The Androfrancine Order appears in Ken Scholes’ novel Lamentation, which I’ve reviewed elsewhere.

Following the collapse of a mighty empire in a war of vast destruction, P’Andro Whym formed the Androfrancine Order to preserve the learning of elder days, to teach useful magic and technology, and to retain and suppress harmful knowledge of the sort that caused the destruction in the first place. Over the following centuries, the order has become the central institution in all the land. The head of the Order is called the Pope; and although the land is now divided into many sometimes squabbling nations, he is regard as King over them all. Meanwhile, the Brothers of the Order send out archaeological teams to the ruined lands seeking yet more lost knowledge, which they preserve in the Library. The Pope is revered by all, and the Order along with him; but the Order is also resented for its control of technology, and for the subtle and secret machinations by which it maintains its position.

Brothers in the Order are celibate, at least in principle, though they sometimes have bastard children; such bastards are raised by the Order as the “Orphans of P’Andro Whym”, are well educated, and often enough join the Order themselves. Between the Brothers and the Pope is a hierarchy of Bishops and Archbishops.

The role the Order plays in Schole’s world is patterned after the role of the Catholic Church in uniting Western civilization and preserving various texts in the scriptoria of countless monasteries after the fall of Rome. This is clearly indicated by the use of the terms “Order”, “Bishop”, “Archbishop”, and “Pope”. But the fascinating thing about the Order is that despite its religious trappings there’s nothing particularly religion-like about it. It has a hierarchy, it has the Gospels of P’Andro Whym, the Pope is honored as a spiritual father by the Brothers…but there is no theology at all. There are mental disciplines of some sort—the Brothers recite quatrains of the Gospels of P’Andro Whym under stress—but the content of the “faith” appears to be entirely materialistic and not at all supernatural. Think of the Abbey of St. Leibowitz without the Catholic faith, and you’ve got it.

For a wonder, there are no Bishops Behaving Badly. It’s clear from Scholes’ book that the members of the order are capable of error and hubris, but for the most part they seem to be carrying out their mission sincerely and with the common good in mind.

It’s such a different conception than usual that most of the categories I’ve come up with don’t apply. It doesn’t make sense to ask whether the beliefs of the Androfrancine Order are true or not, for example, because the Order doesn’t really address eternal verities. And it makes for an interesting book. Ultimately, though, the Androfrancine Order suffers from incoherence. It simply isn’t a believable institution.

The Catholic Church managed to unite Europe because Europe was Christian. But the Androfrancine Order doesn’t really seem to have a religion. There doesn’t seem to be anything about it that would account for the esteem and reverence in which it is held by the population at large; and there’s quite a bit about it that would give powerful men good reason to storm the library and sieze its contents. I could see the Pope of the Order being hated and feared. I could see the Order ruling over mankind with an iron fist. But that doesn’t seem to be how it works. Instead, the Order does what it does, and the people let them, and it seems very unlikely.

There are a number of robots, called “mechoservitors”, in the book, one of which becomes nearly human mentally and emotionally. This is in keeping with the materialist nature of Androfrancine teaching; if intellect is no more than atoms in motion, there’s no reason why a robot can’t be human.

To sum up, we have a number of themes in play here:

• A Pseudo-Catholic Hierarchy
• Monasticism (of a sort)
• Monks Preserving Knowledge
• Philosophical Materialism
• Historically Incoherent: This is a value judgement of my own. What I mean is that the social setting at the beginning of Scholes’ book is one that I don’t think could actually have arisen—the forces what would have caused it to develop in those directions and made it stable once there are lacking. Or, of course, they might be hidden from the reader; this is the first book in a series.

Update: I got a note from Ken Scholes himself! He had this to say about the Order:

They worship the “light” of human knowledge and accomplishment. Secular humanists and behaviorists start a religion among a small band of survivors to try and protect what’s left of humanity from itself and save what can be saved of its past. Of course, it backfires down the road a bit despite their best efforts at control.

So there you go!