Robert Raynolds, The Sinner of St. Ambrose

Seldom have I been so disappointed in a novel. On the one hand, The Sinner of St. Ambrose was a moving picture of the fall of Rome and a rather ordinary, (very) flawed 'hero' on his search for God. Stirring indeed was the account of pagan honor and virtue; I doubt I shall see Julian the Apostate in the same light again (though I hope Raynolds did his research well, for I did not attempt fact-checking of the letters, inscriptions, etc. reported in Sinner), and even the conflict between reason and revelation was hinted at in the opening chapters, and most wonderful of all, the question concerning the compatibility between faith and nobility. I was thus primed for an exciting time.

How very disappointed I was when not only were these serious questions not developed, but the novel devolved into a twin promulgation of the Pelagian heresy and what amounts to secular humanism (perhaps the close kinship of the two explains Raynolds' appreciation of the former). What little faith Gregory finds destroys his pagan honor and nobility (which I suppose would not have surprised Nietzsche at all, but I doubt this was Raynolds' intention), ripping the soul out of everything specifically Christian: what is left when you say, "a man can, by his exertion of will to good achieve grace, though of course God's help makes it easier"? or, "God is great enough to tolerate diversity", by which is meant "what you believe does not matter". Added to these is a disdain of asceticism, celibacy, and the institutional Church: Pelagius is the "human Christian", Augustine the "Catholic Caesar" - given the disdain of autocracy, one can imagine all the negative connotations Raynolds intended for this latter. All this I could tolerate (for heaven's sake I adore reading Nietzsche) if Gregory remained an honorable nobleman, but he does not, exchanging pagan virtue for modern secular humanism. This resulting destruction of heroism makes it easy to see why Nietzsche despised Christianity and why I ended up despising this book.

I opened the novel excited to read about the passionate conversion of a proud, noble pagan and all that entailed; bound in an exciting, wrenching tale of the fall of Rome. And indeed these portions are good. But the most important parts of the book are those least important to the author/Gregory, who prefers to remind us at every turn of the humanistic, comforting elements of his secular heresy. Flaws granted, it does provoke an uncomfortable, lingering question: is nobility possible for the Christian?

"All the gods are one God, and He breaks the human heart."