Heresy, Prophecy, Sacrilege by S J Parris
These are the first three of a six book series of mystery thrillers set in the late 16th century. Elizabeth I is Queen of England, Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries is still a recent memory and Catholic plots against Elizabeth, real or imagined, abound.
The main protagonist and first-person narrator is one Giordano Bruno, an ex-Dominican monk from Naples who fled from his monastery to escape the Inquisition; he had been found reading a forbidden book in the monastery’s privy. Bruno ends up in England and thanks to his friendship with Sir Philip Sydney, whom he had met in Padua a few years earlier, and the patronage of the King of France whom he had tutored in philosophy, he is drawn into the circle of Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham. The stories flow from this setting.
I read the books in the wrong order, picking up a paperback version of the third book, ‘Sacrilege’, and reading it almost in one sitting. I quickly downloaded ‘Heresy’ and ‘Prophecy’ on Kindle and binge-read them. In chronological order they are set in Oxford, London and Canterbury. In each, Bruno is instrumental in uncovering the perpetrators of a series of murders. I found them gripping and compelling, totally convincing in their depiction of both the historic physical world and the thoughts and ideas of the time. There’s action and excitement too.
But I was taken by surprise while reading ‘Sacrilege’ (the first I read). In the story Bruno is desperate to track down a book he had once seen, written by “Hermes Trismegistus”. After the third or fourth mention of this book I thought it was such a strange name I looked it up – and discovered Hermes was at the time said to be the author of a series of ancient mystical texts (according to Wikipedia now thought to be written by a number of Greek writers in the second or third century AD). From there I discovered that Giordano Bruno himself is a real historical character whose life story is the back story to the books, and who even today is known as an enlightened free-thinker. I haven’t checked, but I’m confident that many of the other characters in the books are also historical, though their actions may not always be; these books are fiction after all!
I shall read the other three before too long, though knowing now how the historic Giordano Bruno died I’m not sure I want to read the last one!
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