In the character of Martin Luther Mr. Davis has found admirable
material around which to build an historical novel of more than
ordinary importance. He has succeeded above all else in making
this picturesque figure live, imparting to the stirring episodes
in which he played a part so much of reality that the reader is
enabled to visualise as perhaps never before the conditions leading
to the religious revolt of which the Friar of Wittenberg was so
powerful a leader. The story is told in the first person by Walter
von Lichtenstein, a young German nobleman who, apart from Luther, is
the hero. In effect, it is a vivid working-out of two forces which
are striving for the possession of Walter’s soul--the semi-pagan,
immoral beauty of sixteenth-century Italy as represented by Marianna
di Forli, the daughter of a Roman cardinal, and the more restrained,
less sophisticated, pious spirit of the awakening North, personified
by Ilsa von Blankenburg, daughter of a Harzland Graf.