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Adele and Gilbert
Adèle and Gilbert is more a journey to be made than a book to be read. You will travel with two young loves who were separated by circumstance in adolescence. Each having reason to believe the other dead, they then follow separate pathways through 14th century France until reunited twenty years later, by chance, on the doorsteps of a church in an obscure village. If you decide to travel alongside Adèle and Gilbert, please be aware that the journey you make will be an arduous passage. The pathways you will travel with Adèle and Gilbert wander through fields populated by characters who will prey on your imagination as ruthlessly as they prey on the souls of Adèle and Gilbert. These fields, though, also host characters whose souls reflect divine majesty and sublimity, and whose nurturing and protection sustain Adèle and Gilbert. Lurid and ghastly encounters await the traveler around every bend as the journeys of Adèle and Gilbert carry them past sites that contain dark and haunting images. These sites, though, serve to foil shrines that house visions of eternal beauty, which appear along the way and tower above the darkness surrounding them.
During their travels, Adèle and Gilbert encounter sinister priests, vengeful bishops, communal beguines, and benighted inquisitors. They also meet historical characters who range in temperament and outlook from Marguerite Porete to her persecutor, William of Paris.
Adèle’s journey begins with her abduction by Frère Amaury. She travels with him and his acolytes, a band of heretical monks, as they despoil out-of-the-way hamlets. Eventually, Adèle falls victim to Frère Amaury’s nihilistic and amoral philosophy and becomes a willing participant in the ravages he and his acolytes visit on unsuspecting and guileless villagers. As the result of a confrontation between Marguerite Porete and Frère Amaury, Adèle is liberated, body and soul. She then travels as a mendicant evangelist before settling down to tend the inhabitants of a small village, where she waits, unknowingly, for Gilbert’s arrival.
Gilbert's route winds through two different Crusades. On the first, he is captured by militant heretics who were led by Fra Dolcino. On the second, Gilbert patrols the waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea as a knight, Hospitaller. Eventually, an encounter at sea leads him to reconsider his life as a Crusader. He then returns to France where he seeks redemption through acts of retributive justice until he wanders on the village where Adèle awaits his arrival.
At the village that serves as the site of their reunion, Adèle and Gilbert encounter a Franciscan monk, called Frère Abélard, who had also traveled to the village. The frère had traveled to the village in search of a ward who had been abducted. Twenty years earlier, the frère had assumed the guise of Franciscan monk after escaping Philip the Fair’s suppression of his military order, the Templar Knights. He took responsibility for his ward shortly afterward. It is after Frère Abélard confesses and reconciles Adèle and Gilbert that they face their most daunting and gruesome challenges when old debts are collected, in blood, by all involved parties who survived to collect them.
Barbara Tuchman described the calamitous fourteenth century as A Distant Mirror, but you will find that the characters who gaze back at you from the pages of Adèle and Gilbert do so from close range. The tenets of the rigid orthodoxy and bizarre heresies Adele and Gilbert encounter echo, loudly, in modern philosophical and behavioral movements.
During their travels, Adèle and Gilbert encounter sinister priests, vengeful bishops, communal beguines, and benighted inquisitors. They also meet historical characters who range in temperament and outlook from Marguerite Porete to her persecutor, William of Paris.
Adèle’s journey begins with her abduction by Frère Amaury. She travels with him and his acolytes, a band of heretical monks, as they despoil out-of-the-way hamlets. Eventually, Adèle falls victim to Frère Amaury’s nihilistic and amoral philosophy and becomes a willing participant in the ravages he and his acolytes visit on unsuspecting and guileless villagers. As the result of a confrontation between Marguerite Porete and Frère Amaury, Adèle is liberated, body and soul. She then travels as a mendicant evangelist before settling down to tend the inhabitants of a small village, where she waits, unknowingly, for Gilbert’s arrival.
Gilbert's route winds through two different Crusades. On the first, he is captured by militant heretics who were led by Fra Dolcino. On the second, Gilbert patrols the waters of the eastern Mediterranean Sea as a knight, Hospitaller. Eventually, an encounter at sea leads him to reconsider his life as a Crusader. He then returns to France where he seeks redemption through acts of retributive justice until he wanders on the village where Adèle awaits his arrival.
At the village that serves as the site of their reunion, Adèle and Gilbert encounter a Franciscan monk, called Frère Abélard, who had also traveled to the village. The frère had traveled to the village in search of a ward who had been abducted. Twenty years earlier, the frère had assumed the guise of Franciscan monk after escaping Philip the Fair’s suppression of his military order, the Templar Knights. He took responsibility for his ward shortly afterward. It is after Frère Abélard confesses and reconciles Adèle and Gilbert that they face their most daunting and gruesome challenges when old debts are collected, in blood, by all involved parties who survived to collect them.
Barbara Tuchman described the calamitous fourteenth century as A Distant Mirror, but you will find that the characters who gaze back at you from the pages of Adèle and Gilbert do so from close range. The tenets of the rigid orthodoxy and bizarre heresies Adele and Gilbert encounter echo, loudly, in modern philosophical and behavioral movements.
1026 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 21, 2022
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