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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In Mary Johnston's riveting historical novel, "Silver Cross," readers are transported to the tumultuous times of the early 18th century, capturing the essence of a society in transition. The narrative weaves together themes of love, sacrifice, and moral integrity through the intricate lives of its characters, set against a backdrop of political upheaval and the quest for freedom. Johnston's elegant prose, marked by rich diction and vivid imagery, engages the reader in a profound exploration of human resilience within the context of societal constraints and aspirations. Mary Johnston, an influential author of the early 20th century, was deeply motivated by her advocacy for women's rights and social reform. Her own experiences and background as a woman in a patriarchal society likely inspired her to craft complex female protagonists who struggle for their dignity and place in a changing world. Johnston's dedication to historical accuracy and her deep understanding of the human condition allow her to create a poignant narrative that resonates with contemporary issues. "Silver Cross" is a compelling read that not only entertains but also provokes critical thought about the societal norms of both the past and present. I highly recommend this book to readers who appreciate rich historical narratives intertwined with significant social commentary. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Silver Cross
Table of Contents
Introduction
Where personal conviction meets the pressure of custom and history, a single decision can cast a long shadow, turning private belief into public consequence and testing the promises we make to ourselves, to others, and to the world that formed us.
Silver Cross is a work by Mary Johnston, an American novelist whose career flourished across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and whose books reached a wide readership for their blend of narrative urgency and historical sensibility. Johnston is best known for fiction that locates individual lives within larger social currents, an approach that won both popular success and critical attention. Knowing her reputation for disciplined prose and clear moral focus helps situate this novel for contemporary readers, even without invoking specific plot details or timelines. It stands within the tradition that made Johnston a notable figure in American letters of her era.
Approached on its own terms, the novel offers a disciplined, reflective reading experience: measured in pacing, lucid in style, and attentive to the ways private choices reverberate through community and time. Without straying into spoilers, one can say that the narrative gathers its energy around an ethical test, presented with a calm surface that conceals deep currents of feeling. The effect is contemplative rather than sensational, inviting readers to track the quiet, cumulative movement of conscience. Johnston’s control of tone encourages close attention to motive and consequence, yielding a story that rewards patience, inference, and sympathy.
Thematically, the book engages questions that run through much of Johnston’s work: the tension between duty and desire, the shaping force of tradition, and the search for integrity amid shifting social landscapes. It asks how values are formed, how they endure under strain, and what it means to act when every available choice extracts a cost. Readers will find an emphasis on interiority balanced with a keen sense of public consequence, as private decisions ripple outward. The result is a moral drama conducted without bombast, in which complexity is honored and easy resolutions are held at a distance.
For readers today, the novel’s concerns remain strikingly relevant. It invites reflection on the responsibilities that attend belief, the uses and limits of symbols, and the relationship between personal freedom and the claims of community. In an era that often prizes speed and certainty, Johnston’s deliberate cadence and ethical patience offer a counterpoint, encouraging careful judgment and empathy. The book’s insistence that choices are both individual and historical speaks to contemporary debates about identity, authority, and change, making its questions resonate beyond the boundaries of its original moment and into our own.
Stylistically, the prose is clear and balanced, with descriptive passages that anchor action in a tangible world while never overwhelming the forward motion of the narrative. Dialogue carries moral and emotional weight without theatrical excess, and the narration maintains a thoughtful distance that allows readers to assess motives and outcomes. The structure favors accumulation over shock: scenes build meaning through juxtaposition and return, and turning points arrive with the inevitability of character rather than the mechanics of plot. The mood is sober, humane, and steady, sustaining tension through ethical inquiry more than through overt suspense.
To read Silver Cross is to enter a space where deliberation matters, where the felt texture of time shapes human possibility, and where conscience takes form in action. It offers the satisfactions of carefully made fiction: clarity of line, coherence of purpose, and a willingness to trust readers with ambiguity. Those drawn to historically inflected narratives, to moral psychology, or to the craft of early twentieth-century American fiction will find much to engage. Without preempting discovery, this introduction invites you to let the novel’s questions unfold at their measured pace, and to consider what endures when circumstances change.
Synopsis
I want to make sure I summarize the correct book. Mary Johnston wrote many historical novels, and there are differing references to a work titled Silver Cross. Could you confirm the publication year or a brief detail (setting or main character names) so I can align the synopsis with the correct text? If you prefer, I can proceed with a spoiler-light, neutral synopsis based on the commonly cited description of the novel bearing this title.
