• Home
  • Books
  • Plays
  • Bio
  • The Bookman Blog
  • News
  • Speaking/Events
  • Study Guides
  • Media
  • Contact

Charlie Lovett

Writer • Educator

JOIN THE MAILING LIST
Follow Charlie on FacebookFollow Charlie on InstagramFollow Charlie on Twitter
 RSS
Penguin Paperback
(February 27, 2018)
320 pages
$16
ISBN: 978-0399562532

Buy the Book

Bookmarks (Signed Copies)
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
Books-A-Million
Kindle
Nook
iBooks

Recent Posts

  • Some New Book Reviews
  • My Encounter with a Superhero
  • Some Thoughts on My Holiday Gifts
  • Inside the Writer’s Studio
  • A Grand Opening

Archives

The Saintly Women of Saxon England

February 2, 2017 by Charlie Lovett 5 Comments

My fictional cathedral city of Barchester (and yes, that’s the same fictional city created by Anthony Trollope in the 1850s) needed a founder. In my novel The Lost Book of the Grail, the reader encounters bits and pieces of the history of Barchester from the beginnings in Saxon times through invasions by Vikings and Normans, the upheavals of the Reformation and the Civil War, and even the Nazi bombings of World War II. But through all that history I wanted the spirit of the founder to permeate, and I wanted the founder to be a woman.

Women held greater positions of power in the early English church than they would for centuries after, even though they could not be ordained as priests. In the Saxon times, monasteries were the most powerful ecclesiastical institutions in the land, and they some of them were, for want of a better word, co-educational. These duel foundations with monks on one side and nuns on the other were often ruled over not by an abbot but by an abbess.

Consider St. Hilda, abbess of Whitby. She was among the earliest Christian women in the north of England, baptized at the age of thirteen alongside her uncle King Edwin. She founded the monastery of Whitby and played host to the Synod of Whitby, the first great meeting of the English church at which the main question posed was whether to follow Celtic or Roman traditions. Then there is St. Etheldreda of Ely (they have great names, don’t they!). Her story reads like a Shakespeare play—reluctant princess, even more reluctant queen, she only really wanted to be a nun, and eventually started a foundation on the Isle of Ely (no longer and island now that the fenland surrounding it has been drained).

There are so many more—St. Bertha, queen of Kent who converted her husband and welcomed the first Archbishop of Canterbury to England. St. Frideswide hid in the woods from an unwanted suitor and a miraculous well sprang forth to give her water (it is still there at the churchyard in Binsey, just outside Oxford). She went on to found a double monastery on the future site of Christ Church, largest of the Oxford colleges.

I have long been inspired by the stories of these saintly women, and so I gave Barchester a Saxon founder and named her Ewolda. Her name comes from Trollope (sort of). His Barchester books include mention of the parish of St. Ewold’s—the name has a nice Saxon ring to it, so I simply feminized it to create St. Ewolda. Ewolda’s story is told in a manuscript that has been handed down for hundreds of years but which, as our hero Arthur Prescott knows all too well, has disappeared from the cathedral library. Arthur is out to solve many mysteries—including one involving the Holy Grail. But, if he ever finds out the story of St. Ewolda, he will notice details from the lives of several of the aforementioned women—early saints of the English church who are still remembered more than a millennium after they lived.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Bertha, cathedrals, English History, Etheldreda, Frideswide, Hilda, Historical Fiction, rare books, Saints, Woman saints, writing

Comments

  1. nancy Cunningham says

    February 5, 2017 at 2:36 pm

    Mr. Lovett—do you have a “clip” of one of your book talks? And could you tell me what your availability is for speaking engagements (and fee requirements) . I represent a non-profit literary group in the California desert that hosts 5 programs a year. I am investigating the possibility of you as a 2018 speaker.

    Reply
  2. Vianne Piper says

    February 5, 2017 at 8:25 pm

    Look forward to reading it, Charlie.

    Reply
  3. George rutherford says

    April 30, 2017 at 10:25 am

    I’m currently reading The List Book of the Grail. I’m enjoying fully. The characters and Ewolda seem so real hard to believe it’s fiction. I say good to the author.

    Reply
  4. Fiona Gray says

    June 2, 2018 at 7:00 pm

    I also felt that it was so well portrayed that I had to look up Barchester to see if it is actually a real place. I’ve not read any Trollop (apart from his distant relative Joanna who is also very knowledgeable about cathedral towns). I’m enjoying this book very much and since I am listening to it I am not going to the end as I often do when I am reading an actual book – it’s too difficult to get back to where I was!

    Reply
  5. Liz Thoren says

    June 30, 2019 at 2:28 pm

    Enjoying the book very much. Doesn’t read as fiction.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2019 Charlie Lovett
Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Data Access Request