Confessors of the Name

by Gladys Schmitt

The reign of the Emperor Decius (250 A.D.) was a time which the great English historian Toynbee likens to our own - "a time of troubles." Troubles there were - Goths descending upon the Empire from the northern forests, Christians setting up a state within a state, and appalling corruption and chaos on every level, from the senators to the slaves. It is with Favorinus Herennius that the reader is taken through all the levels of Roman society in this year of decision. It begins in the fabulously wealthy family of the Herennii, where the young man - charming, intelligent, handsome -seeks and fails to find the meaning of life, and turns his back on a mother whose sole interest is money and prestige and on a sister Drusilla, who can think of nothing but the wreck of what her friends call "the worst marriage in Rome." Nor can he find the significance he seeks in the circle of artists and intellects gathered around his Greek mistress Charis. This is a novel of a yesterday which is all too like our own. In the splendid ruins and the hovels, in the Forum and on battlefields, you will find yourself. In the orgies and the persecutions, in the ruthlessness and the demoralization, you will see what you have been witnessing in the world for the last twenty years. But here, too, is a story of hope, since some new shoot always springs out of the decay. The primitive Christian Church survives the collapse of this dying civilization, rises triumphant out of the ruin in spite of the beasts and the rack and the fire.

Genres: Historical Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

Reviews

[Nancy Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

old book I found in an antique shop, the author was born in 1909...but it is a great historical read about the Romans and the Christian Church

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in the 1950's when I was a kid. I am amazed how it stayed with me and how, when I read it now, there were passages --- really remarks or descriptions --- that I remembered. I looked up the author on the web and learned, much to my surprise, that she had been head of the creative writing department at Carnegie Mellon University.

The overarching theme is the fate of individuals and institutions perceived as oppositional (the Church here) in the face of totalitarianism. My knowledge of the history of the 50's is not really very good, but there must be reminders to the contemporary reader of McCarthyism and the controversies over loyalty oaths. In this sense, Ms. Schmitt, like Giuseppe Verdi and his librettists, pushed her manuscript past the censors. But I couldn't read modern attitudes and the knowledge of history too far backwards into all this because the Goths in the book are a true menace --- and the Communists in this modern age are now fragmented and dispersed. So, perhaps, Ms. Schmitt's interest might have been how to show that external threats to society breed totalitarianism. It's interesting to think about, but I admit that I speculate.

The book has several qualities that I appreciated. First, there are elements that are like the soaps or the Latin TV Novellas --- the high drama and melodrama, the straightforward emotions, the excellent and horrid fate of some of the characters, like Charis. This part is totally delicious. Second, there is the development of the hero and heroine, Favorinus Herrenius and Paulina. They are a very unlikely couple as Favorinus begins as a somewhat escapist Stoic dilettante and Paulina is a Christian who becomes later, well, the Blessed Paulina. Third, the description of the quandaries of the earlyish Church in the face of persecution was interesting and, in the descriptions of the life on death row, as it were, quite gripping. Fourth, there are very few works of historical fiction, if any, that take the reader into the third century and at least highlight the fears and chaos of the time.

It's true that Ms. Schmitt was writing an epic, but even so the book drags in places (but, as they say, even Homer nods). For example, even though, overall, the progression is interesting, the extended treatment of Favorinus' mental and emotional torments is just too extended. Ms. Schmitt is just not Dostoyevsky. On the other hand, when she limits herself to description and conversation, she can be strong. In this respect, one of the most impressive characters is a minor one: Moyses the elder whose conversation with the emperor Decius in prison is humorous and actually charming.

I am not saying that you should run out and read this book. But I think that I will likely look for at least one more of Ms. Schmitt's books, perhaps the one on King David.