Topic Actions

Topic Search

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 37 guests

The 1000 year visit

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: The 1000 year visit
Post by n7axw   » Thu Jan 14, 2016 9:06 am

n7axw
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 5997
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 8:54 pm
Location: Viborg, SD

JeffEngel wrote:
Keith_w wrote:
Absolutely there are priests not resident in the monastery that are part of the brethren circle - Michael Stayner is one example. It is simply that the people who get mentioned the most are those in the monastery since they are the ones most easy to consult and probably the leadership of the decision making group.

I imagine it is a whole lot easier to decide to induct someone into the inner circle when you know they will be right there anyway in the normal course of things, when no one will miss them if they have to vanish or be kept under watch for a long time, and when you can have a long and intensive time to get to know them before deciding in the first place. So the threshold for entry is practically much easier to meet for permanent residents of the monastery (or nunnery).

There wouldn't have to be any policy in place or desired to restrict inner circle membership to the monks and nuns in that case, but you'd get a strong bias toward them anyway - which is about what we observe.


Both you and Keith are making excellent points on this one. I didn't want to propose the residence in the monastary as a requirement, but only that it apparently happened that way, probably more often than not.

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
Top
Re: The 1000 year visit
Post by thanatos   » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:40 pm

thanatos
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 324
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:29 pm
Location: United States

JeffEngel wrote:
There may be some weak reason to think that Zion didn't shuffle Out Islander priests much around the Out Islands just for not caring enough to: they are few, they are distant, and they may as well be interchangeable for all Zion cared until recently. On the other hand, shuffling is standard over the lowest ranks of the priesthood, and even if they were practicing policies that had the effect of isolating Out Islanders from mainlanders, they could still shuffle the Out Islanders among the islands. We've not textev either way and speculation in either direction is way out on a thin limb.

Certainly if Charisian priests exposed to Charisian theology under the influence of the Brotherhood were shuffled to other Out Islands, it'd affect the religious climate on those other islands more than if the Charisian priests all stayed at home and the channels of influence were all less direct (parishioners, printed sermons, etc.).

I imagine Zion - even bishops executors on the Out Islands - may have been a bit suspicious about Out Islander priests volunteering themselves for transfer among the Out Islands. On the other hand, those bishops executor may have been the people doing Zion's work shuffling the priests among the Islands themselves: even if Zion cannot be brought around to caring enough, a diligent BE could hope to win some points by assiduously following policy that way on his own, in concert with his counterpart on the next (remote, borderline-heretical, Langhorne-forsaken, but pleasantly wealthy) Out Island.


I don't think the reasons were "weak". Even here on Earth, the influence of the two biggest monotheist religions grew weaker the further away one got from those religions' geographic centers. Protestantism was strongest in Germany and northern France because they were separated from Rome by hundred of kilometers of land and very big mountain ranges. The same is true in Islam, where distances had enabled the schism between House Umayia and House Abbas and later on the Sunni and Shiite schisms. In the case of the Safeholdian "out islands", that distance is augmented by thousands of miles of salt water in between them and Zion.

Add to that the purely personal interests of clergymen who want to go places that would enhance, rather than diminish, their career prospects and personal wealth or to places that are closer to "civilization" as they thought it. Add also the fact that according to RFC, the out islands should have been represented by one or two vicars on the Council and weren't because the Church had opted to neglect them entirely in the big political game of the Church. And add to that the fact that the Charisian clergy didn't spread the gospel of Saint Zhernau even if they somehow got sent elsewhere because they were peripherally aware of the dangers of preaching their unorthodox views to anyone on the outside.

Now though we see that the Church of Charis is doing the missionary work that everyone feels they should have done long ago - and the reason they can is because they no longer need to fear some overzealous inquisitor or bishop-executor hauling them in for preaching "heresy" as Staynair found himself before Ahdymsyn in OAR after Tirion's death. And all of those "missionaries" are backed by the bayoneted rifles of the ICA and RSA themselves so they are free to preach reform and the gospel of Saint Zhernau throughout the Charisian Empire and anywhere on the mainland where they can get to.
Top

Return to Safehold