Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett

Wm Morrow, 1989, 973pp (FHL)

This lengthy tome is an interesting portrayal of life in 12th century England. The story opens in the year 1123, three years after the wreck of the "White Ship," which carried the heir apparent to the English throne. This sets the stage for years of bloody civil war for the succession. The book contains many scenes of brutality, violence and what many will consider gratuitous sex ... not for the squeamish or prudish.

In the opening scene, there is to be a public hanging. Describing the small boys waiting around for the big event, the author says they "despised everything their elders valued. They scorned beauty and mocked goodness. They would hoot with laughter at the sight of a cripple, and if they saw a wounded animal they would stone it to death. They boasted of injuries and wore their scars with pride, and they reserved their special admiration for mutilation: a boy with a finger missing could be their king. They loved violence; they would run miles to see bloodshed; and they never missed a hanging" (11).

This scene illustrates the fact that civilized behavior is by no means inborn among humans and must be painstakingly taught to each individual. It is also a fortaste of some of the adult behavior we'll be witnessing during the course of the story. The message seems to be that civil society is a thin veneer over our brutish natures and we're never too far removed from it.

After the hanging in the prologue, we join the family of a builder named Tom in 1135 (wife Agnes, 14yo Alfred, 7yo Martha) as they walk from place to place in search of work. Tom decides to pass up a relatively stable job in favor of a chance to work on a cathedral. His wife never understood that decision (23). A primary theme throughout the book is the process of building cathedrals, by far the greatest architectural accomplishments of the age. We are offered lots of detail as to the techniques used to build such a monument. Agnes is again with child, after many miscarriages, one stillborn, and little Matilda who had died at 2yo. Agnes feels she's too old to have more, so this should be the last (24). We meet some very good characters, such as Philip the monk (a main character) and Meg of Winchester (a bit player who is kind to Aliena at a difficult time), and also very nasty ones such as William Hamleigh, son of an earl, and Waleran Bigod, a corrupt church official and finally some mostly good ones (if not always perfectly noble) like Tom, Jack, Ellen, Aliena and Richard. When Lady Aliena, the dau of the earl of Shiring, refuses to marry Wm Hamleigh, son of Lord Percy, Agnes comments "If earls' daughters were allowed to marry whom they please, we'd all be ruled by strolling minstrels and dark-eyed outlaws" (25).

After Tom's wife Agnes dies (bled to death during childbirth, he leaves the newborn baby boy out on his mother's gave, where's he's fortunately soon found by monks), he lives with a wild woman they'd previously met living in the forest named Ellen. She has a son Jack (11). Unfortunately, Alfred and Jack didn't get along well, Jack being smarter and Alfred being a bully. After a while, Ellen decides to leave for her son's protection because of Alfred and because Tom's income is so unstable. This ends Part I.

Part II opens with Tom working on his cathedral under Philip's direction (to be funded hopefully by King Stephen). ... Part II closes with 13yo Jack taking a shining to 18yo Aliena. "He was single-minded about her. He was enchanted. He was possessed. He was in love" (437).

Part III opens with Wm Hamleigh and his fellow thugs at a whorehouse. A messenger announces that Wm's father has died (444) ... Part III ends as Wm sets fire to the town of Kingsbridge, where Jack and Aliena live. Aliena's beloved wool (all her stored wealth) is destroyed, but Jack saves her life. Tom is killed by Wm's raging horse. Jack thanks him for taking care of him and especially for giving him the skill of cathedral building (595).

Part IV opens w/Wm terrified by Philip's "You'll go to hell for this!" (600) ... and ends with Jack and Aliena finally getting together (765).

Part V opens with Jack making progress on his cathedral (770).

