One with the Father: A Novel of Mysticism, Heresy, and Rebellion in the Middle Ages
Ebook
When Justin escapes the comfortable medieval estate where his overbearing father has kept him sheltered his whole life, hot in pursuit of the servant girl he has fallen in love with, he finds himself caught up in a social order torn between extremes of wealth and poverty, feudal hierarchy and peasant revolts, ecclesiastical corruption and monastic piety, gross injustices and boundless mercy.
The mid-fourteenth century was a time not only of burgeoning towns, majestic cathedrals, and nascent universities, but also of debauchery and violence, the Black Death and Inquisition, torture and ordeals. In his encounters with noblemen and peasants, alchemists and hermits, monks and heretics, knights and revolutionaries, prostitutes and miscreants from the medieval underworld, Justin comes to realize that he is entirely on his own as he confronts his personal moral failings and struggles to find faith in a world where God no longer seems to exist.
“If you enjoy meaningful and detailed novels with intriguing plots that make you think rather than simply entertain, you are going to love this one! Situated in medieval England, the novel describes one man’s struggle to navigate his way through competing religious and cultural beliefs in a complex and rapidly changing society, eventually reaching a belief system he can live with and die for. A unique novel that is fascinating to read.”
—Tony Boys, retired university professor
“Argue not concerning God, said Walt Whitman, but with a scholar’s heft and a poet’s touch, Richard Evanoff argues ingeniously in this disputatious, philosophical novel. The overlapping of the Buddha and St. Francis backstories in the hero Justin’s life brings East-West concerns into relief, and the reader is alert to the dialectical possibilities it raises for the sympathetic mind.”
—Alan Botsford, author of Dreamer
“A boy foreseen at birth as a future religious leader, raised in strict seclusion in a medieval English fiefdom by an authoritarian father, breaks away—seeking ‘to know God.’ Richard Evanoff draws on myriad Western and Eastern philosophical/spiritual sources to debate the meaning of personal salvation, social justice, and political autonomy, revealing incidentally how some beliefs once dismissed as absolute heresies have metamorphosed into mainstream orthodoxies in our present era.”
—Ken Rodgers, managing editor, Kyoto Journal
“I highly recommend this book by Richard Evanoff. Its various twists and turns and the various religious/philosophical perspectives makes it a fascinating read.”
—David Howenstein, author of Jumbo Jumble
“Richard Evanoff’s writing is telling of more than a story; it is telling of life itself, of how it is for us. That is its glory. It is writing that is alive, that helps us survive.”
—Scott Watson, author of Quake Notes
- Title: One with the Father: A Novel of Mysticism, Heresy, and Rebellion in the Middle Ages
- Author: Richard Evanoff
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666771121, 9781666771114, 1666771112, 9781666771107, 1666771104, 1666771120
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666771121
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-08-19T02:12:30Z
Richard Evanoff is professor of intercultural communication at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Lancaster University in the UK and is the author of numerous publications in intercultural ethics and environmental ethics, including the book Bioregionalism and Global Ethics (2011). He is particularly interested in crosscultural dialogue on Western and Asian philosophy and religion, and is also active in literary circles in Tokyo as a poet, writer, and editor.