The Road to Jerusalem - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Road to Jerusalem is the first book in Jan Guillou's

Jan Guillou

Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou is a Swedish author and journalist. Among his books are a series of spy fiction novels about a spy named Carl Hamilton, and a trilogy of historical fiction novels about a Knight Templar, Arn Magnusson...

The Knight Templar
The Knight Templar (Crusades trilogy)
The Knight Templar is a series of books about the fictional character of Arn Magnusson. The series is written by Swedish author and journalist Jan Guillou....

book series. The book follows the fictional character

Fictional character

A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...

of Arn Magnusson from his birth and until he sets off to Jerusalem.

Arn is born in Arnäs, Sweden

Earnaness

Earnanæs , Aranæs and Årnäs is the name of at least two locations, in what is today southern Sweden, which are known from history and legend...

in the year 1150. At the age of 5, he has an accident while climbing a scaffold and is saved due to his mother's prayer

Prayer

Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...

s to Saint

Saint

A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...

Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux, O.Cist was a French abbot and the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian order.After the death of his mother, Bernard sought admission into the Cistercian order. Three years later, he was sent to found a new abbey at an isolated clearing in a glen known as the Val...

. The conditions stated in the prayer for their sons salvation is that he will be donated to Gods work on earth. He is to be sent to Varnhem Abbey

Varnhem Abbey

Varnhem Abbey in Varnhem, Västergötland, Sweden was founded around 1150 by monks of the Cistercian Order from Alvastra Abbey in Östergötland.The Cistercian Order used the same floor plan for all its abbeys, which makes it possible to easily locate the different rooms and halls regardless of the...

, to which his mother has donated the land and is so counted as its founder. Because of a dispute of the validity of the donation the Queen of the Swedes harasses the Cistercian monks into flight. The abbot and his subjects relocate to Denmark awaiting the excommunication of the Swedish royals.

One of the brothers of Varnhem and Danish Vitae Scholae is brother Guilbert, a former Knight Templar

Knights Templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple or simply as Templars, were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...

, who instructs him in the use of the sword and the art of medieval

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

war

War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...

fare in the Holy Lands. After relocating back to Varnhem again, the Prior

Priory

A priory is a house of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. Priories may be houses of mendicant friars or religious sisters , or monasteries of monks or nuns .The Benedictines and their offshoots , the Premonstratensians, and the...

of the convent, Father Henri, instructs Arn to witness the outside world for himself before taking the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience

Vow of obedience

The Vow of Obedience in Catholicism concerns one of the three counsels of perfection. It forms part of the vows that Christian monks and nuns must make to enter the consecrated life, whether as a member of a religious institute living in community or as consecrated hermit...

. Arn does so, but fell into the terrible sin

Sin

In religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...

of having sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse

Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...

with Cecelia, who was also in the nunery. Cecelia got pregnant and told her sister Katarina. Katarina was jealous and told the Head Mother that not only did Cecelia have sex with Arn, but reveals that Arn had had carnal knowledge [sexual morality|before marriage]with her as well (having seduced him while he was drunk after his first visit to her father's homestead.). He was then condemned to spend 20 years in the Holy Land, as a Knight Templar, and Cecelia was kept in the nunery and her boy child taken away from her and sentenced to 20 years of penance in the convent of Gudhem.

See also