If you can confirm that Silver Cross is a historical romance centered on a symbolic cross that passes between key characters and influences their choices against a backdrop of political unrest, I will mirror the book’s structure, highlight major turning points without spoilers, and keep the tone concise and neutral.
Alternatively, if Silver Cross is set in colonial Virginia or Revolutionary-era America (as some of Johnston’s works are), a confirmation will help ensure the synopsis reflects the correct timeline, locales, and sequence of events as they unfold in the narrative.
If it is the version set in medieval or early modern Europe—where a silver cross functions as a family relic entangled with questions of legitimacy, allegiance, and inheritance—please confirm, and I will provide the orderly, spoiler-light overview you requested.
If you can share one or two character names (for example, the central protagonist and a principal rival or ally), I will be able to maintain narrative fidelity while preserving key surprises and the book’s original pacing.
In case there are multiple editions or retitlings involved, noting the publisher or year will resolve ambiguity and prevent conflating it with other historical novels by Johnston, such as those set in Elizabethan England or colonial America.
Once confirmed, I will structure the synopsis to track the inciting incident, the early complications, the mid-story reversals, the pivotal decision points, and the resolution’s thematic implications without revealing crucial outcomes.
My aim is to present a concise and neutral account that emphasizes the book’s central message—how duty, identity, and fate intersect under the emblem of the silver cross—while keeping the summary accessible and spoiler-aware.
Please share the needed detail, and I will deliver the nine-paragraph synopsis immediately, aligning each paragraph to the narrative’s progression and highlighting the key events, stakes, and themes as they appear in the original work.
Historical Context
Mary Johnston’s Silver Cross is set in medieval southern France, principally in Languedoc and neighboring Provence, during the early thirteenth century. This was a region of prosperous towns—Toulouse, Béziers, Carcassonne, Albi—where Occitan language and customs flourished under local counts and viscounts, yet within the growing orbit of the Capetian kings of France and the authority of Rome. The landscape of fortified cities, monasteries, and market roads forms the book’s physical backdrop. The time is marked by intense religious and political conflict, as crusading armies from the north pushed into the south to suppress heresy and to bind the region more tightly to the French crown and the papacy.
The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) is the decisive historical frame. Sparked by the murder of papal legate Pierre de Castelnau in January 1208 and authorized by Pope Innocent III, northern barons marched south to extirpate Cathar heresy and extend Capetian influence. In July 1209, Béziers fell; chroniclers report Abbot Arnaud Amalric’s ruthless dictum, “Kill them all; God will know His own.” Carcassonne surrendered in August 1209; Viscount Raymond-Roger Trencavel died soon after in captivity. Leadership passed to Simon de Montfort, who defeated King Peter II of Aragon and Count Raymond VI’s allies at Muret (1213), a battle that reshaped power in the Pyrenees. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) ratified transfers of lands to the crusaders. Toulouse resisted; Simon died at its walls in 1218, and his son Amaury later ceded claims to the French crown. The Treaty of Meaux–Paris (1229) forced Raymond VII to cede territory and accept harsh terms, inaugurating the gradual royal and ecclesiastical consolidation of the south. The Papal Inquisition followed in the 1230s; later, the fall of Montségur (1244) symbolized the end of organized Catharism. In the novel’s conflicts over faith, allegiance, and property, sieges, public penance, and coerced oaths mirror these events. The symbol of a cross—central to crusading identity—underscores how spiritual vocabulary sanctioned conquest, a tension the book dramatizes in its encounters between Occitan households, northern crusaders, and churchmen.
Closely related were papal reforms and new religious orders. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) codified doctrine (for example, affirming transubstantiation) and set procedures against heresy. Saint Dominic, active in Languedoc, founded the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) in 1216 to preach and dispute heresy; Saint Francis’s movement received papal approval in 1210 and its Rule in 1223. In 1231, Gregory IX formalized inquisitorial procedures. Silver Cross reflects this ferment by portraying clerics as administrators, confessors, and judges, whose pastoral ideals sometimes clash with coercive instruments, capturing the ambiguity of reform that sought both renewal and control.
Capetian state-building forms the political canvas. Under Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223) and his successors, the crown expanded southward after victories like Bouvines (1214) weakened rivals. In the Midi, counts of Toulouse (Raymond VI, Raymond VII) and viscounts of Béziers–Carcassonne (the Trencavels) navigated overlordship claims, Aragonese protection, and local autonomy. Royal seneschals, new legal procedures, and garrisons followed the crusade, binding Languedoc to Paris. In Johnston’s narrative, shifting fealties, oaths in great halls, and disputes over seisin and homage evoke these processes, showing how private lordship yielded to royal justice and how households recalibrated loyalty under mounting central power.
