William Golding, British Nobel Prize winner, is of course best known for The Lord of the Flies, but he was primarily a historical novelist, his works ranging from The Inheritors, which is set far back in the mists of prehistory (and is in my opinion one of the greatest novels ever written), through The Scorpion God, set in ancient Egypt, The Double Tongue, his last novel, set in classical Greece, to the wonderful Rites of Passage trilogy, set in I believe the 18th century. His one novel set in medieval times is The Spire.
Jocelin, Lord Dean of the (unnamed) cathedral, has a dream: a dream based on a vision, for he is above all else a mystic.
And then, quite suddenly, he knew he was not alone. It was not that he saw, or heard a presence. He felt it, like the warmth of a fire at his back, powerful and gentle at the same time; and so immediate was the pressure of that personality, it might have been in his very spine.
He bent his head in terror, hardly breathing. He allowed the presence to do what it would. I am here, the presence seemed to say, do nothing, we are here, and all work together for good.
Then he dared to think again, in the warmth at his back.
It is my guardian angel.
I do Thy work; and Thou hast sent Thy messenger to comfort me. As it was of old, in the desert.
With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
Joy, fire, joy.
And the dream of adding a soaring spire to the cathedral becomes an obsession: he will not listen to words of warning and advice from such as the sacrist, Father Anselm, who voted against it in Chapter and was overruled (and now refers to it as Jocelin's Folly), and Roger Mason, the master-builder, who tells the Dean there are no proper foundations and is told in return to have faith and believe in miracles.
At first, he knows that he must not focus on the spire to the exclusion of all else. "And I must remember that the spire isn't everything! I must do, as far as possible, exactly what I have always done." But this becomes impossible as the drama builds up.
There is human drama, too, a personal drama also building up to a terrible climax. This revolves around Goody Pagnall, an orphan and ward of the cathedral chapter, Jocelin's "daughter in God" (as he puts it), now a red-haired beauty who has become "entirely a woman". There is a small affair, a small tragedy; and yet in a sense it is the greater tragedy, for can there be one greater than love, and the death of the beloved, of beauty?
Golding poses the question, should a God-obsessed mystic be entrusted with temporal authority, be thrust into a situation where people depend on the decisions he will make - and suddenly tells us how Jocelin really came to be appointed Lord Dean in the first place.
Beautifully written, of course, a wonderful novel, a classic, Golding at his best, and to be read by everyone interested in the Age of Belief, when the great cathedrals which still have us craning our necks backwards in awed disbelief, were built by hand and on faith.
JM
THE SPIRE
William Golding
Medieval Magic and Mystery
> the mysticism of the great cathedral-builders
> bale-fires up on the hills on Midsummer night
> witchcraft a spell cast by means of a dried-up mistletoe berry
Medieval Outsiders
> a prelate of the Church obsessed with adding an impossible 400-foot spire to the cathedral for which he is responsible
> the itinerant masons and labourers who undertake such projects
> the cathedral care-taker who is made the butt of the labourers' jokes
> the caretaker's beautiful young wife, herself a ward of the cathedral chapter
