Schueler, Chihiro, and the Post-War Development (SPOILERS)

Have we ever actually come across a real live member of the Order of Andropov in any of the books? I think it must have been a very 'walk on' encounter if so. Is it just a little joke in the appendix or Chekov's Gun?

Randomiser wrote:There is textev that regardless whose name appears on the title pages of the various books Chihiro wrote most of the Writ. All the books had to be attached to some Archangel's name to help validate them and there may not have been too many prominent Archangel's left to hang what became the Book of Scheuler on by the time it was written. We have no idea how much or little of it he may have written. The idea that it blackens his name is very fanciful. It hasn't done so for the vast majority of the time since it was written. The modern Inquisition is what has blackened his name in some quarters.

I didn't mean it blackens his name in the population (Schueler was an archangel, his words were God's words so this couldn't happen, even the atrocities won't change that. The hatred isn't directed against Schueler but against the inquisition as an institution).

But Schueler's name and personality could be perverted by Chihiro in some kind of a petty personal joke. Nobody could understand it because the complete command crew was dead but that isn't the point. The thought of Schueler's book, which completely contradicts his personality, evolving in who knows what over the coming centuries could be very satisfying to someone who really dislikes Schueler.

This theory tries to unite the different images we got from Schueler. For this to work I assume there was some falling out between Schueler and Chihiro who presumably wrote the book. It is all pure speculation of course.

The Order of Schueler may have been the specialist Judges involving Heresy and corrupt clergy while the Order of Langhorne dealt with general Church Law and "Secular" Law.

Randomiser wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:One thought on the problem that the Book of Schueler describes the punishment for Heretics while the Inquisition was originally part of the Order of Bedard.

IMO it makes since if you think of the Inquisition as the Investigation Team and the Order of Schueler as originally the Judicial Team.

In other words, the Inquisition were the police and the Order of Schueler were the Judges.

Now the Inquisition is both the Police and the Judges. Not a good situation.

Except that the Order of Langhorne is specifically named as the source of all Church Jurists with no indication it ever had any different role.

I've always had the impression that the order of schueler had many original purposes. Remember that the Wylsyns probably represent the original order, maybe not in whole but in part. I suspect that the order of schueler was charged with punative management and internal investigations. They did not judge, they helped people make pennance, and with their rigour kept people from being too corrupt. They were probably always involved in the inquistion, it was just that the bedardist were primary. I've also always had the impression that they were originally the church's primay military order, the original order of schueler uses the sword, but that function was seperated out after schueler's death.

DrakBibliophile wrote:The Order of Schueler may have been the specialist Judges involving Heresy and corrupt clergy while the Order of Langhorne dealt with general Church Law and "Secular" Law.

HungryKing wrote:I've always had the impression that the order of schueler had many original purposes. Remember that the Wylsyns probably represent the original order, maybe not in whole but in part. I suspect that the order of schueler was charged with punative management and internal investigations. They did not judge, they helped people make pennance, and with their rigour kept people from being too corrupt. They were probably always involved in the inquistion, it was just that the bedardist were primary. I've also always had the impression that they were originally the church's primay military order, the original order of schueler uses the sword, but that function was seperated out after schueler's death.

There may have been more to St. Greyghor's Reforms than shifting the Bedardists out of Inquisition work and into teaching, philosophy, and psychology, and giving that to the Order of Schueler as a sort of consolidated Church enforcement authority. Just what each order was about before then is not terribly clear, and it's possible it wasn't terribly clear to them then either - the Reforms may have been about organizing Orders (some, anyway - Bedard, Schueler, Langhorne, perhaps Chihiro) more along particular functions where previously they were a bit too jumbled.

Also, while the concentration of authority among the scary people who torture and burn other people is pretty frightening, it did serve up an Order all about teaching, thinking clearly, and helping people think clearly. Cook that a couple hundred years and you end up with Maikel Staynair. And if it did mean an unfortunate concentration in the Order of Schueler, if the Order were then in the hands of people like the Wylsynn's, that would have been another very good thing. Pity it didn't last, but then, that kind of concentration of power would attract a hundred Clyntains or Raynos for every Wylsynn.

