Joseph Scott Amis retired from a thirty-year professional and business career in 2004. He has since devoted his time to medieval and Crusades studies and writing historical fiction. Until recently, Scott was a writer and features editor at Real Crusades History. A native Texan, he lives in Dallas.
To Shine with Honor, my sole
novel to date, takes place in “The Times of the First Crusade” and includes
characters fictional, historical, and ‘composite’; i.e., both drawn from
the historical record and fictionalized. The vast majority of the characters are completely fictional, so,
for purposes of this essay, I’ll focus on historical and composite characters
and the means by which they were rendered for inclusion in the story. The
purely historical include Pope Urban II, Bishop Adhémar
of le Puy, Peter the Hermit, and Guy, Archbishop of Vienne. The composite include
the architect Joseph of Reims and his patron, Abbot Leo of the Abbé de Saint-Amand.
Regarding Urban II, beyond the five versions of the address delivered
on November 27, 1095, at Clermont, France, his noble lineage, his age at the
time, and his distinguished career in the Church, I found little to nothing in
the historical record save characteristically stylized illustrations executed
‘after the fact’, that hints at his appearance, demeanor, and personality. As a
result, ‘re-inventing’ him for his one appearance in To Shine with Honor
became a necessity.
Reconstructing a person of lesser importance would be a simple
task, but lending character to the Pope whose commanding address initiated the
beginning of the First Crusade and would inform the climactic scene in To Shine with Honor, called for careful attention
and a bit of ‘reverse engineering’.
An orator capable of composing and delivering an address that received immediate responses and commitments much greater than Church powers expected, and would eventually motivate a hundred thousand noblemen, knights, and ordinary people to ‘take the Cross’, would have been of necessity a man of extraordinary presence, vigor, and confidence, as well as humility and empathy; all of these despite Urban’s age, fifty-four years; still young in the twenty-first century; approaching old age in the eleventh. Using these assumptions along with the available historical sources, as well as an appropriate touch of ‘literary license’, I was able to construct an effective Urban who was well-received by reviewers and critics. Of the extant accounts of Urban’s address, I chose that written by Robert the Monk as the basis of the semi-fictional version recounted in To Shine with Honor. Robert’s narrative provided both drama and detail sufficient for story purposes.
Peter the Hermit was the most famed - and certainly the most colorful - of the itinerant friars and monks who wandered throughout France preaching Urban’s promise of remission of sin and entry into the Kingdom of God for those who fulfilled their pilgrim’s vow or died along the way. The readily available English translations of contemporary accounts - William of Tyre’s A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea and The Version of Guibert of Nogent - provided descriptions more than ample for the scene in which he appears in To Shine with Honor.
In writing Historical Fiction, historical persons who serve as minor “walk-on” characters require careful research and characterization, even if their appearance in the story is brief and seemingly unimportant. Two notable examples appear in To Shine with Honor: Bishop Adhémar of le Puy and Guy, Archbishop of Vienne. Bishop Adhémar, present at Clermont as personal aide to Urban, makes a brief appearance as the first person to publicly take the Cross from Urban; after, as he gives the Cross and vow to the fictional knight Thierré de Coudre. A brief description of Adhémar’s clerical attire and his words spoken to Thierré proved sufficient to complete the scene.
Guy of Burgundy had an eminent career in the Church, concluding with his election as Pope Callixtus II in 1119. Guy, who appears in To Shine with Honor in 1093, had been newly appointed to the Archbishopric of Vienne and was heir to the task of resuming work on the historical Cathedral of Vienne. In To Shine with Honor, Guy contracts with the fictional Martin de Coudre and Roger de Lyon for stone sufficient for completion of his cathedral. Since Guy was barely past twenty years old when elevated to Archbishop - a promotion fitting for sons of highest nobility who entered the Church - and he is more than satisfied with the terms of the contract, I portrayed him as friendly, affable, and a bit unaware of his own importance.
