1929: THE TRUMPETER OF KRAKOW by Eric P. Kelly with illustrations by Janina Domanska
It was in the spring of the year 1241 that rumors began to travel along the highroad from Kiev in the land of Rus that the Tartars of the East were again upon the march.
For a book whose first chapter is titled “The Man Who Wouldn’t Sell His Pumpkin”, 1929 medalist The Trumpeter Of Krakow is surprisingly good. It happens to be yet another work of historical fiction set in medieval Europe, because that has been the Newberry committee’s number-one favorite genre since even a century ago, but Trumpeter is built around a very strong sense of place, and unlike previous selections in this genre which all hit the same key elements - okay, knights, ladies, plague, monks, bards, peasants, king, I get it - the 1400s Krakow of Eric P. Kelly’s novel is a heaving mass of idiosyncratic traditions and characters, where every back alley has its own unique culture and history. Kelly wrote Trumpeter while teaching on an exchange program at the University of Krakow, so he absolutely comes by his knowledge of Polish history honestly, and his love for that history comes through very obviously in his writing. But a few years before his time at the university, Kelly was also stationed with an international aid organization to assist Ukranian refugees who had been driven into Poland by the Soviet army, and unfortunately, that happens to be a story that we have to keep retelling different versions of throughout history.
I don’t know if Kelly was any good at helping refugees, but he did it, and very few people sign up to do that at all. He went out and encountered them firsthand, people who were terrified and didn’t know where to sleep, what they were going to eat, where their loved ones were, what the rest of their life was going to be. Whatever material aid they may have needed, they also needed someone kind, who was willing to give of themselves, who was willing to spend time with these unwanted and frightened people without counting the cost to themselves, who could drop everything and be there for people they didn’t even know. They needed someone selfless. They needed a saint. And I don't know if Kelly was a saint, but I think he tried very hard to be like one. I think he knew what a saint would have done for the refugees he helped. Because he wrote a saint into his book.
Joseph Charnetsky and his parents are the fifteenth-century Ukrainian refugees at the center of Trumpeter; the first chapter opens on them arriving in Krakow after their home is destroyed by a band of Tartar soldiers. The aforementioned pumpkin that is not for sale is the one possession that Joseph's father, Andrew, has brought from their razed home, and hides a valuable gem that Andrew needs to deliver personally to the king of Poland.
But right away, the Charnetsky family starts running into all sorts of problems. The king of Poland is off fighting and Andrew has to keep the gem safe until he returns. The family that the Charnetskys were expecting to crash with in Poland have already been attacked and killed, leaving the Charnetskys with no place to stay and more people to grieve. Most urgently, it looks like a Tartar assassin is well aware of the gem and is in close pursuit of the Charnetsky family in Krakow. Things are desperate, and when Joseph stumbles across another family in the streets of Krakow and lets his plight spill out in front of them, the solution is obvious, as it would have been to anyone who lived in Krakow in the early 15th century: you guys have to go see Jan Kanty.
Jan Kanty is a priest, professor, and (on the side) physicist working at the university. Upon meeting the Charnetsky family in the middle of his project work, he immediately drops what he's doing and helps the needy family right in front of him. He offers them immediate shelter in his cell, pulls some strings to find them more permanent housing, hooks them up with a fake identity, finds Andrew a job sounding the hourly trumpet hymn at the local church, and connects them with more people in the city who can help them. While he's doing all of this over the course of a single chapter, multiple people come to visit him for medical advice, which he dispenses easily. As Kanty takes the family through the city to their various stops, it becomes very clear to the Charnetsky family that Kanty is a revered figure in the city, to the extent that people move out of his way in the street because they are afraid to touch a man this holy. Everyone in the rickety streets of Krakow has come to this man in desperation at some point in their lives, and he has unquestioningly helped every one of them.
Kanty was a real person, and he really was that respected in Krakow, for his willingness to give so selflessly to the poor of his city; Kelly refers to him, upon introducing him in his novel, as:
"...among the most remarkable personages of Krakow's age of glory in the fifteenth century…his name was one to be reckoned with everywhere, inside the city and out. He hated above all things cruelty of man against man, or of man against something helpless, a horse, or a dog, or a child. And when he saw one man and a woman and a boy of honest features and good appearance harassed by some hundred men, he did not hesitate but rushed into the midst of the flying stones without regard to his own safety or comfort."
