Charlier’s artfully written account of Clotild’s struggle to save her medieval sisterhood from the dominance of kings and bishops is a perfect novel for today’s women.” - Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author Extensively researched and rich in historical detail, The Rebel Nun tells of a time when women were chattel, when priests questioned whether females had souls. Led by Clotild, a king’s bastard daughter, a group of nuns attempts to rescue their monastery from the all-male church hierarchy. ”Marj Charlier takes an obscure sixth-century tale and turns it into a stunning story of a nun caught up in the misogyny of the early Christian church. The result is an engaging and thought-provoking tale.” - Samantha Kahn Herrick, Associate Professor of History, Syracuse University
Marj Charlier imagines the incident from the perspective of one of these nuns, the noblewoman Clothild, and embeds these events within the larger story of Clothild’s life. It draws on historical sources that briefly mention - and condemn - the insurrection that two noble nuns led within their abbey, in Poitiers, in 589. ” The Rebel Nun is a boldly imagined story of one early medieval woman’s struggle against the societal forces that constrained her. In the only historical novel written about the incident, The Rebel Nun is a richly imagined story about a truly remarkable heroine. Will Clotild and her sisters succeed with their quest, or will they face excommunication, possibly even death? But the bishop refuses to back down, and a bloody battle ensues. When the bishop of Poitiers blocks her appointment and seeks to control the nunnery himself, Clotild masterminds an escape, leading a group of uncloistered nuns on a dangerous pilgrimage to beg her royal relatives to intercede on their behalf.
By the end of the sixth century, even this is eroding as the church begins to eject women from the clergy and declares them too unclean to touch sacramental objects or even their priest-husbands.Ĭraving the legitimacy thwarted by her bastard status, Clotild seeks to become the next abbess of the female Monastery of the Holy Cross, the most famous of the women’s cloisters of the early Middle Ages. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. (Blackstone Publishing, March 2021)Īt that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Marj Charlier’s The Rebel Nun is based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church.
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