So... what religious buildings *are* allowed in Aurvandil?
Depends on what you consider to be religious I suppose, which opens a kettle of fish about buildings in Aurvandil we can consider to be religious, or sacred, etc.
The Medieval times is a long period which had several religions coexisting, not only Catholicism, though I see BM's religion module as more closely resembling an Ancient times model.
In any case SMA, as said before, is about you character acting with the mindset of the medieval noble. Keep reading and I'll explain how yours is not doing it.
The Oxford Dictionary defines Monarchism as this:
noun
support for the principle of having monarchs.
Is that your religion? Where is the belief and worship of a superhuman controlling power in there? Unless you claim to be following the definition of "a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion", which with such an open interpretation could make Sudoku a religion.
This is not SMA at all. That is the logic of a post-Enlightenment Age person, not of a superstitious medieval noble. Religions are not "mere beliefs" for our SMA characters, they are the only absolute truths they have, their anchor and reference. There is a saying among religious people in where I live that sums up what is SMA (and also modern for many people): "There are only two things certain in life: that God exists and death".
Your culture seems to be a very modern form of Enlightened absolutism, post French revolution. A monarch would be very swiftly ousted by nobility and peasants alike if he declared war on religion, seen as a heathen and a madman.
Aurvandil hasn't declared war on religion, it's only people on the forum saying that as far as I am aware, and last I checked what hearsay posted on the forum doesn't actually reflect the in character policies of Aurvandil. It's like saying Aurvandil has declared war on scouts, if we close a scouts guild. Aurvandil, in it's time has closed a single religious building, and that was done against the instruction of Mendicant, and Aurvandil however has made it perfectly clear what other realms believe/worship/build isn't any of our business, and is below our notice, the only time we would take exception to their religion is when they try to force it on other realms, which, as the last free realm of the League, we are obligated to do. If we declared war on religion to spread our own views on religion, then how would that make us any different from realms that try to spread their religions by force? It wouldn't, but it would make us hypocrites. Aurvandil isn't going to be fighting any war to spread religious views, quite simply.
Mendicant made it quite clear in his letter to D'Hara while back that Aurvandil deals with varying religions simply by making them irrelevant to the Commonwealth, by refuting their beliefs or otherwise extolling the virtues of our own ideology as a counter, but mainly by ignoring the religion, letting it fade from public awareness. Which is fairly standard practice for trying to put one religion before another without the use of force.
"Is that your religion? Where is the belief and worship of a superhuman controlling power in there?"
Is that entirely necessary? There is such a thing as nontheistic religion, where you don't accept or believe in God's, which existed in the allotted time frame of the SMA, and Aurvandil fits that bill pretty nicely, but for the sake of argument, Mendicant is very much a controlling power that transcends the limitations of ordinary men. Aurvandil very much can be considered to practice hero worship.
"A hero was more than human but less than a god, and various kinds of supernatural figures came to be assimilated to the class of heroes; the distinction between a hero and a god was less than certain, especially in the case of Heracles, the most prominent, but a typical hero"
Which quite defines the way Mendicant is considered, not necessarily a God, but definitely not of the same class as men. Another thing to consider is apotheosis, we could quite easily say that the coronation of Mendicant was an act of deification, there were multiple, deliberate contrasts to it, and Mendicant has referred to it in a similar manner. A very important thing to remember however, is Aurvandil hasn't denied the existence of God's, we hold an epicurean belief on the God's (We accept the likelihood of their existence, but deny the notion that they interfere or control the lives of humans, and likely don't know of our existence) in our own words we consider them to be irrelevant until such a time as they become relevant.
