Religious freedom?

[Heq]

If I can arrange a "Japanese shotgun faith wedding" (Like Buddhism and Shintoism, where Shnito was offically declared a subsection of Buddhism), Aenelianiam may become a faith hegemony in the FEI again.  Ideally, everyone would nominally be Aenelian (it's an excellent "top" for theology), with all the other religions as sub-sectional denominations.  So Adgharians and Cra'aithil could be recognized as the same theological structures, but with radically different goals and leanings.

Much as theoretically Sartanianism and Adgharianism are theologically overlapping faiths.  Or Protestantism, Catholicism, and Greek Orthodox all share a theological core.

Probably won't happen though, Ciann has too much on her plate at present.

[Bedwyr]

Well, you'd get support from Jenred and a lot of other Aenilian types.  That's been standard MAE opinion for a while (that the Adgharists, Sartanians, Order of the Elders, Cra'ithil and what not are all just cults of a single or small group of Aenil), and whenever he gets the time Jenred was planning on seriously reforming the Aenilic religions.  I just haven't had the time with all the other stuff.

[Vellos]

Well, you'd get support from Jenred and a lot of other Aenilian types.  That's been standard MAE opinion for a while (that the Adgharists, Sartanians, Order of the Elders, Cra'ithil and what not are all just cults of a single or small group of Aenil), and whenever he gets the time Jenred was planning on seriously reforming the Aenilic religions.  I just haven't had the time with all the other stuff.

I like to think that's how the Reformation happened. The Church was just really busy for a while dealing with stuff, crusades and heretics and all that, and meant to reform, but just didn't have time. They planned on seriously reforming, but got way too busy....

Who will be the Aenilic Martin Luther?

[De-Legro]

Cra'ithil already considers itself as part of the greater Aenila system, they just aren't that super keen on the Aenil that aren't Linwe

[Haerthorne]

I like to think that's how the Reformation happened. The Church was just really busy for a while dealing with stuff, crusades and heretics and all that, and meant to reform, but just didn't have time. They planned on seriously reforming, but got way too busy....

Who will be the Aenilic Martin Luther?

What, you mean who will be the guy to translate the Book of Promises into a language everyone can understand, distributes it freely and then freaks the !@#$ out when he realises that people have different interpretations to what he thought was a normal and orthodox way to understand the faith so who will then write a nice short-hand version of the bible with his commentary about how to live properly to be used instead?

[Vellos]

What, you mean who will be the guy to translate the Book of Promises into a language everyone can understand, distributes it freely and then freaks the !@#$ out when he realises that people have different interpretations to what he thought was a normal and orthodox way to understand the faith so who will then write a nice short-hand version of the bible with his commentary about how to live properly to be used instead?

Touché.

[Haerthorne]

Touché.

To be fair, the Book of Promises is meant to drive people mad who read it, whilst you just had to be educated to read the Bible in Latin (or Greek).

Also the heresies and crusades were the highpoints of reform in the church, not the low points. Catholicism defined itself theologically largely through its discourse and conflict with "heretics" and "schismatics", whilst the rise and fall of the crusades were due to the popular desires of the clergy and laiety to do so. Following the Reformation the Catholic Church began again to redefine itself through the Counter-Reformation, which is another example of a revitilisation pushed forward by conflict/discourse with heretics. To bring this back to the point of the discussion you could say that the attitude of the players makes it almost impossible to persue heresies and holy wars with any real conviction.

[egamma]

We're getting far, far away from my rules for this section of the forum.

1. If you have something historical to say, please provide a link to an online source
2. If it's not related to actual history, then it probably doesn't belong here

[Chenier]

We're getting far, far away from my rules for this section of the forum.

1. If you have something historical to say, please provide a link to an online source
2. If it's not related to actual history, then it probably doesn't belong here

"Far, far away"? At least the discussions are still about history, even if not all posts are academic in nature. Also, demanding online sources is a bad policy imo, there are still just so many more *reliable* sources that are in paper format and not online. When people have third-party sources they wish to contribute, such as what I learnt from my history teacher in college, I would think it better to encourage this sharing than to simply have nothing at all to help others that are completely history-clueless to get a better picture of the era.

[Haerthorne]

I've gotta agree with chenier here. We're discussing some of this stuff in relation to the game (because the name is 'background') whilst talking about the real world history, hell, even arguing about it. As for providing sources, I'm more of the opinion those should be given when asked for, not whenever an opinion is expressed.

We're not the plagiarism board of the University.

[Chenier]

Perhaps there could be a subsection of  the board for academia? It's nice to have historian-backed claim, with quotes and all, but I don't feel we should limit historical talks to this.

[egamma]

I feel that if you're discussing battlemaster, then it should be in the main BM forum. Perhaps a BM historical sub-forum should be created?

[Fleugs]

We're getting far, far away from my rules for this section of the forum.

1. If you have something historical to say, please provide a link to an online source
2. If it's not related to actual history, then it probably doesn't belong here

I'd like to make two remarks on that.

• An online source could as well be wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a good source. It's a fun website and it's good if you wish to casually read some superficial information. Do not use it for in-depth information. The rule of thumb we use at our university is running a quick check on the reliability of your source. The first step is not using google but an alternative, academic search engine (Google Scholar, Scirus, ...). Extensions like .edu are, often, trustworthy. Check when the site was updated the last time. If it wasn't recent, drop it. It's old information that is not maintained anymore. If it looks amateuristic, don't use it. Common sense is the key here.
• I strongly believe that "link" should be replaced by "reference", and "online" ought to be scratched. Books are of an equal value, if not a higher value, as websites.

[Haerthorne]

I feel that if you're discussing battlemaster, then it should be in the main BM forum. Perhaps a BM historical sub-forum should be created?

We're discussing things which are the background to battlemaster in the context of real world history. If you do not think that the religions in battlemaster should be talked about and referenced alongside a proper in-depth discussion about medieval religion, then most of the topics in this sub-forum should also have warranted similiar disapproval. We have discussed the position of adventurers as serfs and freeman with proper reference to the wording of medieval oaths and considered how faithful the current battle system is to the reality of combat.

If this should be a forum to discuss history without any reference to anything else then it should not be under the "Battlemaster" specific section of the forums.

[Chenier]

We were discussing and comparing the BM setting to medieval history. You can't just take a random fact of medieval history or culture and slap it onto BM as if that was the norm in Europe, and must therefore be the norm in BM. This is basically what was being discussed here: most of Europe was a religious monolith, intolerant, whereas the fringe regions were more diverse and tolerant. In BM, we simply don't have any monoliths because of, namely, geography. Islands and realms are so small compared to their RL counterparts that they almost always find themselves in a situation comparable to fringe kingdoms. What was most abundant is Europe is therefore a tiny minority in BM, while remaining historically accurate as realms of BM are acting as the comparable kingdoms of Europe, even if on the big picture it is all swapped.