The background of this wonderful novel set in the late fourteenth century is the seething resentment against the aristocracy and the Church (the two were one, the heirarchy of the Church being composed of aristocrats such as the youthful but villainous Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich and "one of the most powerful men in England", who plays a major role in this book) while the mass of people live in extreme poverty and on the verge of starvation.
Leading the rebellion against the Church is John Wycliffe, whom we meet at once in the Prologue: "John Wycliffe put down his pen and rubbed tired eyes," the book begins. He was the first translator of the Bible into English and leader of the Lollard movement that came close to achieving reformation in England 150 years before Henry VIII's break with Rome.
But, as always, theologians found favour (and ordinary Christian folk lived or died) at the whim of those who held the reins of power. The Reformation occurred because Henry VIII, previously an ardent supporter of Romanism, needed a marriage anullment that only the Pope could grant, but the Pope would not because he was in the pocket of the Spanish king; so Henry did an about-turn and raised to positions of power the reformers who promised him a simple divorce. Similarly, John Wycliffe's successes 150 years earlier were due to the support of John o' Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and Regent of England, who used Wycliffe as a pawn in his own power struggle with the Church. Without Lancaster, Wycliffe would have been condemned as a heretic, but as it is he retains his post as Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and continues his translation of the Bible and his other writings harshly criticising various aspects of the medieval Roman Church such as the sale of spurious 'relics' and of 'indulgences' for sins of which the sinner had not repented and indeed may not even yet have committed.
This is the situation in which Finn the Illuminator (calligrapher and painter of illuminated texts), whilst overtly copying Biblical texts and saints' lives for the Church, clandestinely copies out Wycliffe's English Bible.
The story itself is a love story or rather two love stories. One between Finn and Lady Kathryn, the widow with whom he is billeted by the abbot of the local monastery, his current employer, and the other between Finn's daughter (the reason he cannot be lodged at the monastery) and the younger of Kathryn's two sons. Kathryn is very conventional and orthodox; Finn, whose woman, the mother of his daughter, was "a Jewess", is not. Yet they are drawn to each other irresistably.