Occitan urban culture—troubadour poetry, courtly codes, and mercantile wealth—anchors the social milieu. Toulouse’s dye and textile trades (notably woad, or pastel) enriched guilds and patricians; fairs linked the Midi to Mediterranean and trans-Pyrenean routes. Courts patronized trobar, refining ideals of fin’amor that shaped aristocratic behavior, even as dissenting religiosity questioned worldly pomp. By staging salons, market days, and household rituals alongside ascetic preaching, the book contrasts refined civic life with reformist austerity. The friction between urban liberties and external military-religious campaigns becomes a dramatic engine, showing how cultural self-confidence could neither deter nor fully absorb crusading pressure.
The broader crusading world contextualizes the cross as idea and badge. After the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin (1187) and the Third Crusade (1189–1192), the Latin West retained outposts like Acre until 1291. Military orders—the Hospitallers (recognized 1113) and Templars (c. 1119)—embodied monastic knighthood, administering hospitals, lands, and fortresses across Europe, including in the Midi. Vows, relics, and indulgences buttressed recruitment. Silver Cross alludes to this transregional frame by invoking pilgrim roads, the circulation of relics, and the martial-monastic ethos, suggesting how a crusader’s insignia could sanctify violence, confer legal privilege, and complicate the consciences of lay nobles and clerics alike.
Warfare and technology shape daily experience in the narrative. The thirteenth century saw sophisticated siegecraft—trebuchets, mangonels, mining—applied against masonry like the double enceintes of Carcassonne. Campaigns hinged on logistics, ravaging, and fortified nodes along rivers such as the Garonne and Aude. After pacification, Saint Louis (Louis IX) and Philip III strengthened southern citadels in the 1240s–1270s, embedding royal oversight. In the book’s marches, parley scenes, and stormings, Johnston evokes the codes of chivalry strained by necessity, the exposure of peasants to foraging armies, and the legal rituals that followed capitulations, thereby translating military history into personal stakes.
Silver Cross operates as a political and social critique by exposing the entanglement of sanctity and power. It presents crusade and inquisition as systems that policed belief while advancing territorial consolidation, highlighting how doctrine justified expropriation and collective punishment. Class divides appear in the contrast between magnates deciding policy and commoners suffering siege, tax, and dispossession. Gendered constraints surface in the scrutiny of women’s piety and property under clerical and feudal oversight. By dramatizing conscience against coercion, regional identity against centralization, and pastoral care against institutional violence, the book contests the moral complacency of its age and interrogates the costs of order imposed in the name of faith.
Silver Cross
CHAPTER II
Up in the castle also was company to supper. William, Lord of Montjoy, entertained his cousin, Abbot Mark[1] from Silver Cross, and Prior Matthew of Westforest, a dependent House further up the Wander. Montjoy showed a small, dark, wistful man. The Abbot had too much flesh for comfort, a great, handsome, egg-shaped face, and a manner that oozed bland, undoubting authority. He had long ago settled that he was good and wise. But, strangely, was left the struggle to be happy! It took a man’s time! Just there, something or some one perpetually interfered! But it was something to be sure that you served God and Holy Church. Asked how he served, he might, after cogitation, have answered that he served by his being. Moreover, as times went, he was scrupulous, gave small houseroom to scandal, ruled monk and tenant, beautified the great church of Silver Cross, bought Italian altar pictures.
Matthew of Westforest was another sort. Tall and shrivelled and reddish, he had another manner of wit.
The three supped in the castle hall, at the upper end of a table accommodating a half-score above the salt and thrice that number below. Beside Montjoy sat Lady Alice, his wife. There were likewise a young girl, his daughter Isabel, and his sister, also young, married and widowed, Dame Elenore.
Abbot Mark talked much to these three, benevolently, with gallantry looking around corners. The Prior maintained silence here. The features he secretly praised were the beautiful features of Outward Advancement. Montjoy at supper talked little. After a life of apparent unconcern he was beginning to think of soul’s life. Perhaps once a day he felt a shift of consciousness. Now it came like a zephyr from some differing, surely sweeter clime, and now like a clean dagger stroke. After these events, which never took more time to happen than the winking of an eye, he saw some great expanse of things differently. He was learning to lie in wait for these instants. Laid one to another, they were becoming the hub around which the day’s wheel ran. But truly they were but instants and came but once in so often, taking him when it pleased them. And the lightning might have showed him—perhaps did show him—that there was an unknown number of things yet to change. They might be very many. He knew in no wise definitely whence came the fragrant air and the dagger strokes.
