FIAT HOMO
After the fall of the western Roman Empire, Europe was beset by a state of anarchy. Rule was according to and seized by the strongest. Formal learning and education vanished. What had been achieved as scholarship was preserved only by religious groups of men called monks who lived austerely and in ordered communities (monasteries or abbeys) apart from the rest of the human community during this period of time called the Dark Ages.
Conditions at the beginning of the novel mirror the Dark Ages of western civilization. Fiat Homo establishes the purpose of the monastery and the characters of Francis, Leibowitz, and Benjamin. We are teased with the rumors of a holocaust that wiped out a mythical civilization centuries earlier, the founding of the monastery at that time, and its dedication to preserving what it could of the prior civilization. The canonization (making a saint) of Leibowitz causes both Francis and the monastery serious social and religious problems which are resolved by the end of Part One.
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