The Mother of God is a novel, originally the work of the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895), that was published in 1886 as "Die Gottesmutter" and then in French as La Mère de Dieu.
The novel features the story of Sabadil, a simple peasant farmer living in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century.
Driven by infatuation, he traces her to a village where it transpires that she heads a quasi-Christian cult, the members of which pay her unquestioning devotion.
Blinded by unrequited love, the farmer is drawn into a web of manipulation, cruelty and violence from which there is no escape.
The translator, William Holmes, felt that Masoch's original text ended rather "up in the air", so he penned a further three chapters to bring the book to what he regards as a more satisfactory conclusion.