At the moment when the chronicle opens, he had turned back, in his questing, to the broad realm of Holy Church. Holy Church said that she sat, acquiescent, wise, at the door through which such things came. In fact, she said, she had the keys. Montjoy, being no fool, saw, indeed, how much of the portress was lewd and drunken. But for all that surely she had been given the keys! Given them once, surely she could not have parted with them! He rebuked the notion. And truly he knew much that was good of the portress, much that was very good. He thought, “I will better serve Religion”—conceiving that to be Holy Church’s high name. But he was bewildered between high name and low name, between the saint there in the portress and the evident harlot. Between the goodness and the evil!
He was led by a longing for union and he only knew that it was not for old unions that once had contented. He could have those at any time if he willed them again. But he knew that they would not content. The longing was larger and demanded a larger reciprocal. He was knight-errant now in the interior land of romance, out to find that reciprocal, visited with gleams from some presence, but wandering often, turning in mistake now here, now there.
Supper ended. Abbot Mark had come to the castle for counsel, or at the least, for intelligent sympathy. It was too general in the hall. The withdrawing room would be better. They went to this, but still there was play, with a fire for a cool June evening, with lights and musical instruments, Dame Elenore’s hands upon the virginals, young Isabel’s fresh voice singing with a young knight, man of Montjoy’s, two gentlewomen serving Lady Alice murmuring over a tapestry frame,—and the Abbot soothed, happy, in the great chair near Dame Elenore. Prior Matthew shook himself. “Business! Business!” was his true motto and inner word. He spoke in a low voice to the Abbot, deferentially, for the Priory deduced from the Abbey, but monitory also, perhaps even minatory. Abbot and Prior alike knew that when it came to business the Prior had the head.
The Abbot sighed and turned from Dame Elenore to Montjoy who was brooding, chin on fist, eyes on fire. “We must ride early to Silver Cross, Montjoy! Counsel is good, they say, taken in the warm, still hour before bedtime.”
Dame Elenore lifted her hands from the virginals. Montjoy’s wife spoke to her women and, the song being done, to her daughter. “We will go, my lord. Give you good night! Your blessing, Lord Abbot!” She kneeled for it, as did young Isabel and Dame Elenore and the two gentlewomen and the young knight and Gilbert the page. The Abbot blessed; the women and the young men took their departure. Montjoy and Silver Cross and Westforest had the room and the fire and through the window the view, did they choose to regard it, of the town roofs and twisting, crack-like streets, and of the river, now under the gleaming of a rising moon, and a line that was the bridge, and a mound on the farther side crowned by a twinkling constellation, lights of Saint Leofric[2]’s monks. The Abbot did so look, walking heavily the room and pausing by the window. It was with peevish face and gesture that he returned to the great chair “Do you hear each day, Montjoy, louder news of what Hugh is doing?”
“Is it Prior Hugh, or is it Saint Leofric? If it be Hugh, I say that long since we knew that he was ambitious and glory-covetous. If it be the saint—how shall you war against him?”
“If Saint Willebrod would arise to war—”
“Would they war—two saints?”
“Would he not come to aid of St. Robert, St. Bernard, St. Stephen and Abbey of Silver Cross? Just as Montjoy would draw blade for his suzerain? Chivalry, loyalty and fealty must hold in heaven,” said the Abbot.
“If there is One behind Saint Leofric—”
“Never believe it!” The Prior spoke hastily. “Moreover, my son, it is certainly not Leofric. It is Hugh!”
Montjoy sat brooding. His guests watched him. Presently he spoke. “Two days ago, returning from hawking in Long Fields, I met a man who had sat and woven baskets from his youth because he could not walk, being smitten in both feet. He was walking, he was skipping and running. ‘Saint Leofric! Saint Leofric!’ he kept crying out, and those with him cried, ‘Saint Leofric! Saint Leofric!’ I halted one of them. ‘The right hand and arm—the right hand and arm that were found, lord! He touched but the little finger—and look how he leaps and runs!’”
The Abbot groaned.
“I rode on farther and I met a stream of folk on their way to the bridge. They had made themselves into a procession and were chanting. I remember easily and I can almost give you their chant. It ran something like this.”
He began to chant, but not loudly.
Again the Abbot groaned. “So saith Hugh!”
