The Hill of Venus

About the book

In 1266 Francesco Villani is summoned from courtly life to the monastery where his father lies dying. The meeting brings the circumstances of his birth into painful focus and confronts him with a demand that his future should compensate for another person's past. A religious commitment would require him to relinquish attachments and aspirations already taking shape beyond the monastery walls. Gallizier follows this conflict through an elaborately imagined medieval Italy of pilgrimage, ecclesiastical power, and romantic temptation. The richly colored landscape continually sets earthly beauty beside the language of renunciation. Rather than treating a vow as the end of a moral decision, the novel explores the pressures created when such a promise attempts to govern a life that has not yet been lived.

• Inherited guilt
• Vows and personal freedom
• Religious power and earthly love

Why read it

The father's deathbed request makes the central spiritual conflict inseparable from filial loyalty and emotional pressure.

English L. C. Page edition, first impression March 1913