Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Context

Context

Many years ago I read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I liked it so much I read other works of Tolkein one of which was the Sylmarillian. I expected to see more of the Trilogy set in a broader context and sure enough I did. Three pages in the Sylmarillian, I forget how many pages it went on, but a lot, covered Hobbit and Lord of the Rings segment of his history. For some reason this stunned me…to think that this epic event was only worth three pages in the greater context.

Context is important , as I’m finding out in Habit of Despair. I’m not a history nut but after doing the research on the period I was stunned to discover that a period characterized in the text books as the golden age of Spain was more like a Gothic Horror Story. What the Christians did in the name of God, defies all understanding….It was bad enough what the Nazi state did but to have a situation so frighteningly similar occurring in Spain, fermented by Christian leaders in the name of Jesus Christ is truly mind boggling.

A great fan of Leon Uris and his books Exodus and Mila 18, and a combat veteran of Vietnam, I thought I knew something from a literary and personal perspective on the manifestations of Evil. WRONG! After coming to grips with what was going down in Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, both in country and the New World, took me to an all time low appreciation of what Church and State are capable of when zealous madmen in pious robes and Monarchs driven by greed, take a nation in an unbridled spiral into Hell. Until Ferdinand and Isabella allowed the Holy Office (Inquisition) to become established their reign was a model of how inspired leadership can make a difference….Then they did the unthinkable, it got out of control and left a blemish that will never be forgotten.

In some regards Nazi Germany was worse with their Gas Chambers and cold immorality and sociopath logic, but in other regards the Spanish were even more frightening giving legal justification and moral sanction to their genocide.

This is the context into which a story I never intended to write began to emerge. I don’t intend to let it overshadow the Romantic adventures in which the characters find themselves drawn, but as they describe what is happening around them, the reader is going to see things much more shocking than the personal behavior of the characters. What they will observe is a horrific state of affairs they will surely think is totally contrived.