What did the Temple Circle hope to accomplish?

From what I can gather, the focus of the Circle was to gather evidence of corruption within the Church for purposes of a future reformation.

But... why? Who were they going to submit all this evidence to? The Church had no higher, not-corrupt body to appeal to. The Church equivalent of the FBI (the Inquisition) was the most corrupt of the corrupt. All the Inquisition would do with the 'evidence' would be to bury it, and charge the provider with crimes of invasion of privacy or heresy or something. I don't see the 'end game' for the Circle as a whole.

I can understand the Wylsynns. They had what they thought was the card in the hole, the 'return' of Schueler himself in the near future. They obviously didn't realize he'd just slap Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn on the back and tell him what a wonderful job he was doing. They might have figured o.k., here's the Archangel, look at these boxes of 'evidence' of the priesthood being bad boys.

But everyone else in the Circle? Who were they planning on telling about their 'evidence'? How stupid would you have to be to need 'documentary' evidence of corruption when the corruption was being built into the church budget from the get go? Or not notice all the vicars hanging out at ye ol' cat house, or traipsing whores through the Temple proper?

I've had a rough time understanding the thought process of such an apparently futile operation.

Even after seven books, and thousands of pages, there's been absolutely no sign that anything the Circle did, or a single line of evidence gathered, has had any effect on anything whatsoever. Even killing off a tenth of the vicarate itself had no noticeable effect, except possibly a little more suffering in Zion. What did these vicars do all day, that killing off a tenth of them does nothing?

Its like the whole Circle plot line is nothing more than a human interest story, covering some strategically challenged minor bureaucrats in a capital city. I was even somewhat relieved (though I miss Hauwerd) when Clyntahn murdered them all off in AMF, as I found their ineptitude painful to read about.

Or was the whole thing a rationale for Paityr Wylsynn to go from pro-proscription to anti-proscription. If logic and knowledge won't suffice to overcome faith, good old fashioned revenge will? The death of his father and uncle seemed to play a minor part in his mental processes as described later in the story.

It was mentioned that a few years back, that Wylsynn was outvoted for the position of Grand Inquisitor to Clyntahn, with the suggestion that there was some hanky panky during the vote counting.

The general idea was that if Wylsynn was made Grand Inquisitor, he would have used the power of the position and the evidence he had gathered to clean out the Temple hierarchy. And he was honest enough to admit to himself that he might well have been unsuccessful at it.

Have all the documentation of issues gathered and in the future you may get leadership that is not corrupt. Change of such a large organization is not going to be quick and often starts with small movements

They could have made it public.

There were plenty of good priests, including good people in the Vicarate, who would have decried the crimes if the documentation were available. And the people would have supported those priests. There was already a reform movement underway. Remember that at the beginning, the Group of Four was actually concerned about the reform movement; it was gathering momentum. Given the right circumstances (such as the public revelation of proof of vicarate corruption), it could have actually brought dramatic change.

If the documentation had been made public, there is no way the Inquisition or the Grand Vicar could have brushed it aside. There would have been a grass-roots demand for reform, visible reform. The number of truly corrupt vicars was not that large. Neither the Grand Vicar nor the Inquisition has absolute power. The Vicarate as a whole has some power of its own. With a scandal this big, the Grand Vicar would have been run out of office, and a new reform-minded Grand Vicar could be elected. I believe the Grand Vicar appoints the head of the Inquisition, so there could be a cleansing of the Inquisition. Other reforms could then follow.

SWM wrote:I believe the Grand Vicar appoints the head of the Inquisition, so there could be a cleansing of the Inquisition.

No. The head of the Inquisition was chosen through a vote. I'm not entirely sure who did the voting (the Vicars or the Inquisitors), but there was a vote. It is mentioned that Rayno was the one who counted the votes the last time and it is strongly suspected that he "miscounted".

ayg wrote:

SWM wrote:I believe the Grand Vicar appoints the head of the Inquisition, so there could be a cleansing of the Inquisition.

No. The head of the Inquisition was chosen through a vote. I'm not entirely sure who did the voting (the Vicars or the Inquisitors), but there was a vote. It is mentioned that Rayno was the one who counted the votes the last time and it is strongly suspected that he "miscounted".

Ah yes, thanks.

Well, as with the Grand Vicar, you can be certain that the vote for the head of the Inquisition will also be under heavy scrutiny from the reform movement after the documents became public. With the kind of evidence the Circle collected, there would be a lot of pressure for careful review.

There is corruption, and then there is corruption. Skimming off budgets, for instance, can be taken into account, and the necessary work still get done. Likewise, taking a bribe when allocating a contract, and perhaps inflating its value, while still making sure the work does get done to satisfaction.

And then you have the kind of corruption where heinous crimes get overlooked, work does not get done, and so forth.

Strangely enough, people who are perfectly fine with the first can still get horrified enough by the second to actually try to do something about it. That, or they might reason that these crimes actually threaten their own graft by making the Church as a whole look bad, and they should be stopped as a matter of self-preservation.

Of course, when it comes to self-preservation, Clyntahn is the greatest motivator on Safehold.

