Something is definitely not right at the convent la Tres Saunte Annunciation. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s restored and uncut A Mortal Glamour brings to life the plight and horrors that the good nuns of a fourteenth-century convent in France experience when one of their order, Seur Aungelique, succumbs to an all-too-human lust. Her apparent madness passes from nun to nun in an epidemic that’s potentially as bad for their eternal souls as the recurring Plague is for the populace at large. What is behind the strange behavior of the nuns? Is it pride, lust, tainted rye bread, a mass hysteria that spreads like wildfire; or, is it just possible that Satanic forces are responsible?

Yarbro also examines the Catholic Church’s outlook on the nature of men, women, and sex. Women are, in the eyes of the Church, fallen creatures, condemned to repeat the Original Sin of Eve. The only way they can come to redemption is through chastity and the confession of their sins on a regular basis. If all else fails, there’s always fasting, scourging, torturing, and, ultimately, burning at the stake for the sake of saving one’s immortal soul from the pits of Hell. Yarbro depicts the era with an expert’s eye for detail, an time when the options for women were often limited to either entering a convent or becoming a courtesan.

Seur Aungelique is at the convent at the demand of her father, who has given her the choice of either consenting to a marriage he has proposed or to enter a convent. She knows in her heart and soul that God has not called her to be a nun, but she doesn’t want to marry the man whom her father has chosen for her, an old hunchback who fills her with disgust. However, to the new Mother Superior, there can be no other course of action but that of submitting to God’s Will:

“There are no plans but those of God. There is no life but acquiescence in His Will, and those who spend their lives attempting to subvert His Will are worse than fools.”

“For the time being, the Church ignores me officially, and that suits me very well. But if your father should insist that the letter of the law be served against me, then I will find myself in prison or worse, and you, ma Freree, would still have to go back to your convent.”

“The Devil has come here, and nothing is the same. I have seen him, fair as an angel, and he comes with ease to us, and we...he is like the Plague. One moment all is thriving and well, and the next all has sickened and in time it will fade and die. That is the way of the Devil.”