A Mortal Glamour, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Juno Books, 2007Set in 14th Century France, times are hard at the convent La Tres Saunte Annunciacion. The plague has come, killing many of the area’s residents. The Catholic Church has two popes; one is in Rome, while the other rules from the French city of Avignon. The convent is doing the best it can, offering a meal and a bed for any passing travelers.Aungelique, one of the sisters at the convent, is a headstrong young woman, and the daughter of a Baron. She is there only because of a huge disagreement with her father over whom she should marry. Aungelique has discovered the pleasures of the flesh (a major sin for a nun), and runs away from the convent, twice. She wants to live with, and learn from, Comtesse Orienne, the most sexually accomplished courtesan in Europe. Each time, she is convinced to return to the convent by Orienne.Soon, screams of pleasure and pain are heard from behind the door to Aungelique’s room, accompanied by bruises and scratches all over her body. It is as if she is being ravished by some invisible demon. She is ordered to fast, and keep all-night vigils, praying for God’s assistance, but it does not help. In fact, the "disease" spreads to other sisters, one of whom becomes pregnant, and dies in childbirth. An investigator is sent; he thinks that the best way to drive the demons out of the nuns is by physically beating them. He and Orienne cross paths; after a night of passion, he turns from an arrogant person convinced that he is right into feeling like the biggest sinner who ever walked the earth. The last resort for the authorities is to destroy the convent, and take everyone involved away to be burned at the stake.An abridged version of this book was published in the mid-1980s. Here is the unabridged, author-approved version, and it is very much worth reading. It is quite dark and spooky (at which Yarbro is a master), and is a really well-done story.
In France, just after the Black Death wiped out some 30 to 60% of Europe’s population, a small convent of nuns receives a young sister named Aungelique. She took holy orders against her will and naturally goes about making as much of a nuisance of herself as possible, putting the convent’s new Mother Superior, Leonie, to the test.Then a strange, seductive man shows up in the convent, and Aungelique is all too happy to welcome him inside. Suddenly the convent crops begin to die, the farm animals to eat each other. The nuns see strange things in the night and begin going mad with fear.A Mortal Glamour moves slowly, not following a straight narrative so much as wandering over each nun, and the priests and soldiers who visit them. This is not to say the book is dull. Rather, it takes the time to set each scene and character, to detail each injury and sin, so watching the cast slowly rot inside and out is that much more awful. You want to yell at the cast to do something, but whenever they do, it’s almost always the wrong something. In particular, watch out for the coming of the Flagellants, a (actual historical) band of religious zealots that claimed the Black Death was God’s punishment for human sins. They marched through the countryside with whips, torturing peasants to death in the most heinous ways they could devise until soldiers stopped them or their bodies gave out. Their first appearance in the book, while not bloody (at first), is terrifying.A Mortal Glamour is not about action or torture porn. If you are interested in people and the depths the greatest of us can fall to, in the darkest parts of human history, in stories without heroes, this is the book you’ve been looking for. It’s beautifully written and tense to the last page.-Elizabeth ReuterAuthor, The Demon of Renaissance Drive
What do You think about A Mortal Glamour (2007)?
The convent La Tres Saunte Annunciacion in France is experiencing some tough times. It is the 14th century and the country has just gone through the devastation of the Black Plague which killed thousands. The Catholic Church has two popes; one is in Rome, while the other is in the French city of Avignon. They are both seeking power and are at odds with each other.Seur Aungelique has been sent to the convent by her father for refusing to marry a groom of his choice. She is young and headstrong and escapes one night to go to the Comtesse Orienne who is very sexually accomplished and just interested in her own pleasures. Aungelique hopes to meet Pierre Fornault whom she loves.She is brought back to the convent and under the new Mother Superior Leonie is given strict penances. Soon however moans of pleasure and pain can be heard from her cell every night. Degradation seems to slowly follow for the rest of the convent and the sisters and even the animals and crops fail.This is a very slow moving story and the reader must have 'stick-to-it-ness' to keep at it. This is a basic story about good and evil. It was interesting on how the Church felt it should deal with this situation but this story was just too dark and slow for me
—Dana
