Although my genre is specifically historical crime fiction, my Sir Anthony Standen Adventures can more generally be described as mystery novels. Which gives me an excellent opportunity to plug (again) the publication of Serpent’s Teeth on the 1st of November.
The origins of the word mystery lie in the Greek word mustēria (μνστήρια), meaning a secret rite or something revealed only to initiates. This derives from mystēs, an initiate into religious mysteries, probably related to the verb myein, meaning ‘to close’, particularly the eyes or lips. The implication was that initiates must keep silent about sacred knowledge.
In ancient Greece, the famous Eleusinian Mysteries involved secret ceremonies honouring Demeter and Persephone. Participants were forbidden to disclose what they had witnessed. Remarkably, the precise nature of these rituals remains mysterious today. The Romans adopted the word as mysterium, and early Christians employed it to describe divine truths beyond ordinary human understanding, particularly the nature of God and the sacraments. By the fourteenth century, mystery had entered English through Old French mistere. It retained its religious significance but gradually acquired the broader meaning of anything concealed, puzzling or inexplicable.
Curiously, medieval England also had mystery meaning a trade or craft. This came from a different source, Old French mestier, derived from Latin ministerium, meaning service or occupation. The two words eventually converged in spelling, although their origins were distinct.
Medieval mystery plays, performed by craft guilds, illustrate this linguistic convergence. Their name is traditionally associated with the religious mysteries they dramatised, although the guilds’ occupational mysteries also influenced the terminology.
By the nineteenth century, mystery had acquired another important meaning: a story centred upon an unexplained event or crime. Writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins helped establish the mystery as a literary genre.
Thus, a word originally associated with sacred secrets has evolved into something equally compelling: the pleasure of discovering what someone has deliberately concealed.