What do you think?
Rate this book
Crushed Yet Conquering: A Story of Constance and Bohemia
A gripping story filled with accurate historical facts about John Huss and the Hussite wars. Hardly any historical novel can be more captivating and edifying than this book. Even if Deborah Alcock was not the greatest of nineteenth century authors, certainly she is our most favourite.
430 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2002
24 people want to read
About the author
Deborah Alcock
130 books5 followersDeborah Alcock (1835 – 1913) is best known as a late Victorian author of historical fiction focused on religious, evangelical themes.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 18, 2010
I wish it were easier to find Ms. Alcock's books. She manages to vividly recreate historical time periods and fill them with realistic characters who have a strong faith -- and yet remain human. This was a wonderful book.
September 29, 2012
I've read a novel by Deborah Alcock before, and looking back on my review for that, I discover many similar themes in place: overt evangelical protestant proselytizing, hero-worship as a motivator for the fictional junior hero, and a strong interest in historical detail. Within her own world-view (which is most assuredly not mine), Alcock is an honourable author as regards her history, and a reasonably skilled story-teller. The structure of this novel is perhaps a little too obviously divided in two more or less unrelated parts (see the subtitle).
Alcock has taken for the subject of the first half of her novel (and, one suspects, the more congenial one) the events of the Council of Constance, at which Czech (or Bohemian) proto-Protestant martyr Jan Hus (anglicized John Huss) was condemned for heresy and burned at the stake. From a modern viewpoint, most of heresies appear to have been of the type that threatened the Catholic power structure by condemning the practices which fed that money- and power-hungry organization in the early 15th century. Therefore there's little wonder (from that same cynical modern viewpoint) that he was burned. It may have come as something of a surprise, though, to the Councillors and the Church they were desperately trying to save from disintegration (multiple Pope-claimants, etc.) that Hus' death spawned a long-lasting and at least temporarily successful popular uprising in Bohemia which, as the author admits frankly at one point, became as much about Bohemian nationalism as about the martyrdom of Hus, or the point of ritual around which the Hussites rallied, their right to receive the Cup as well as the bread in the mass. That uprising, or at least the opening phases of it, form the setting of the second part of the novel.
Making all of this more or less palatable to the non-Christian reader is a fairly well-told historical novel with plenty of incident drawn from the actual horrors of the time, and a fictional juvenile hero who undergoes his religious conversion in the first half of the book, and gets his reward in the form of marriage to the daughter of his own role-model and hero in the second. This juvenile hero is made English by birth to signal clearly to Alcock's native audience that he is the protagonist, but there's nothing particularly English about him. He is also given a brother (like him, brought up in France, but in a very different milieu), and Alcock's initial conception of her structure appears to have been to balance off the emotional/spiritual journey of Armand with his rediscovered brother Hubert. However, even the attempt to maintain this comparison falls off at the end of the first half, and Alcock does not include Armand in the second half at all, giving him only one brief and uninterested paragraph in the denouement.
There are plenty of nineteenth-century assumptions going on here, including of course the 'natural' difference in the roles of men and women (though Alcock does chronicle at least one incident from the middle of the main battle at Prague where women took part in front-line fighting). She also has a not totally unsympathetic portrait of a Jewish doctor who is responsible for both a plot point and for representing a rationality about the natural world (eclipses, etc.) which completely escapes both sides of the Christian debate at that time. And she does not, I am happy to say, convert him, simply having him depart when Hubert presses him on the subject, saying that people belong with their own kind. It's not nearly as bad as it could be, although the casual anti-Semitic language of any Victorian novel strikes hard upon the post-Holocaust ear (Alcock refers matter-of-factly to the very large Jewish sector in Prague).
Since Hus was in fact a pretty good Catholic, far from being as far along in doctrinal rebellion as, say, Luther, Alcock is occasionally forced by her own historical honesty into a rather defensive tone (as, for instance, when she points out that he believed in actual transubstantiation). It's to her credit that she doesn't gloss these points over, but she assumes she is writing to a homogeneous audience (and perhaps, indeed, she was, and perhaps indeed amongst her small current audience, she still largely is), and one can only sigh at her confident assertions to the tune of, "Well, of course, we know better now!".
That said, a decent story in a historical place and time I knew nothing about, and I was never tempted to set it aside unfinished.
Alcock has taken for the subject of the first half of her novel (and, one suspects, the more congenial one) the events of the Council of Constance, at which Czech (or Bohemian) proto-Protestant martyr Jan Hus (anglicized John Huss) was condemned for heresy and burned at the stake. From a modern viewpoint, most of heresies appear to have been of the type that threatened the Catholic power structure by condemning the practices which fed that money- and power-hungry organization in the early 15th century. Therefore there's little wonder (from that same cynical modern viewpoint) that he was burned. It may have come as something of a surprise, though, to the Councillors and the Church they were desperately trying to save from disintegration (multiple Pope-claimants, etc.) that Hus' death spawned a long-lasting and at least temporarily successful popular uprising in Bohemia which, as the author admits frankly at one point, became as much about Bohemian nationalism as about the martyrdom of Hus, or the point of ritual around which the Hussites rallied, their right to receive the Cup as well as the bread in the mass. That uprising, or at least the opening phases of it, form the setting of the second part of the novel.