Randomiser wrote:There seem to be an awful lot of assumptions going on in this thread about the personal connections of various archangels and the books and orders named after them, for which I don't think there is a lot of textev.

There is textev that regardless whose name appears on the title pages of the various books Chihiro wrote most of the Writ. All the books had to be attached to some Archangel's name to help validate them and there may not have been too many prominent Archangel's left to hang what became the Book of Scheuler on by the time it was written. We have no idea how much or little of it he may have written. The idea that it blackens his name is very fanciful. It hasn't done so for the vast majority of the time since it was written. The modern Inquisition is what has blackened his name in some quarters.

Similarly all the big orders had to be named for some prominent archangel regardless of how much or little personal influence (s)he had on its early members. It was supposed to be inspired by the Archangel's public role, not necessarily their personality.

Matching Archangels to Orders works in some cases, but probably doesn't in others. For example, Sondheim (agronomy) and Truscott (animal husbandry) likely were not the respective experts in farming and livestock on the original command crew; the terraforming team was made up of Shan-wei's friends and colleagues.

The split that wasn't obvious until relatively recently was matching Orders to *Books*. When Merlin enters the scene in OAR, he finds an updated version of the Writ (and I'd be very curious how pervasive the differences were between that copy and the one Kau-yung left him; Merlin notes there are several at the time) and collects some basic information about the structure of the CoGA's Orders. In every case, there was a one-to-one correspondence between the topic of a given Book and the duties of the Order that shared its name (Merlin notes the Bedardist irony, but the Book/Order topical parallel is maintained there). Sure, the Schuelerites are responsible for enforcing Jwo-jeng's Proscriptions, but this is quickly explained by the fact that the Order of Jwo-jeng was absorbed into the Order of Schueler a few centuries back.

As it turns out, the perfectly logical system of the modern CoGA only dates back to YoG 650, and the major discontinuity is that the Order of Schueler *wasn't* the original home of the Inquisition, and we now know that we have no idea what the Order of Schueler's specific duties within the CoGA were for most of its existence.

Father Paityr's hologram further complicates the issue by suggesting that one of the two major Archangels to survive the War doesn't match up well with the Book that bears his name *either*. (Chihiro's does, and in all other cases, the historical and modern Orders more or less match the subject area of their Books.) The Schueler Discontinuity is now possibly a five-way split: his actual character (per the hologram), his historical reputation (Writ/Testimonies), the duties of the original Order (unknown), the duties of the modern Order (Inquisition), and the subject matter of his Book (matches modern Order, but *not* original Order). None of this was apparent at the beginning of the series.

For what I suspect are fairly obvious reasons, I don't intend to give a complete exposition on this topic at the present time. However:

(1) The original copy of the Holy Writ contained all of the books of the current Writ except the Book of Schueler. Virtually all of the other books were altered to either greater or lesser degree to match up with the events of the Alexandria strike and Shan-wei's "fall," but the basic thrust and "personality" of the existing books (other than the Book of Chihiro) remain very much what they were. You can, if you wish, think of the Book of Chihiro as the historical equivalent of the New Testament's Book of Acts. That is, as Luke chronicled the early ministries of the Apostles following the Crucifixion, the Book of Chihiro extends the "historical" Holy Writ in order to deal with the post-Creation schism in the "Archangels'" ranks. It also chronicles the remainder of the War against the Fallen. As such, it is the pivotal book in describing the Writ's explanation for how "evil" entered the world. It also sets forth the reason for the Inquisition's authority in the suppression of proscribed knowledge and techniques.

(2) The Book of Jwo-jeng describes the formulae which are to be used to determine what constitutes acceptable knowledge and techniques. The Proscriptions are, effectively, defined in negative terms; that is, anything which does not satisfy the ground rules for acceptability is automatically proscribed. However, prior to the Fall, the punitive consequences of violating the Proscriptions were far less emphasized.

