Cathedral

In the invented Rhineland town of Hagenburg, a great cathedral begins to rise in 1229, and its slow construction over the next century pulls together an entire society. Rettich Schäffer, a peasant apprentice with a gift for carving stone, borrows from a Jewish moneylender to buy his freedom from the bishop and work the cathedral. Around him move merchants chasing wool fortunes, a scheming treasurer, a bishop playing politics, guildsmen, and the town's Jewish residents whose fates rise and fall with the town. Organized into sections named for the Cross, the Sword, and the Pen, the book traces how faith, money, and ambition build and nearly break a medieval town across generations.