Making all of this more or less palatable to the non-Christian reader is a fairly well-told historical novel with plenty of incident drawn from the actual horrors of the time, and a fictional juvenile hero who undergoes his religious conversion in the first half of the book, and gets his reward in the form of marriage to the daughter of his own role-model and hero in the second. This juvenile hero is made English by birth to signal clearly to Alcock's native audience that he is the protagonist, but there's nothing particularly English about him. He is also given a brother (like him, brought up in France, but in a very different milieu), and Alcock's initial conception of her structure appears to have been to balance off the emotional/spiritual journey of Armand with his rediscovered brother Hubert. However, even the attempt to maintain this comparison falls off at the end of the first half, and Alcock does not include Armand in the second half at all, giving him only one brief and uninterested paragraph in the denouement.
There are plenty of nineteenth-century assumptions going on here, including of course the 'natural' difference in the roles of men and women (though Alcock does chronicle at least one incident from the middle of the main battle at Prague where women took part in front-line fighting). She also has a not totally unsympathetic portrait of a Jewish doctor who is responsible for both a plot point and for representing a rationality about the natural world (eclipses, etc.) which completely escapes both sides of the Christian debate at that time. And she does not, I am happy to say, convert him, simply having him depart when Hubert presses him on the subject, saying that people belong with their own kind. It's not nearly as bad as it could be, although the casual anti-Semitic language of any Victorian novel strikes hard upon the post-Holocaust ear (Alcock refers matter-of-factly to the very large Jewish sector in Prague).
Since Hus was in fact a pretty good Catholic, far from being as far along in doctrinal rebellion as, say, Luther, Alcock is occasionally forced by her own historical honesty into a rather defensive tone (as, for instance, when she points out that he believed in actual transubstantiation). It's to her credit that she doesn't gloss these points over, but she assumes she is writing to a homogeneous audience (and perhaps, indeed, she was, and perhaps indeed amongst her small current audience, she still largely is), and one can only sigh at her confident assertions to the tune of, "Well, of course, we know better now!".
That said, a decent story in a historical place and time I knew nothing about, and I was never tempted to set it aside unfinished.
May 22, 2013
It is 1401 when the book opens with the death of a husband and wife in France, leaving two boys orphans. Hubert, the elder of the two, is the son of the wife by her first marriage to an Englishman, and Armand is the son of her second marriage to a Frenchman. Hubert is sent to study under the Bishop of Arras and ends up serving in the court of Jean Gerson who is the Chancellor of Paris, while Armand is attached to the household of the Duke of Burgundy and becomes a squire. The plot then skips ahead a few years, where the brothers meet again in Constance where the Bohemian reformer John Huss is condemned to martyrdom by the Roman Catholic Council under the leadership of Gerson.
Hubert is so repulsed by the unfair actions of the council that he leaves the service of Gerson and accompanies the knight John of Chlum, who was Huss’s greatest supporter, back to Bohemia. There he falls in love with Chlum’s daughter Zedenka. The rest of the book relates the history of the church in Bohemia and the terrible persecutions which those who support Huss endure at the hands of the Catholic authorities. What will happen to Hubert and Zedenka? Crushed Yet Conquering is filled with accurate historical facts about John Huss and the Hussite wars. The story of John Huss is strictly true. Nothing has been added or altered. All the dialogue given to Huss in the book is directly taken from his quotations, and the actual words of others are in italics. The relations of Gerson to Hubert Bohun are imaginary, but almost every expression of opinion attributed to Gerson has been taken from his writings, and the circumstances of his death are strictly historical as well as the instances of martyrdom introduced.
Deborah Alcock (1835-1913) was the author of several historical novels about the Reformation period and other times, including The Romance of Protestantism, Dr. Adrian, Done and Dared in Old France, The Czar, Archie’s Chances, Prisoners of Hope, and perhaps her best known The Spanish Brothers. Crushed Yet Conquering is part of the Reformation Trail Series published by Inheritance Publications. We did it is a family read aloud. There are several references to drinking wine and other alcoholic beverages which I edited out in reading aloud. It is a gripping story that is not easy to read aloud because of its length, slightly antiquated language, rather intricate plot, and many asides by the author, but it is worth the effort. While the emphasis is on the Catholic persecution of the Hussites, Alcock doesn’t shy away from pointing out some of the mistakes made by the Hussites. It certainly increased our understanding and appreciation of this often overlooked part of Western history.