(3) When I said earlier that the Order of Bédard had been the original keepers of the Inquisition, I did not mean to imply that they had been the primary suppressive arm of the Church. The Inquisition is also responsible for all primary and secondary education on Safehold. The schoolmasters in virtually every Safeholdian town are Schuelerites. Initially, those schoolmasters were Bédardists, however. At that time, the emphasis was much more strongly on teaching "right behavior" than on punishing "wrong behavior. The penalties for wrong behavior existed, however, and the Bédardists were responsible for determining who was guilty of that "wrong behavior." Even at this early date, though, the Inquisition's courts were separate from the other ecclesiastic and secular courts. They were specialized tribunals which considered accusations of heresy based on the Book of Jwo-jeng's provisions.

(4) The Order of Jwo-Jeng was responsible for determining what constituted heresy (which, at that time, was almost entirely focused on violations of the Proscriptions), but not for punishing it. Nor was the order involved in the actual determination of guilt. Prior to the reforms everyone is talking about, its primary and essential function was the preservation in a pure and uncontaminated form of the Proscriptions.

(5) The Order of Schueler was originally a teaching order within the Church combined with a very specialized "enforcement arm" of the Church. The Order of Schueler was responsible for teaching seminarians the ins and outs of recognizing and dealing with the heresies defined by the Order of Jwo-jeng. As such, they cooperated closely with both the Order of Jwo-jeng and the Bédardists, but there was always a certain tension among the three orders as their "turfs" tended to encroach upon one another. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Order of Schueler was responsible for punishing those adjudged guilty of heresy. That is, one might consider the Schuelerites as Mother Church's executioners but not her jurists.

(6) The Order of Langhorne organized and staffed Mother Church's courts (other than the Inquisition's tribunals) and determined whether or not the various realms' secular law was in accordance with the law of Mother Church and the Archangels' expressed commands. That is, it might be considered the "supreme court" of Safehold, although its authority was much more proactive. The one area in which the Order of Langhorne didn't have primary and preemptive authority over canon law was in the area of heresy. That authority had been specifically reserved to the Order of Jwo-jeng and the Bédardists of the Inquisition.

This division of responsibility and authority was inherently unstable, however. Until the deaths of the last Archangels and Angels, that didn't matter a great deal, since the "divine" members of the command crew were still around to sort things out. But once the last of them died off, the natural tendency of human bureaucracies (and bureaucrats) to seek greater power came into play. For the next 100 to 200 years, the system ticked along without any great challenges to its stability, but the Orders found themselves increasingly competing for authority and power as the Church got farther and farther away from the days of the Archangels themselves. It was a gradual process, not something that happened overnight, but by the time of Saint Greyghor's reforms, the infighting had grown rather vicious.

The Bédardists' emphasis had shifted away from enforcement and increasingly concentrated on education, particularly since the levels of literacy had dropped off so alarmingly. Their Order was much more concerned by the fact that illiteracy was undermining the ability to teach the nature of divine law than by the threat of violations of the Proscriptions, which had never amounted to very much by that time, anyway. That is, there was little heresy (where the Proscriptions were involved, at any rate) to need punishing and the Bédardists had come to regard their responsibility in that respect as a distraction from a much more pressing need: the overhaul of the Safeholdian educational system.

The Order of Jwo-jeng, on the other hand, had dwindled. Its primary function was to define what was allowable and what was not allowable in terms of knowledge and technique. In many ways, they had turned into an order of librarians, the keepers of texts and attestations. As such, although in many ways they held ultimate authority where the Proscriptions were concerned, they offered very little to those of an ambitious bent. The Inquisition had the legal authority to try and sentence for heresy — of all varieties; not simply violations of the Proscriptions — and the Langhornites wielded all other legal authority.

In some ways, Saint Greyghor's reforms were simply a recognition of what might be called the secularization of episcopal ambition. The vicarate had become a battleground in which the great orders and factional alliances of vicars were contesting spheres of authority which had become increasingly less clearly defined as customary usage and precedent wore away at the letter of the law. It was beyond his power to turn the clock back to the days immediately after the Archangels' deaths, so his reforms were limited to an effort to draw very sharp and clear lines for the future.

