Capuche: A Medieval Tale of a Forbidden Love and a Barbaric Church

CAPUCHE is a disturbing medieval novel grounded in factual events and personalities. In England, at the dawn of the 1200s, a well-educated Welsh Noble, Sir Morvran Llywarch, preferred a scholar’s life over knighthood. In his search for knowledge and the mysterious, he embraced the esoteric Cathar teachings and became one of their leaders known as Capuche -- an initiate in the Cathar Mystery Doctrines. In that feudal world of brutal suppression, corruption, and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, the Gnostic Cathar ideology of equality for all stood out as a beacon of hope. What the Church promised in the afterlife, the Cathars offered in this life – and available to all. As the downtrodden, abused and oppressed population flocked to join their communes, Church attendance dwindled, as did its income -- the Cathars were a thorn in the eyes of the Church. And as Capuche witnessed their cruel savagery, he set out to take from the Church and even the scales. When Morvran finds a position in a Church, he begins a dangerous double life, trying to stay ahead of the Church. He learns of the Church’s war against the Cathars and saves his commune from destruction in the July 1212 Great London fire. As the Diocese archivist and with a female member of the Clergy, he innovates bookmaking. But when they fall in love, their lives take an irreversible turn. Their forbidden affair, Morvran’s Cathar affiliation as Capuche, and nightly raids provoke the terrifying wrath of the Church. But Morvran/Capuche and the Cathars have powerful friends, the Knights Templar and the Northern Barons. Uncovering Capuche’s identity proves difficult -- elusive the Cathars hide in plain sight, part of a population that loves and protects them. The Catholic Church, though, did not rest and set out to destroy this Cathar heresy. CAPUCHE is a tragedy, a story of hope, passion, and suffering -- a mystical journey in search of the beyond and of love under the most arduous circumstances.