Halancar wrote:There is corruption, and then there is corruption. Skimming off budgets, for instance, can be taken into account, and the necessary work still get done. Likewise, taking a bribe when allocating a contract, and perhaps inflating its value, while still making sure the work does get done to satisfaction.

And then you have the kind of corruption where heinous crimes get overlooked, work does not get done, and so forth.

Strangely enough, people who are perfectly fine with the first can still get horrified enough by the second to actually try to do something about it. That, or they might reason that these crimes actually threaten their own graft by making the Church as a whole look bad, and they should be stopped as a matter of self-preservation.

Of course, when it comes to self-preservation, Clyntahn is the greatest motivator on Safehold.

The problem is that there are no checks and balances at all... For neither of the two forms of corruption mentioned here is there any mechanism for enforcing any accountability. So unless one has a conscience, one can run wild.

Don

I always assumed The Circle's plan was to wait until disgust with the excesses of the Go4 and especially Clyntahn had disgusted most of the Vicarate and repeated reverses in the Holy War had undermined the Go4's authority and aura of invincibility.

Then they would release all their evidence, turn all of the uncorrupted members of the Vicarate against the Go4 and stage a 'relatively' bloodless coup.

That was the plan after the initial attack on Charis. Originally, they were hoping to get one of their own elected to Clyntahn's position and between the failure of that plan and the start of the Scism, they were waiting for some other opportunity to work within the system to force reforms.

RODMAN012003 wrote:From what I can gather, the focus of the Circle was to gather evidence of corruption within the Church for purposes of a future reformation.

But... why? Who were they going to submit all this evidence to? The Church had no higher, not-corrupt body to appeal to. The Church equivalent of the FBI (the Inquisition) was the most corrupt of the corrupt. All the Inquisition would do with the 'evidence' would be to bury it, and charge the provider with crimes of invasion of privacy or heresy or something. I don't see the 'end game' for the Circle as a whole.

I can understand the Wylsynns. They had what they thought was the card in the hole, the 'return' of Schueler himself in the near future. They obviously didn't realize he'd just slap Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn on the back and tell him what a wonderful job he was doing. They might have figured o.k., here's the Archangel, look at these boxes of 'evidence' of the priesthood being bad boys.

But everyone else in the Circle? Who were they planning on telling about their 'evidence'? How stupid would you have to be to need 'documentary' evidence of corruption when the corruption was being built into the church budget from the get go? Or not notice all the vicars hanging out at ye ol' cat house, or traipsing whores through the Temple proper?

I've had a rough time understanding the thought process of such an apparently futile operation.

Even after seven books, and thousands of pages, there's been absolutely no sign that anything the Circle did, or a single line of evidence gathered, has had any effect on anything whatsoever. Even killing off a tenth of the vicarate itself had no noticeable effect, except possibly a little more suffering in Zion. What did these vicars do all day, that killing off a tenth of them does nothing?

Its like the whole Circle plot line is nothing more than a human interest story, covering some strategically challenged minor bureaucrats in a capital city. I was even somewhat relieved (though I miss Hauwerd) when Clyntahn murdered them all off in AMF, as I found their ineptitude painful to read about.

Or was the whole thing a rationale for Paityr Wylsynn to go from pro-proscription to anti-proscription. If logic and knowledge won't suffice to overcome faith, good old fashioned revenge will? The death of his father and uncle seemed to play a minor part in his mental processes as described later in the story.

The original goal of the Circle was to get Samyl Wylsyn into the Grand Inquisitor's position and then direct the Inquisition's attention towards policing the church itself and purging it of corruption. It is also true that given the Wylsyn family history, Samyl had no illusions about the difficulties he faced but that he was determined to at least try and fix the system. RFC noted in a previous response that Trynair had actually expected him to win the election within the vicarite and had been forced to adopt the current arrangement of himself as chancellor and a weak and ineffectual Grand Vicar partially as a defensive mechanism in the face of Clyntahn's surprise victory. And despite his loss, Samyl Wylsyn and his Circle had continued to do what they always did - collect evidence on wrongdoing within the church, release what information was safe to release (without exposing their involvement) and wait for a political opening that allowed them to challenge the Group of Four's authority. It just never came.

But the Circle was not an empty plot line - In point of fact, had it survived and succeeded in reforming the church, Merlin's job would have been far more difficult. After all, the church's corruption and Clyntahn's atrocities have done quite a lot to undermine the legitimacy of the church in general and the Proscriptions of Jwo-Jeng in particular. If anything is guaranteed to caused widespread revulsion and rejection of the church, it would be the revelation of all the church's crimes during the Jihad. But as RFC has also pointed out, while some people are hardcore reformist and some people are dyed-in-wool Temple Loyalist, most people fall somewhere in between and if given a choice between toppling the church and reforming the church, many would choose the latter course. And it is that course which the Wylsyns (and Duchairn now) represented and which poses the greatest threat to Merlin's long term agenda. It would be the height of irony for him to win the Jihad through his allies only to find his long term plans stymied by a reformed church that most people can live with peacefully and which still enshrines the Proscriptions as its central tenets.