The Order of Jwo-jeng, which had (as I said above) dwindled steadily anyway, was folded into the Order of Schueler. The Bédardists, who wanted to focus on education more than on enforcement, surrendered the Inquisition's tribunals to the Order of Schueler. And the Order of Schueler became Mother Church's jurists for all forms of heresy, not just her executioners. What the Bédardists (and, probably, Saint Greyghor) failed to realize was that they couldn't give up only some of the Inquisition's authority. Over the next several decades they found the Order of Schueler, as the new administrators of the Inquisition, pushing further and further into control of primary and secondary education. The Bédardists remained the primary teaching order, but they found themselves more and more under the authority of the Schuelerites, and the Schuelerites expanded their own teaching responsibilities to dominate at the primary school level. By the time a Safeholdian student graduates into the higher schools where the Bédardists hold primary authority, the Order of Schueler has already instilled the basic platform on which the equivalent of high school and college education will build, which gives it enormous power when it comes to shaping basic attitudes.

The Langhornites now found themselves in a head-to-head confrontation with the Order of Schueler for primacy within the Church, and the Order of Langhorne gradually found that the Schuelerites' authority over canon law in regards to heresy had given its rivals a huge "inside advantage" in the vicarate's internal power struggles. Thus by the time of Nimue's awakening, the Order of Langhorne is clearly second in power (arguably, third, after the Order of Chihiro) to the Order of Schueler.

One other unanticipated consequence of Saint Greyghor's reforms, however, was the erosion of the Proscriptions. Prior to the reforms, the Order of Jwo-jeng defined violations of the Proscriptions, the Order of Bédard judged violations of the Proscriptions, and the Order of Schueler punished violations of the Proscriptions. After the reforms, however, all of those functions were vested in the reorganized Inquisition . . . and controlled by a single order: the Order of Schueler. What had been (effectively) a system of checks and balances had been thoroughly unbalanced, and someone who wished to. . . push the boundaries of the Proscriptions could do so with "one-stop shopping." There'd always been a certain tendency to trade on influence in order to get a more favorable interpretation of what did or did not constitute a violation. Now, with the number of orders who had to be consulted reduced by two thirds (largely in the name of efficiency and the termination of "turf wars"), there were far fewer people who had to be influenced. By the same token, there were fewer people who wielded influence and the power of decision, and the concentration of that authority in a small number of hands made those hands more susceptible to outright bribery.

The "secularization" which had prompted Saint Greyghor's reforms had already begun the corruption within the vicarate. His efforts to hold the line through his reforms, unfortunately, boomeranged and actually increased the drift in that direction.

Obviously, the process was much more complicated than the bare bones analysis I've sketched out here. Also (and, I trust, equally obvious) I reserve the right to tinker with all of the above anyway I may find necessary or desirable when it comes to telling the story. Nonetheless, this constitutes the essential elements of the evolution within the Church from Chihiro's time to that of Saint Greyghor, which set the foundations for the situation confronting Merlin and the inner circle.

Hope this helps.

runsforcelery wrote:For what I suspect are fairly obvious reasons, I don't intend to give a complete exposition on this topic at the present time. However:

For an incomplete exposition, you've given us a *lot* of historical tidbits to crunch through, and for that I am deeply thankful! Best wishes to you and your family; Safehold is on my short list of favorite series.

(Based on what RFC did and did not say, my guess is that further plot development in terms of historical revelations will focus on the post-War period under Chihiro and Schueler, via Seijin Kohdy's journals.)

Thanks again, RFC!

Thank you.

runsforcelery wrote:For what I suspect are fairly obvious reasons, I don't intend to give a complete exposition on this topic at the present time. However:

(1) The original copy of the Holy Writ contained all of the books of the current Writ except the Book of Schueler. Virtually all of the other books were altered to either greater or lesser degree to match up with the events of the Alexandria strike and Shan-wei's "fall," but the basic thrust and "personality" of the existing books (other than the Book of Chihiro) remain very much what they were. You can, if you wish, think of the Book of Chihiro as the historical equivalent of the New Testament's Book of Acts. That is, as Luke chronicled the early ministries of the Apostles following the Crucifixion, the Book of Chihiro extends the "historical" Holy Writ in order to deal with the post-Creation schism in the "Archangels'" ranks. It also chronicles the remainder of the War against the Fallen. As such, it is the pivotal book in describing the Writ's explanation for how "evil" entered the world. It also sets forth the reason for the Inquisition's authority in the suppression of proscribed knowledge and techniques.

