that Paulinus was an early Christian (the name maybe?), and was rather annoyed by it, in a 'why are early christians always so nice in books, give us a nasty one for a change' way.

And now I find that this is actually something I have completely made up in my head! I wonder how often that happens.

Artos, in Sword at Sunset, I think is in a Beltane crowd led by a horned priest at one point, that may be the closest - but it's not *very* frenzied. Maybe a bit.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Beekeepers are automatically amazing

This is true. Bees, themselves, are pretty dang amazing.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The beekeepers become amazing because the bees are so awesome. It's, like, the transitive property of amazingness.

In one of my old books for my honors project, the author told a parable about bees that I really liked. When something bad gets in a beehive, say a dead beetle or mouse, the bees cover it over with wax so that it won't spoil the honey - and we, like bees, can wall up small disappointments so they don't poison the happiness in our lives.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

There's a sympathetic nun in Sword at Sunset, and a novice who ditches the Church to be Artos' surgeon (Gwalchmai). I think some of the monks may have been treated somewhat sympathetically.

But in general, I'd say that Sutcliff was very skeptical of organized religion. Those professionally religious characters who aren't portrayed badly are sympathetic in spite of their religious calling (often because in another life they would have been a good warrior, or because they're a healer, two of the Acceptable Sutcliff Career Paths; not because they're religious).

Artos in general gets along very, very badly with the Church, and frankly, I think a lot of it's his own fault.

(I'm having trouble getting into Sword Song. Bjarni is prickly and self-centered, and not in a fun way. He seems to think it vaguely unjust that he's being punished for committing murder.)

Yeah, you've put a finger on my issues with Sword Song. There's some stuff I like in it (mostly around the love interest), but Bjarni the Affectless Sexist Ass is not really one of them. He gets a little better, later on, but...well, I guess he's a saga hero, kinda. And saga heroes are not necessarily likable by modern standards. (I think Sword Song is rough overall, maybe because she didn't finish editing it.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Didn't the beekeeping monk in Lantern Bearers used to be a warrior? At any rate he's definitely something of a healer, which probably helps give him the stamp of approval.

And, of course, monks and nuns are not out there preaching to people, so they don't have too much chance to whip people into frenzies.

Still slogging through Sword Song. I'm considering setting it aside for Warrior Scarlet.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Sutcliff protagonists can be warriors or healers (bonus if they're fighting healers). Some of them are farmers (who are ex-warriors). Some are artists (who are usually also warriors--I think Lubrin Dhu of Sun Horse, Moon Horse is the only artist I can think of who isn't much of a warrior--although she had a slightly recurring theme of the difficulty of being a warrior and an artist, because too much imagination.

I think it may be a product of her Navy brat upbringing.

I think Sword Song is worth reading, if you can ignore Bjarni being a dick for long enough. I really want fic for it, though--I keep struggling with trying to write it because Bjarni has no feelings.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

There's Herluin the bard in Knight's Fee, but I can't remember if he's also a warrior or not.

Could you write Sword Song fic in Bjarni's love interest's point of view? I haven't met her yet, but presumably she actually has feelings.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I put bards in the artist category! But a bunch of the bards will still pick up a sword when necessary.

I tried, yeah--still ran up against the Bjarni Has No Feelings problem, and why the fuck does she even like him. I dunno, maybe someday--because they are a wonderful candidate for interesting genderplay stuff.