The main character of the story is Padre Innocenzo, a 39 year-old Cistercian monk who observes an austere lifestyle and is a ceramist of the abbey where he lives. Besides having a good voice and working with the confreres, he is sometimes requested by other churches to sing sacred music in Latin. The transfer of the parish priest of the village involves new commitments for the monk (music celebrations, blessing of houses, confessions of the faithful, church maintenance), which divert him from his rarefied loneliness, to his great disappointment.