Today, Kanty is known as Saint John Cantius, who is an important figure in the history of Polish Catholicism. If you live in a city with a sizeable Polish population (including, of course, Chicago), you'll almost definitely find a church or even a street named after him.
Maybe I just read too many modern and postmodern novels, but there's a certain sense of relief and refreshment you get when you meet a literary character who is just an unambiguous saint. This is the man people go to when they need help, and he is there to help them. There are no plot twists, there are no heel turns. This is the part of the story where the family gets help.
Kanty is saintly in how he acts, and he is literally a saint in the eyes of the Catholic Church, but most importantly, that doesn't make him superhuman. He doesn't have ecstatic visions, he can't levitate, he's not fireproof, he doesn't have stigmata, his hair doesn't grow alarmingly fast, he didn't die and have his body decompose except for his tongue which has somehow remained unspoiled (all of these are qualities attributed to other saints). It is probably good that he didn't have these qualities, since Poland in this era, as we see throughout the novel, was extremely suspicious of wizards, alchemists, and anyone who could be practicing dark magic. But Kanty is just the person who helps, without question, when there are people in front of him who need help.
Selflessness is a key theme of Trumpeter, especially when it comes to the Great Tarnov Crystal, that damn gem that everyone in the novel is after. It turns out that the Crystal has borderline-hypnotic qualities that tend to drive its possessor mad with power, and throughout the novel, the people who end up with it or try to steal it usually end up losing it when they drive themselves mad. Notably, the Charnetsky’s aspiring-alchemist neighbor - that was a legitimate career path in this time and place - gets his hands on it at one point, and is tempted into madness as he tries to use it to turn lead into gold and almost burns down half of Krakow; this was a real fire that occurred in Krakow in 1462, but wasn’t started by an amateur alchemist in real life.
After all of the thefts and chases and fires and attempted assassinations, the Charnetsky family is finally able to deliver the Great Tarnov Crystal to the king of Poland shortly before the end of the novel, and by this point, Andrew is begging the king to take it off of his hands:
“Pan Andrew fell upon his knees before the king. ‘Take this crystal and guard it, your Majesty,’ he exclaimed with great feeling, the tears already streaming down his face. ‘It has already done enough harm in the world. In my own family it has been nothing but a burden, a source of endless anxiety and suffering…In spite of the beauty of this jewel, I hate it from the very bottom of my heart, and I hope that I may never look upon it again. For every ray of light it reflects, thousands of men have fought and died for its possession; for every color that lurks within its depths, miseries and sufferings have swept over whole nations…My home in the Ukraine exists no more. My house is burned, my fields are laid waste, and all because I had this jewel in my possession and men envied me.”
The Crystal is out of Andrew’s hands, but of course the king gets transfixed by the damn thing during their meeting, and so the alchemist, in the novel’s big redemption arc, takes it upon himself to steal the crystal away once again, but this time, instead of using it to enrich himself, the alchemist throws the Crystal into the river:
“‘The first sight of it drove honesty from my head, as it has driven honesty from the heads of many who have see it…between us we have done nothing but cause want and misery and suffering all over Krakow. It is because of our madness that half the city is now a heap of ashes, that men and women and children are homeless and in poverty…with such jewels as this, that cause strife between man and man, and war between nation and nation - here - now I make an end!’”
The alchemist, named Kreutz, had spent his life trying to be a literal wizard. He was trying to give himself unimaginable power and riches. But the world doesn’t need wizards, it needs saints. It needs people who will fight against the things that cause strife between man and man, even if it costs them greatly. Jan Kanty was a saint and was a great character in the novel, but that’s not a story. The actual story is about people who wanted power instead choosing to become saints, not through bizarre miraculous superhuman powers, but through their willingness to give of themselves to others.
We’re almost a full century out from the publication of this novel. Poland has once again become a haven for Ukrainian refugees fleeing war and famine. Supernatural alchemical powers are not going to save us from the problems we have in the world; as Kelly’s novel shows us, being saints to each other just might. May we choose to be saints in desperate times like these.
Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 2010 medalist, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.