Strange as it may sound, one of the best antidotes to the angry atheism of such disaffected Britons as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins is the recent science-fiction novel Eifelheim by Michael Flynn.  The book, dedicated to Jean Buridan—the Paris scholastic who described inertia, a scientific concept unknown to the ancients, in the 14th century—focuses on the disappearance from the historical record of the village of Eifelheim, a disappearance that turns out to be related to an encounter between grotesque extraterrestrial visitors known as the Krenken and German villagers in 1348, on the eve of the Black Death.  Flynn’s novel touches on many important events in late-medieval history, including the dispute between the pope and the emperor, the conflict between Spiritual and Conventual Franciscans, and the Hundred Years’ War and presents medieval Christendom with sympathy and insight as a society in which the “cool, scholastic rationalism of Paris” arose from and happily coexisted with a deep Christian faith that permeated everything.  In the process, Flynn sounds themes that will appeal to many readers of Chronicles and tells an engaging story that captivates the reader and keeps the pages turning.

The central character (and hero) of Flynn’s novel is Father Dietrich, the pastor of the village visited by the Krenken.  Despite his humble benefice, Dietrich is a man of great learning, having been a student of Buridan and a colleague of William of Ockham in Paris.  He is a friend of Manfred, the lord of the manor who gave shelter to Dietrich years before, and Dietrich in turn has given shelter to Joachim, an emotional Spiritual Franciscan at odds with the ecclesiastical authorities.

From the start, Dietrich is convinced that the Krenken are not demons, even though their appearance repulses him, reminding him of the gargoyles in Cologne’s cathedral, which terrified him as a child.  The first sign of the Krenken is an unusual electrical disturbance, which frightens the villagers but about which Dietrich concludes, “The causes are occult, but they surely are material.”  When he finally meets the Krenken, Dietrich concludes from the fact that they are capable of being harmed, and have children they care for, that they are mortals, not demons, and he baptizes a dying Krenken infant.  Dietrich is impressed by the Krenken technology but, because he is well versed in the scholarly literature of his own day, not overawed.  “My guests employ devices like those described by Roger Bacon,” he tells his bishop.

Dietrich’s faith impels him to tell the Krenken about Dietrich’s “master . . . Jesus Christ, [Who] has already ransomed me with his blood.”  Over time, some of the Krenken accept Baptism.  Krenkish society resembles a cross between a traditional oriental despotism and a rigid genetic determinism, with an immovable hierarchy fixed by birth in which it is not “natural for the greater to help the lesser.”  The Krenken who convert are impressed by Christian charity, which Joachim exemplifies in treating plague victims, telling Dietrich that “changing bandages . . . lancing pustules . . . wiping up the shit and vomit and the pus” is “the most glorious work of all.”  Such charity is perfectly in keeping with Christian precepts and, therefore, strikes us as mundane, but by showing it to us through Krenkish eyes, Flynn rightly portrays it as revolutionary.

The Krenken are also impressed by the existence of law, observing that Manfred is not an absolute ruler but is bound by the laws and customs of the manor.  Dietrich tells the Krenken that “we may not obey a bad lord, nor follow an unjust command” and presents the overreaching authority of God as liberating, not despotic: “All authority is ‘under God,’ else authority would have no limits, and justice would be only a [lord’s] will.”  For much of the pre-Christian and non-Christian world, justice was only the will of the ruler, and the totalitarians of the 20th century employed a similar concept with chilling effect.  The Krenken experience Christianity as liberating—as, indeed, it has generally been historically.

Flynn thus uses Dietrich to explore medieval society, with its respect for both faith and reason, and its hierarchy bound by law.  As Flynn notes, medieval education focused on natural philosophy, logic, mathematics, astronomy, optics, statics, and music: “Never before and since has such a large proportion of a population been educated so exclusively in logic, reason, and science.”  Medieval theologians, all of whom received this training, did not impede science, which, in fact, arose from the Christian understanding of reality:

God had endowed material bodies with the ability to act upon one another by their own natures.  Hence, “natural laws.”  If God made the entire world, then invoking God to explain the rainbow or magnetism or rectilinear motion added nothing to human understanding.  Philosophers therefore sought natural explanations to natural phenomena.

Indeed, Flynn has Dietrich rely on St. Albert the Great to argue that, “in investigations of nature, experience is the only safe guide.”

Flynn also uses the modern researchers investigating the disappearance of Eifelheim to point out truths about our own age.  The physicist who develops a theory to explain how the Krenken were able to travel to Germany worries about being branded a “heretic” in the physics department—first, after she comes to believe that the speed of light is not a constant, and then, after her research suggests the presence at the beginning of time of something that is “Aristotelian” or even “God.”  No such prejudices dissuade the Krenken from detecting the presence of a Creator in nature; the Krenken had observed that a small change in any of a number of universal constants would make life impossible and concluded that “had the [Lord]-in-the-sky ordered the world in any other way, there would be no life at all.”  Flynn’s modern researchers even come to appreciate that the medieval world attempted to be scrupulous in its treatment of its own heretics, with inquisitorial tribunals being bound by stricter rules of procedure than royal courts, with the result that “we know of cases where the accused deliberately committed blasphemy to get transferred out of [a] royal court to [an] inquisitorial court.”  Flynn’s observations about the medieval world are supported by much solid scholarship, and the fact that they may surprise some readers only shows the persistence of historical myths rooted in the malice of the Enlightenment.

Other parts of Eifelheim call to mind Eric Voegelin, Russell Kirk, and Richard Weaver.  Far from seeking to immanentize the eschaton, Dietrich has learned that political violence cannot eliminate injustice, advising the radical Joachim that “Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgment.”  The Krenken observe the peasants teaching their children the boundaries of the manor during the Rogation days and are moved by the custom: “One cannot love a world.  It is too large.  But a fleck of ground as far as his eye can see, one may hold precious above all.”  Flynn even has William of Ockham tell his friend Dietrich, “I am no nominalist . . . I tell you, Dietl, a man becomes a heretic less for what he writes than for what others believe he has written.”

I do not know whether Michael Flynn is a believer or a traditionalist of any type.  But the story he tells in Eifelheim is an enjoyable reminder to readers that, far from being synonymous with the obscurantism and cruelty Hitchens and Dawkins ascribe to it, Christianity is in fact the cornerstone of our civilization, and we imperil that civilization by seeking to loosen its bonds.

 

[Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn (New York: Tor Books) 320 pp., $25.95]