EricCWelch

The narrator in God's Equal is a monk seeking absolution by writing about his sins just before his death. He tells of his youth, when as a squire for a Norman knight, he comes of age during battle defending a small town in northern France during the middle ages. He comes to love the knight passionately. The knight, however, falls in love with a mysterious peasant woman who seems to have supernatural healing powers. The squire jealously plots the death of the woman but only succeeds in accidentally causing the death of his beloved knight. The most interesting facet of the work, aside from its vivid recreation of the middle ages, was Absire's description of the monk's torment with himself; his guilt over having caused his master's murder, but more his relationship with God. As he brings his beloved knight back to life through the miracle of writing the story, he wonders if he is not trying to become God's equal, i. e. resurrecting the dead through his manuscript.