(2) The Book of Jwo-jeng describes the formulae which are to be used to determine what constitutes acceptable knowledge and techniques. The Proscriptions are, effectively, defined in negative terms; that is, anything which does not satisfy the ground rules for acceptability is automatically proscribed. However, prior to the Fall, the punitive consequences of violating the Proscriptions were far less emphasized.

(3) When I said earlier that the Order of Bédard had been the original keepers of the Inquisition, I did not mean to imply that they had been the primary suppressive arm of the Church. The Inquisition is also responsible for all primary and secondary education on Safehold. The schoolmasters in virtually every Safeholdian town are Schuelerites. Initially, those schoolmasters were Bédardists, however. At that time, the emphasis was much more strongly on teaching "right behavior" than on punishing "wrong behavior. The penalties for wrong behavior existed, however, and the Bédardists were responsible for determining who was guilty of that "wrong behavior." Even at this early date, though, the Inquisition's courts were separate from the other ecclesiastic and secular courts. They were specialized tribunals which considered accusations of heresy based on the Book of Jwo-jeng's provisions.

(4) The Order of Jwo-Jeng was responsible for determining what constituted heresy (which, at that time, was almost entirely focused on violations of the Proscriptions), but not for punishing it. Nor was the order involved in the actual determination of guilt. Prior to the reforms everyone is talking about, its primary and essential function was the preservation in a pure and uncontaminated form of the Proscriptions.

(5) The Order of Schueler was originally a teaching order within the Church combined with a very specialized "enforcement arm" of the Church. The Order of Schueler was responsible for teaching seminarians the ins and outs of recognizing and dealing with the heresies defined by the Order of Jwo-jeng. As such, they cooperated closely with both the Order of Jwo-jeng and the Bédardists, but there was always a certain tension among the three orders as their "turfs" tended to encroach upon one another. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Order of Schueler was responsible for punishing those adjudged guilty of heresy. That is, one might consider the Schuelerites as Mother Church's executioners but not her jurists.

(6) The Order of Langhorne organized and staffed Mother Church's courts (other than the Inquisition's tribunals) and determined whether or not the various realms' secular law was in accordance with the law of Mother Church and the Archangels' expressed commands. That is, it might be considered the "supreme court" of Safehold, although its authority was much more proactive. The one area in which the Order of Langhorne didn't have primary and preemptive authority over canon law was in the area of heresy. That authority had been specifically reserved to the Order of Jwo-jeng and the Bédardists of the Inquisition.

This division of responsibility and authority was inherently unstable, however. Until the deaths of the last Archangels and Angels, that didn't matter a great deal, since the "divine" members of the command crew were still around to sort things out. But once the last of them died off, the natural tendency of human bureaucracies (and bureaucrats) to seek greater power came into play. For the next 100 to 200 years, the system ticked along without any great challenges to its stability, but the Orders found themselves increasingly competing for authority and power as the Church got farther and farther away from the days of the Archangels themselves. It was a gradual process, not something that happened overnight, but by the time of Saint Greyghor's reforms, the infighting had grown rather vicious.

The Bédardists' emphasis had shifted away from enforcement and increasingly concentrated on education, particularly since the levels of literacy had dropped off so alarmingly. Their Order was much more concerned by the fact that illiteracy was undermining the ability to teach the nature of divine law than by the threat of violations of the Proscriptions, which had never amounted to very much by that time, anyway. That is, there was little heresy (where the Proscriptions were involved, at any rate) to need punishing and the Bédardists had come to regard their responsibility in that respect as a distraction from a much more pressing need: the overhaul of the Safeholdian educational system.

The Order of Jwo-jeng, on the other hand, had dwindled. Its primary function was to define what was allowable and what was not allowable in terms of knowledge and technique. In many ways, they had turned into an order of librarians, the keepers of texts and attestations. As such, although in many ways they held ultimate authority where the Proscriptions were concerned, they offered very little to those of an ambitious bent. The Inquisition had the legal authority to try and sentence for heresy — of all varieties; not simply violations of the Proscriptions — and the Langhornites wielded all other legal authority.