The fictional Abbé de Saint-Amand of To
Shine with Honor, conceptually based on the famed Monastery of St. Gall,
is named after Saint Amand, a Frankish missionary bishop who lived in the sixth
and seventh centuries. Amand is a patron saint of wine and beer makers; the
fictional monastery named so for the reason that its principal products are
wine and ale. This location also serves as the setting for the account of
the fictional architect Joseph of Reims and his role as the originator of ‘Gothic’
architecture.
The historical precedent for the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe
is the reconstruction of the Abbey Church of Saint Denis, located north of
medieval Paris, under the patronage of the visionary Abbot Suger. This
work began in 1135 and was completed in 1144; unfortunately, the name of the
architect who worked closely with Suger has been lost.
Those familiar with the historical development of Gothic architecture - originally and correctly, le style français - will recognize Abbot Leo as a fictional portrayal of Abbot Suger, whose many notable accomplishments include the redesign and reconstruction of the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis; Joseph of Reims, as the author’s characterization of the unknown architect who worked closely with Suger to bring this significantly influential project to completion. My own adaptation of the historical account: geographical relocation and transplantation into the late eleventh century, the recreation of Suger and his unknown collaborator in the composite characters of Joseph and Leo, and the reconstruction of the church at the Abbé de Saint-Amand, represents the greatest amount of ‘literary license’ taken in To Shine with Honor.
+ + +
Nearly nine years after the publication of To Shine with Honor, I find myself still on the fence between two partially written sequels: the first, a continuation of the adventures of protagonist Galien de Coudre as he journeys to the Holy Land, serves as a knight in the First Crusade, and remains in the new Kingdom of Jerusalem until his death in 1125; the second ‘fast-forwards’ fifty years to the eighth decade of the twelfth century and the story of Roger de Coudre, great-grandson of Galien, during the reign of King Baldwin IV; subsequently, under the command of Richard Couer de Lion over the course of the Third Crusade.
Either sequel will present its own challenges - in the first, as I envision and plan close and extended interaction between Galien and his brother Thierre with the temperamental leader Bohemond of Taranto; in the second, Roger de Coudre with King Baldwin IV; after Baldwin’s early death and the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, with Richard Couer de Lion.
Any difficulties encountered while creating composite characters of these medieval heroes won’t be from a lack of sources; primary, secondary, or fictional. Extensive records of Richard I exist from the renowned warrior king’s own time, he has been the subject of countless academic studies and publications, and seemingly equally numerous novels, movies, and video games. Though Bohemond and Baldwin have been much less well-known, sufficient original and academic sources are readily available, and, with renewed interest in the medieval Crusades, both have found their way into the public media. Baldwin, by way of a flawed yet memorable appearance in the cinematic epic Kingdom of Heaven, has been propelled from academic obscurity to popular folk hero and inclusion, with varying degrees of characterization, in more than a few recent novels and video games.
As a result, the problems I’m certain to encounter in the course of developing compelling characters, particularly Baldwin, won’t come from a lack of source materials; rather, from an overabundance of these and the need for creative originality when ‘it’s all been done before’.
In comparison with Baldwin, Bohemond should prove much easier to render - to my knowledge, extensively characterized fictional versions of him are far less numerous than of Baldwin. Anna Comnena, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexius I and an impressionable teenager at the time of the First Crusade, unknowingly did future historians and novelists a great favor with her comprehensive and colorful - some claim admiring - description of Bohemond in her classic memoir, The Alexiad.
Richard Couer de Lion could arguably be the textbook case of ‘it’s all been done before’, so much so that creating a truly original version of him could also arguably be a textbook case of ‘why bother?’ - just be careful not to blatantly plagiarize in the process.
As in all Historical Fiction, To Shine with Honor is set in a ‘master framework’ of historical places, persons, and events. However, creation of the environment and characters, be they fictional or composite, necessitates a degree of period accuracy equal to those verifiably historical.
Find out more about To Shine with Honor at: here.
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