The Discovery of Brother Hermitage

Long lost and forgotten manuscripts, telling tales of a lost and forgotten monk have recently come to light. As these are painstakingly assembled and translated they tell a remarkable tale.

I have named the first complete work 'The Heretics of De'ath' and have spent many months in my scriptorium preparing it for the Kindle portable lecturn: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heretics-Chronicles-Brother-Hermitage-ebook/dp/B004AYDBVM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1309337005&sr=1-1

The literature of modern times seems to insist that every medieval monk or nun was an effective investigator of crime. This crime was almost always murder and was comitted with worrying regularity. Given the population of medieval England it is remarkable that any one was left alive by 1300.

I am most fortunate to have uncovered these "Chronicles of Brother Hermitage" as I shall call them. They are the primary source for this particular monk who too was an investigator, but perhaps a more human one in that he was not very good.

From the material to date I conclude that Brother Hermitage was fortunate even to survive his first case. It is only the support of a worldly weaver of tapestry, Wat by name, which kept the young monk alive.

This tapestrier is remarkable in his own right and I would be interested to discover if any of his unique products survive. Given the fundamentally obscene subject matter it seems unlikely anyone would confess to owning one.

I am compiling a further set of manuscripts into a second tale, provisionally titled The Garderobe of Death. At the moment this does not appear to show Hermitage improving in any way. There is also a number of shorter stories which do nothing to enhance the monk's reputation.

It takes considerable time to decipher the combination of medieval English slang and very poor Latin in which the manuscripts are written but they put medieval England in a whole new light. I shall leave it for the reader to decide whether the light should be quietly switched off.

Your Chronicler

Howard of Warwick.