"Poor, sinning folk"

Description

**A tragic loss. A desperate journey. A mother seeks the truth.** In December of 1377, four children were burned to death in a suspicious house fire. Villagers traveled hundreds of miles across England to demand justice. Sinful Folk is the story of this terrible mid-winter journey as seen by Mear, a former nun who has lived for a decade disguised as a mute man, raising her son quietly in this isolated village. For years, she has concealed herself and all her history. But on this journey, she will find the strength to claim the promise of her past and create a new legacy. Mear begins her journey in terror and heartache, and ends in triumph and redemption. The remarkable new novel by Ned Hayes, illustrated by New York Times bestselling author/illustrator Nikki McClure, Sinful Folk illuminates the medieval era with profound insight and compassion.

Excerpt

"April comes to us with her showers sweet. I wake to the cries of little birds before the light comes across the heath. I turn back the rich brocaded cloth of gold on my bed and walk to my glazed casement window. I imagine my mother calling to me in the plaintive voice of the wood fowl, her words echoing across the years. I wrap myself in a Moorish robe of intricate design and gaze beyond my solitary window. Raindrops speckle the costly glass." — from the novel SINFUL FOLK

Excerpt

In the end, I listen to my fear. It keeps me awake, resounding through the frantic beating in my breast. It is there in the dry terror in my throat, in the pricking of the rats' nervous feet in the darkness. Christian has not come home all the night long. I know, for I have lain in this darkness for hours now with my eyes stretched wide, yearning for my son's return. On this night, I tell myself that the sound I hear is frost cracking, river ice breaking. I lie to my own heart, as one lies to a frightened child, one who cannot be saved. All the while, I know it is a fire. And I know how near it is.

Excerpt

“On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our camp, around us echo faint sounds of that other hidden world—the one of meadow and forest in the night. The melody of whip-poor-will, the cry of hunting owl, the scurrying rush of vole and chasing fox. This night, the land is empty. The silence is deep in stark and open heath. It is as if some great razor scraped the life from this sheet of white-edged vellum, leaving only blank.” - SINFUL FOLK

Excerpt

"Stars steam away as a pale sun rises, hot coal dropped in a watery sky. Light seeps across the forest as the reedy shrieks of wood fowl echo in the trees. The path from our village to the King’s Highway is no road at all. To the east, that faint track leads up through the forest until it reaches, finally, the open country and paths that lead to other places. Hob is taking us beyond the bounds of the known world.” — from the novel SINFUL FOLK

Description

In "Poor, Sinning Folk," W. David Myers investigates the sixteenth-century fate of the medieval Christian sacrament of penance, the process of confessing to a priest in secret one's sins against God and other humans. In Pre-Reformation Germany, numerous layers of public ritual, expectation, and display surrounded the central secret act of confessing and conditioned its meaning. Less frequent and less private than the ritual familiar to modern Catholics, medieval penance was for most German-speaking Christians a seasonal event with social as well as spiritual ramifications for participants. Protestantism swept confession away from many German lands. Even where Catholicism survived and flourished, as in the lands comprising modern Bavaria, the sacrament of penance changed profoundly. The modern confessional booth was introduced, making the sacrament more prominent, more secure from scandal, and ultimately more private. This reform coincided with the efforts of secular rulers to fashion a more disciplined, obedient population. New religious orders, most notably the Society of Jesus in Bavaria, saw the frequent confession of lay people as a means to piety and spiritual discipline amid the temptations of worldly affairs. By the middle of the seventeenth century, political and religious forces combined to forge the sacrament of penance into an effective instrument of spiritual discipline which would fashion the modern Catholic conscience and endure essentially unchanged into the late twentieth century.

Subjects

Other Editions

• "Poor, sinning folk": confession and conscience in Counter-Reformation GermanyCornell University Press1996-01-01
• Sinful FolkeBookCampanile Books2014-01-01
• Sinful FolkCampanile Books2014-01-01
• Sinful FolkPaperbackCampanile Books2014-01-01