In some ways, Saint Greyghor's reforms were simply a recognition of what might be called the secularization of episcopal ambition. The vicarate had become a battleground in which the great orders and factional alliances of vicars were contesting spheres of authority which had become increasingly less clearly defined as customary usage and precedent wore away at the letter of the law. It was beyond his power to turn the clock back to the days immediately after the Archangels' deaths, so his reforms were limited to an effort to draw very sharp and clear lines for the future.

The Order of Jwo-jeng, which had (as I said above) dwindled steadily anyway, was folded into the Order of Schueler. The Bédardists, who wanted to focus on education more than on enforcement, surrendered the Inquisition's tribunals to the Order of Schueler. And the Order of Schueler became Mother Church's jurists for all forms of heresy, not just her executioners. What the Bédardists (and, probably, Saint Greyghor) failed to realize was that they couldn't give up only some of the Inquisition's authority. Over the next several decades they found the Order of Schueler, as the new administrators of the Inquisition, pushing further and further into control of primary and secondary education. The Bédardists remained the primary teaching order, but they found themselves more and more under the authority of the Schuelerites, and the Schuelerites expanded their own teaching responsibilities to dominate at the primary school level. By the time a Safeholdian student graduates into the higher schools where the Bédardists hold primary authority, the Order of Schueler has already instilled the basic platform on which the equivalent of high school and college education will build, which gives it enormous power when it comes to shaping basic attitudes.

The Langhornites now found themselves in a head-to-head confrontation with the Order of Schueler for primacy within the Church, and the Order of Langhorne gradually found that the Schuelerites' authority over canon law in regards to heresy had given its rivals a huge "inside advantage" in the vicarate's internal power struggles. Thus by the time of Nimue's awakening, the Order of Langhorne is clearly second in power (arguably, third, after the Order of Chihiro) to the Order of Schueler.

One other unanticipated consequence of Saint Greyghor's reforms, however, was the erosion of the Proscriptions. Prior to the reforms, the Order of Jwo-jeng defined violations of the Proscriptions, the Order of Bédard judged violations of the Proscriptions, and the Order of Schueler punished violations of the Proscriptions. After the reforms, however, all of those functions were vested in the reorganized Inquisition . . . and controlled by a single order: the Order of Schueler. What had been (effectively) a system of checks and balances had been thoroughly unbalanced, and someone who wished to. . . push the boundaries of the Proscriptions could do so with "one-stop shopping." There'd always been a certain tendency to trade on influence in order to get a more favorable interpretation of what did or did not constitute a violation. Now, with the number of orders who had to be consulted reduced by two thirds (largely in the name of efficiency and the termination of "turf wars"), there were far fewer people who had to be influenced. By the same token, there were fewer people who wielded influence and the power of decision, and the concentration of that authority in a small number of hands made those hands more susceptible to outright bribery.

The "secularization" which had prompted Saint Greyghor's reforms had already begun the corruption within the vicarate. His efforts to hold the line through his reforms, unfortunately, boomeranged and actually increased the drift in that direction.

Obviously, the process was much more complicated than the bare bones analysis I've sketched out here. Also (and, I trust, equally obvious) I reserve the right to tinker with all of the above anyway I may find necessary or desirable when it comes to telling the story. Nonetheless, this constitutes the essential elements of the evolution within the Church from Chihiro's time to that of Saint Greyghor, which set the foundations for the situation confronting Merlin and the inner circle.

Hope this helps.

Hello RunsForCelery,

Thanks for clearing that up tremendously.

Checking your latest posts has become a daily pleasure, and the best way to keep current on clarifying what actually happened or is happening.

Obviously the long threads that don't merit your posts are too far off to bother with or are rehashing some trivial point you've already stated what's necessary.

So new details are always much appreciated.