Tom's son Alfred has the potential to go either way, but he turns out to be rotten. He didn't have to go that way. As he is dying after being stabbed by her brother Richard while trying to rape her, Aliena reflects "he had never been compassionate himself, nor forgiving, nor generous. He had nursed his resentments and hatreds all his life, and had taken his pleasure from acts of malice and revenge. Your life COULD have been different, Alfred, she thought. You could have been kind to your sister, and forgiven your stepbrother [Jack] for being cleverer than you. You could have married for love instead of for revenge. You could have been loyal to Prior Philip. You could have been happy" (888).

Aliena's father (and her son Tommy) are described as "having a very strong will and a somewhat inflexible sense of right and wrong" (880). Jack (and his daughter Sally) had "easygoing natures and contempt for man-made rules" (882). The latter were likely to sympathize with underdogs while the former to pronounce judgement on them.

A touching story is when Remigius, the corrupt and power-hungry monk is brought low by his disloyalty to Prior Philip. When the good Prior finds him rooting around in a garbage dump for food, he offers Remigius to come back as an ordinary monk, confessing his sins and spending the rest of his days in prayer and preparing to meet God. His reaction is shock that Philip would have the goodness to make this offer, but after thinking it through, he accepts and later testifies to past wrongs in court, helping Philip's cause. He has been broken, but finds redemption.

William and Waleran are bad from the beginning. We are happy when William finally receives his due toward the end for his part in the murder of Thomas Beckett. Waleran is a curious character, since he sincerely believes in God and in the rightness of his own actions in God's eyes. His mistake is in justifying the means by the ends. He is brought low toward the end, living out his last days as an ordinary, humble monk, like Remigius.

Toward the end we intersect the life of the real-life character Archbishop Thomas Beckett, who is martyred in his own cathedral by over-ambitious associates of King Henry. The parting thought is how events have secured limits on the power of kings, in no small part due to the influence of the church (despite its corruption). The implication is that God uses (past, present and future) his very imperfect church and people within it to bring about His good plans for the world.

Part V (and the book) closes with 66yo Philip standing at the West Gate of the ancient city of Canterbury, 3.5 yrs after Beckett's death. "The death of Thomas had shown that, in a conflict between the Church and the Crown, the monarch could always prevail by the use of brute force. But the cult of St. Thomas proved that such a victory would always be a hollow one. The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people. This change had taken place within Philip's lifetime" (972). The ceremony had a barefoot King Henry, guided by Philip, humbling himself before the Church leaders there.

A persistent theme of the book is that situations that appear totally bleak can turn out OK. Not always, but sometimes. This is true for Philip as well as Tom, Jack and Aliena. In a number of cases, events surrounding Prior Philip appear so bad that the cause of God and the church appears to be lost. Evil, violence and brutality appear to have won the day and we are sorry for it. But out of the blue comes some event or twist that rescues the situation, or at least some good result of the bad event. This rings true to life and also illustrates God's ongoing providential guidance of His creation, His church and also of the individual lives of those He loves.

One lasting impression of the book is how far we've progressed since these days of starvation, poverty and human degradation of every type. Although human nature still tends toward evil and injustice, we have managed through our Christian-inspired institutions of limited government and balance of powers to keep that nature at bay in a more effective manner than was employed during the 12th century. Still, its unfair to characterize them as the "dark ages," since the groundwork for later freedoms was clearly being laid in those days, as the end of the book makes clear.

Books by Follett:
- Eye of the Needle, 19xx
- Triple, 19xx
- The Key to Rebecca, 19xx
- The Man from St. Petersburg, 19xx
- On Wings of Eagles, 19xx
- Lie Down with Lions, 19xx
- The Pillars of the Earth, 1989
- Night over Water, 19xx
- A Dangerous Fortune, 19xx
- A Place Called Freedom, 1995
- The Third Twin, 199x
- The Hammer of Eden, 199x
- Code to Zero, xxxx
- Jackdaws, 200x
- Hornet Flight, 200x
- Whiteout, 200x
- World Without End, 2008

Early Mysteries recently reissued:
- The Modigliani Scandal, 19xx
- Paper Money, 19xx