Books like Citadel of God — picked by fans

The glamour and excitement of the films distract somewhat from this book’s true message. A young Jewish prince named Judah Ben-Hur longs for a Jewish king to vanquish Rome, but suffers injustice through no fault of his own and is brutally enslaved. After perilous experiences on land and sea, he returns to Jerusalem and witnesses the last days of Jesus’s life: healing of outcasts, gracious forgiveness, and a mercilessly cruel death. Ben-Hur finally comes to faith in this divine anti-hero.

The historic, geographic, and cultural detail in this long book is stunning, as are the realistically portrayed characters and the romantic side story. But it is the spiritual message that impressed me most: a downtrodden slave finally chooses to follow Jesus rather than pursue worldly riches and fame. He experiences redemption, learns to forgive, and starts a new life.

Sensitively written with a solid basis in history, we meet – and in some cases come to love – Queen Bertha, Pope Gregory, Archbishop Augustine, and other key players. The hopes and fears that drive Augustine on his challenging mission to convert England and to bring the old-school Christian Britons in Wales back into the fold of the Roman Church, are vividly portrayed. We also encounter the harsh reality of life in the primitive, war-torn, pagan Land of Angels.

This book taught me a lot about a significant period in the history of Britain and inspired me to reflect on the prevailing incompatible Christian perspectives.

This book is set in Italy at the end of the 6th century. It is a vivid account of an engineer who struggles to survive in a largely devastated country and longs to revive the former advanced Roman technology. It depicts a cruel world: old Romans attacked by Lombards, and merciless clashes between Pagans, Arian, and Catholic Christians. Of great interest to me were the personal interactions of both leaders and ordinary people.

Although, for my taste, it included an unnecessary preoccupation with violence and sex, the vivid cultural and factual detail provided me with much background information and food for thought. The characters are well developed and the story exciting.

Philip de Braose, a despondent French mercenary who has lost his desire to live, is found half-dead and subsequently befriended by Hywel, a Cistercian monk. This moving tale explores the spiritual journey of an initially hopeless soul.

Margetts recounts engaging details of their travels, such as Hywel’s seasickness as they sail from Bordeaux to Bristol, and Philip’s soul-searching as he becomes aware of his own arrogant, selfish attitudes. We also gain a realistic impression of the modest living conditions and spiritual aspirations prevailing in thirteenth-century Cistercian monasteries.

This book has a deeply Christian message, with many Biblical references. As such, it speaks to readers who may be finding it difficult to trust God as they struggle with past wounds and failures. The dénouement at the end is unexpected, but both life-asserting and encouraging.

Migration is the great theme of the twenty-first century. Our experience has set historians on a quest to see how new the mass movement of peoples really is. Isayev’s book is one of the first full-length studies of migration in Roman times.

It is enormously wide-ranging, bringing together the evidence of archaeology and of Roman comedy and history with the insights of geographers and sociologists. We see populations transplanted against their will, enslaved prisoners, hostages, and refugees, but also settlers and traders trying to make their fortune, and explorers and travelling scholars. Best of all we explore the ways that Romans thought about this, sometimes encountering chillingly familiar hostility but more often positive views of new arrivals. Romans often thought of themselves as a city of immigrants, and saw their willingness to accept newcomers as one reason for their success. Isayev does a wonderful job of opening up this new… show more.

A historical novel has to do more than just re-tell a part of history. The author has the duty to make history come alive for the reader, even if fictionalized. That means details about daily life and customs, not just buildings and battles. This book was enormously helpful in describing everyday Roman life. What the Romans were eating and wearing in Rome, they probably also ate (as near as they could) and wore in their colonies. Here I found everything from going to the barber to going to the circus.

I return to this book in my mind again and again, and quote it all the time! It’s a slim, sexy, romantic, philosophical novel set against the backdrop of a British woman’s eye (and heart)-opening trip to Italy.

At first, young Lucy Honeychurch plays the piano with unbridled passion and lives somewhat timidly. But with a little bit of love, and some beauty, can that change?

It’s not often I’m moved to tears by an academic book, but this book did it for me by putting me in the shoes of a Florentine patrician trying to comfort his friend the night before his execution. The main historical source of the book is an extraordinary ‘how-to’ manual: the one used by the ‘comforting confraternities’ of 16th-century Bologna, men who volunteered to spiritually prepare condemned criminals for their final moments on earth and, in so doing, hopefully increase their chances of salvation. The book explains the various methods and tools that the comforter could use, including prayers, songs, and pictures, and reveals the complex rituals of execution that began long before the prisoner’s arrival at the scaffold. A moving account of the realities of historical capital punishment.

This book is a fantastic, broad overview of the Italian Renaissance (or rinascimento, the term Ruggiero prefers and which his subjects would have recognized). The Italian Rinascimento was a period, according to Ruggiero, of vibrant cities, social change, and cultural expression, in which intellectuals, politicians, and artists both looked back to an idealized classical past and forward to uncharted territory.

I love the way this book focuses on issues that preoccupied the people he studies and incorporates topics often absent from works on the Renaissance, including women, sexuality, economics, disease and death, and religion, among others. Even more important, perhaps, is that it is clear, accessible, and engaging, and demonstrates a wealth of knowledge developed over an illustrious career as a historian of early modern Italy.

This book presents six vignettes of sex and violence plucked by Thomas Cohen from the archives of the papal governor of sixteenth-century Rome.

I love Cohen’s passion for telling a good story without losing sight of its broader historical significance. Examining the everyday lives of people in the streets, Cohen reveals how a clash between the contradictory currents of Italian Renaissance society fueled much of its conflicts and discontents.

On the one hand, Christian religion preached mercy, forgiveness, and community, on the other the compelling codes of honor, familial loyalty, and unwritten social rules promoted violence and vengeance.

The book also reveals how women and other socially marginalized figures could navigate and manipulate these codes to find space and freedom in a world dominated by powerful men.