The Rebel Nun by Marj Charlier

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Rebel Nun    
Author: Marj Charlier
Release Date: 3.2.21
Publisher: Blackstone

Publisher's Summary
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.

At that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. 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.

Craving 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. 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. But the bishop refuses to back down, and a bloody battle ensues. Will Clotild and her sisters succeed with their quest, or will they face excommunication, possibly even death?

In the only historical novel written about the incident, The Rebel Nun is a richly imagined story about a truly remarkable heroine.

My Review

As a woman in 6th century Europe, you had three choices: marriage, prostitution, or the cloister. Marriage wasn't necessarily "safe" in that even if you were lucky enough to not be used as a bartering tool to form an alliance between families and your husband didn't beat you mercilessly, it still meant endless child-bearing, often resulting in the deaths of the mother, child, or both. Prostitution was (and still is) a highly dangerous profession for myriad reasons. When faced with those two options, it is easy to see why many women became nuns for the safety and security provided by the cloister, not necessarily for their piety.

The daily lives of the nuns of The Monastery of the Holy Cross are uprooted when the local bishop anoints an unexpected predecessor upon its abbess' death. Together the bishop and the new abbess slowly strip away the rights and "luxuries" previously given to the nuns...ya know, little things like safety, warmth, and food. As nuns, they try to learn how to live with these changes but when their larders get dangerously low and there is a threat to their sacred relic, they hatch a plan. I enjoyed diving into this little known pocket of history and was so glad to see a new historical fiction release that isn't set during WWII or is a mythological retelling.