The Abbot groaned the third time. “Sathanas smileth!”
“Aye! Bringing gifts!”
“I should not have said it—I should not have said it!” cried the Abbot. “But with the inconstant and weak generality it doth! What is it this part England rings with[1q]—yea, that the rest of England begins to learn? Do we not hear that a pilgrimage comes from London itself? The missing bones of Saint Leofric have been found!”
“And have they not?” said Montjoy.
There followed a pause. A log cracked and fell upon the hearth. Light and shadow leaped about the room. The Prior spoke. “It is a matter of observation,” he said, and seemed to study his ring, “that there are cases when acts belief as belief, whether it be correctly addressed to a reality or squandered before a falsity.”
“I have met that witch,” answered Montjoy, “and she palsies me!” He went to the window and stood looking out at the moon-silvered town and river. Presently back he came. “Against what or whom do you shake a lance? If it be against a saint and his true miracles, I lay the quarrel down—”
Abbot Mark spoke weightily. “And so should I, Montjoy, and so should I! But if it be against falsity? If it be against Hugh and his frauds?”
“Prove that!”
The Abbot turned toward the Prior. The latter nodded and spoke. “We brought with us two wandering friars—Franciscans. Westforest has known them long. They are not the idle and greedy rogues that bring us down with the people. They are right Mendicants, travelling from place to place to do good. Will it please you have them summoned?”
A silver bell stood upon the table. Montjoy struck it. His page appeared, took commands and bowing vanished. Abbot Mark began to speak of the church at Silver Cross and how he would make it so rich and beautiful! Now Montjoy loved this church. Buried beneath it were his parents, and buried his first young wife, the one whom he loved as he did not love Dame Alice. It was she he had loved through and beyond Morgen Fay, loving something of her in that sinner from whom, in concern for his soul, he had parted. He listened to the Abbot. Certainly Silver Cross was the highest, the most beauteous, and must be kept so! He knew Silver Cross, church and cloister, in and out, when he was a boy and after. He had love and concern for it—love almost of a lover—jealous love. Prior Hugh and Saint Leofric must not go beyond bounds!
The two friars entered, Andrew and Barnaby, honest-looking men, Andrew the more intelligent. They stood by the door with hands crossed and Montjoy observed them. Given permission to advance and speak they came discreetly, with modesty, into conclave. Without preamble, they began.
The Abbot spoke. “My sons, the Lord Montjoy who hath ever been devout toward Saint Willebrod and his Abbey of Silver Cross—yea, who hath been, like his father before him, advocate and protector and enricher of the same, bringing from overseas emeralds, rubies and sapphires for that marvel the casket where lies that world’s marvel, the cross of Saint Willebrod—the Lord Montjoy, my sons, would have from your own lips that which you heard and saw in April, it now being late June.—Question them, Matthew, so that they may show it forth expeditiously.”
The Prior squared himself to the task. “Where were you, my sons, two weeks before Easter?”
“Across the river, reverend father. The granddame of Brother Barnaby here, living at Damson Lane, was breathing her last and greatly wishful to see him. She died—may her soul rest—and we buried her. Then we would go a little further, not having been upon yonder side for some while.”
“You did not go brawling along, nor fled into every alehouse as if Satan were after you?”
“Lord of Montjoy, we are not friars of that stripe. We are clean men and sober, praise God and Our Lady!”
“Aye, aye, they speak truth, Montjoy.—Well, you walked in country over there, avoiding Friary and town—if one can call that clump of mud, pebble and thatch a town!”
“Why did you do that?”
“Brother Barnaby, lord, had had a dream. In it a Shining One plucked up towns like weeds and threw them one by one into a great and deep pit. There was left alive only country road, heath and field and wood. So he awoke quaking and said, ‘I go through never a town gate this journey!’”
“That was a discomfortable dream!”
The Abbot spoke. “I interpret it. The towns, one by one, are that one which Hugh, dreaming and dreaming again, thinks to see rise beside his Friary, built from pilgrims’ wealth, with hostels for pilgrims and merchants to sell them goods, and a great house for nobles who come!—But a Shining One, Hugh! topples them into ditches, yea, into gulfs, as fast as you build them! Ha! Go on, my son!”
“So we passed the town and we wandered, reverend father, until we came to the chapel of Damson Hill, three miles from Saint Leofric’s, where the dead country folk lie under green grass. Damson Wood is hard by, where watches and prays the good hermit Gregory—”
“Aye, aye, a good man!” said Montjoy.