Hubert is so repulsed by the unfair actions of the council that he leaves the service of Gerson and accompanies the knight John of Chlum, who was Huss’s greatest supporter, back to Bohemia. There he falls in love with Chlum’s daughter Zedenka. The rest of the book relates the history of the church in Bohemia and the terrible persecutions which those who support Huss endure at the hands of the Catholic authorities. What will happen to Hubert and Zedenka? Crushed Yet Conquering is filled with accurate historical facts about John Huss and the Hussite wars. The story of John Huss is strictly true. Nothing has been added or altered. All the dialogue given to Huss in the book is directly taken from his quotations, and the actual words of others are in italics. The relations of Gerson to Hubert Bohun are imaginary, but almost every expression of opinion attributed to Gerson has been taken from his writings, and the circumstances of his death are strictly historical as well as the instances of martyrdom introduced.
Deborah Alcock (1835-1913) was the author of several historical novels about the Reformation period and other times, including The Romance of Protestantism, Dr. Adrian, Done and Dared in Old France, The Czar, Archie’s Chances, Prisoners of Hope, and perhaps her best known The Spanish Brothers. Crushed Yet Conquering is part of the Reformation Trail Series published by Inheritance Publications. We did it is a family read aloud. There are several references to drinking wine and other alcoholic beverages which I edited out in reading aloud. It is a gripping story that is not easy to read aloud because of its length, slightly antiquated language, rather intricate plot, and many asides by the author, but it is worth the effort. While the emphasis is on the Catholic persecution of the Hussites, Alcock doesn’t shy away from pointing out some of the mistakes made by the Hussites. It certainly increased our understanding and appreciation of this often overlooked part of Western history.
July 11, 2008
This book opens with the death of a husband and wife, leaving their two boys orphans. Two men each take a boy to care for him. The book then skips ahead many years, where the brothers meet in Constance. The elder is the secretary of the chancellor of Paris, and the younger is a squire of the duke of Burgundy. (On a side note, this book helped my with my history time line. The duke of Burgundy at the Council of Constance is the same that in later years condemned the Maid of Orleans to the flames.) The story follows the two young men, with less focus on the younger brother, during the trial of John Huss. Both meet Christ through the events of the trial and burning. Any true story will speak to a heart because it shows true love. True love to a father, a friend, a faith, a family, a lover. This story has them all. I cried more reading this book than any other in a long time.
The end of the first half of the book tells us that Armande, the younger brother, will follow Christ all his days, although he will always remain a man of his times. John Huss is considered a reformer, but he was truly a good Catholic. He believed in the tenets of Catholicism, including transubstantiation, purgatory (at least in his written works), and did not even say anything against praying to "saints." He spoke against indulgences, and the corruptions of the priesthood, but he was doctrinally Catholic. Even at the Council they found no fault with his doctrine.
The second half of the book follows Hubert, the older brother, as he accompanies John of Chlum back to Bohemia. I had never heard the history of the church in Bohemia, and the terrible persecutions they endured, for the most part because they went farther than Huss. The most controversial thing at that time was that they believed that not only was the bread for all the people in the Lord's Supper, but also the cup. Many lives would have been spared, had people simply said that the cup was not for the people.
The book is well written, and well researched. The author states that all the dialog given to Huss in the book is directly his quotations, and she has the actual words of others in italics. The characters are drawn well, and made me ask myself if my faith is so precious to me as it was to them. I think it is, but if death, not just to me, but to my loved ones, was consequence for holding to the tenets of my faith, would I cling to Christ the way they did?
Definitely one of the best, most edifying novels I have read.
The end of the first half of the book tells us that Armande, the younger brother, will follow Christ all his days, although he will always remain a man of his times. John Huss is considered a reformer, but he was truly a good Catholic. He believed in the tenets of Catholicism, including transubstantiation, purgatory (at least in his written works), and did not even say anything against praying to "saints." He spoke against indulgences, and the corruptions of the priesthood, but he was doctrinally Catholic. Even at the Council they found no fault with his doctrine.
The second half of the book follows Hubert, the older brother, as he accompanies John of Chlum back to Bohemia. I had never heard the history of the church in Bohemia, and the terrible persecutions they endured, for the most part because they went farther than Huss. The most controversial thing at that time was that they believed that not only was the bread for all the people in the Lord's Supper, but also the cup. Many lives would have been spared, had people simply said that the cup was not for the people.
The book is well written, and well researched. The author states that all the dialog given to Huss in the book is directly his quotations, and she has the actual words of others in italics. The characters are drawn well, and made me ask myself if my faith is so precious to me as it was to them. I think it is, but if death, not just to me, but to my loved ones, was consequence for holding to the tenets of my faith, would I cling to Christ the way they did?
Definitely one of the best, most edifying novels I have read.
April 6, 2010
If was great for a Historical fiction book. I thought by looking at the cover I was going to be really confused while reading it, but it turned out to be a very eAsy yet powerful read. This book has the same story line as Luther and the fight against the Catholikc church in England.
November 9, 2013
I really liked this book. Good story, lots of history.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews