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| Victor Hugo, the creator of Bishop Myriel. |
I am only just into the book and I already love it. Unlike
the musical the book begins with an extensive portrayal of the Bishop. In fact,
the whole of Book One is about Monsignor Myriel, Bishop of Digne, and is
entitled “An Upright Man”. Hugo paints a picture of
Myriel that is deeply sympathetic, indeed nearly iconic. He locates Bishop
Myriel clearly within the tumult of France in the 1800s and elevates a vision of Christian faith and charity timeless in its beauty and deep compassion. While
viewers of the musical will be well aware of the Bishop’s act of grace towards
Jean Valjean, the book has numerous other stories of Myriel’s witness to mercy.
Here, for instance, is a section on Bishop Myriel’s ministry to a man headed to
the guillotine for murder:
He [Myriel] went at
once to the prison and to the [prisoner’s] cell, where he addressed him by
name, took his hand and talked to him. He spent the rest of the day and the
night with him, without food or sleep, praying to God for his soul and
exhorting the man to have regard for himself. He repeated the greatest truths,
which are the simplest. He was the man’s father, brother, friend; his bishop
only to bless him...
When they came for
the man next day the bishop went with him showing himself to the crowd at the
side of the fettered wretch, in his purple hood and with the Episcopal cross
hanging from his neck. He went with him in the tumbril and on to the scaffold.
The man who had been so desolate the day before was now radiant. His soul was
at peace and hoped for God. The bishop kissed him and said when the knife was
about to fall: ‘Whom man kills God restores to life; whom the brothers pursue
the Father redeems. Pray and believe and go onward into life. Your Father is
there.’…
Since the most
sublime acts are often the least understood, there were people in the town who
said it was all affectation. But this was drawing-room comment. The common
people, who do not look for shabbiness where none exists, were deeply moved.
With each page of the novel my love for it grows and my
anticipation for the movie builds. The trailers that I have seen for it, and
the initial buzz around early screenings of it, give hope that this will be a
film worthy of the novel and of the stage production. I can't wait!
Greg (I've written some more on the idea of Christian Humanism and Les Miserables over at my other blog site.)