L

runsforcelery wrote:For what I suspect are fairly obvious reasons, I don't intend to give a complete exposition on this topic at the present time. However:

(1) The original copy of the Holy Writ contained all of the books of the current Writ except the Book of Schueler. Virtually all of the other books were altered to either greater or lesser degree to match up with the events of the Alexandria strike and Shan-wei's "fall," but the basic thrust and "personality" of the existing books (other than the Book of Chihiro) remain very much what they were. You can, if you wish, think of the Book of Chihiro as the historical equivalent of the New Testament's Book of Acts. That is, as Luke chronicled the early ministries of the Apostles following the Crucifixion, the Book of Chihiro extends the "historical" Holy Writ in order to deal with the post-Creation schism in the "Archangels'" ranks. It also chronicles the remainder of the War against the Fallen. As such, it is the pivotal book in describing the Writ's explanation for how "evil" entered the world. It also sets forth the reason for the Inquisition's authority in the suppression of proscribed knowledge and techniques.

(2) The Book of Jwo-jeng describes the formulae which are to be used to determine what constitutes acceptable knowledge and techniques. The Proscriptions are, effectively, defined in negative terms; that is, anything which does not satisfy the ground rules for acceptability is automatically proscribed. However, prior to the Fall, the punitive consequences of violating the Proscriptions were far less emphasized.

(3) When I said earlier that the Order of Bédard had been the original keepers of the Inquisition, I did not mean to imply that they had been the primary suppressive arm of the Church. The Inquisition is also responsible for all primary and secondary education on Safehold. The schoolmasters in virtually every Safeholdian town are Schuelerites. Initially, those schoolmasters were Bédardists, however. At that time, the emphasis was much more strongly on teaching "right behavior" than on punishing "wrong behavior. The penalties for wrong behavior existed, however, and the Bédardists were responsible for determining who was guilty of that "wrong behavior." Even at this early date, though, the Inquisition's courts were separate from the other ecclesiastic and secular courts. They were specialized tribunals which considered accusations of heresy based on the Book of Jwo-jeng's provisions.

(4) The Order of Jwo-Jeng was responsible for determining what constituted heresy (which, at that time, was almost entirely focused on violations of the Proscriptions), but not for punishing it. Nor was the order involved in the actual determination of guilt. Prior to the reforms everyone is talking about, its primary and essential function was the preservation in a pure and uncontaminated form of the Proscriptions.

(5) The Order of Schueler was originally a teaching order within the Church combined with a very specialized "enforcement arm" of the Church. The Order of Schueler was responsible for teaching seminarians the ins and outs of recognizing and dealing with the heresies defined by the Order of Jwo-jeng. As such, they cooperated closely with both the Order of Jwo-jeng and the Bédardists, but there was always a certain tension among the three orders as their "turfs" tended to encroach upon one another. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Order of Schueler was responsible for punishing those adjudged guilty of heresy. That is, one might consider the Schuelerites as Mother Church's executioners but not her jurists.

(6) The Order of Langhorne organized and staffed Mother Church's courts (other than the Inquisition's tribunals) and determined whether or not the various realms' secular law was in accordance with the law of Mother Church and the Archangels' expressed commands. That is, it might be considered the "supreme court" of Safehold, although its authority was much more proactive. The one area in which the Order of Langhorne didn't have primary and preemptive authority over canon law was in the area of heresy. That authority had been specifically reserved to the Order of Jwo-jeng and the Bédardists of the Inquisition.

This division of responsibility and authority was inherently unstable, however. Until the deaths of the last Archangels and Angels, that didn't matter a great deal, since the "divine" members of the command crew were still around to sort things out. But once the last of them died off, the natural tendency of human bureaucracies (and bureaucrats) to seek greater power came into play. For the next 100 to 200 years, the system ticked along without any great challenges to its stability, but the Orders found themselves increasingly competing for authority and power as the Church got farther and farther away from the days of the Archangels themselves. It was a gradual process, not something that happened overnight, but by the time of Saint Greyghor's reforms, the infighting had grown rather vicious.

The Bédardists' emphasis had shifted away from enforcement and increasingly concentrated on education, particularly since the levels of literacy had dropped off so alarmingly. Their Order was much more concerned by the fact that illiteracy was undermining the ability to teach the nature of divine law than by the threat of violations of the Proscriptions, which had never amounted to very much by that time, anyway. That is, there was little heresy (where the Proscriptions were involved, at any rate) to need punishing and the Bédardists had come to regard their responsibility in that respect as a distraction from a much more pressing need: the overhaul of the Safeholdian educational system.

The Order of Jwo-jeng, on the other hand, had dwindled. Its primary function was to define what was allowable and what was not allowable in terms of knowledge and technique. In many ways, they had turned into an order of librarians, the keepers of texts and attestations. As such, although in many ways they held ultimate authority where the Proscriptions were concerned, they offered very little to those of an ambitious bent. The Inquisition had the legal authority to try and sentence for heresy — of all varieties; not simply violations of the Proscriptions — and the Langhornites wielded all other legal authority.

In some ways, Saint Greyghor's reforms were simply a recognition of what might be called the secularization of episcopal ambition. The vicarate had become a battleground in which the great orders and factional alliances of vicars were contesting spheres of authority which had become increasingly less clearly defined as customary usage and precedent wore away at the letter of the law. It was beyond his power to turn the clock back to the days immediately after the Archangels' deaths, so his reforms were limited to an effort to draw very sharp and clear lines for the future.

The Order of Jwo-jeng, which had (as I said above) dwindled steadily anyway, was folded into the Order of Schueler. The Bédardists, who wanted to focus on education more than on enforcement, surrendered the Inquisition's tribunals to the Order of Schueler. And the Order of Schueler became Mother Church's jurists for all forms of heresy, not just her executioners. What the Bédardists (and, probably, Saint Greyghor) failed to realize was that they couldn't give up only some of the Inquisition's authority. Over the next several decades they found the Order of Schueler, as the new administrators of the Inquisition, pushing further and further into control of primary and secondary education. The Bédardists remained the primary teaching order, but they found themselves more and more under the authority of the Schuelerites, and the Schuelerites expanded their own teaching responsibilities to dominate at the primary school level. By the time a Safeholdian student graduates into the higher schools where the Bédardists hold primary authority, the Order of Schueler has already instilled the basic platform on which the equivalent of high school and college education will build, which gives it enormous power when it comes to shaping basic attitudes.

The Langhornites now found themselves in a head-to-head confrontation with the Order of Schueler for primacy within the Church, and the Order of Langhorne gradually found that the Schuelerites' authority over canon law in regards to heresy had given its rivals a huge "inside advantage" in the vicarate's internal power struggles. Thus by the time of Nimue's awakening, the Order of Langhorne is clearly second in power (arguably, third, after the Order of Chihiro) to the Order of Schueler.

One other unanticipated consequence of Saint Greyghor's reforms, however, was the erosion of the Proscriptions. Prior to the reforms, the Order of Jwo-jeng defined violations of the Proscriptions, the Order of Bédard judged violations of the Proscriptions, and the Order of Schueler punished violations of the Proscriptions. After the reforms, however, all of those functions were vested in the reorganized Inquisition . . . and controlled by a single order: the Order of Schueler. What had been (effectively) a system of checks and balances had been thoroughly unbalanced, and someone who wished to. . . push the boundaries of the Proscriptions could do so with "one-stop shopping." There'd always been a certain tendency to trade on influence in order to get a more favorable interpretation of what did or did not constitute a violation. Now, with the number of orders who had to be consulted reduced by two thirds (largely in the name of efficiency and the termination of "turf wars"), there were far fewer people who had to be influenced. By the same token, there were fewer people who wielded influence and the power of decision, and the concentration of that authority in a small number of hands made those hands more susceptible to outright bribery.

The "secularization" which had prompted Saint Greyghor's reforms had already begun the corruption within the vicarate. His efforts to hold the line through his reforms, unfortunately, boomeranged and actually increased the drift in that direction.

Obviously, the process was much more complicated than the bare bones analysis I've sketched out here. Also (and, I trust, equally obvious) I reserve the right to tinker with all of the above anyway I may find necessary or desirable when it comes to telling the story. Nonetheless, this constitutes the essential elements of the evolution within the Church from Chihiro's time to that of Saint Greyghor, which set the foundations for the situation confronting Merlin and the inner circle.

Hope this helps.