Religious freedom?

[Indirik]

So, the regions named after American country singers, and famous Sci-Fi movies don't bother you?

[Gustav Kuriga]

I haven't noticed them. What may be famous to some are unknown to others. Plus I pay zero attention to country music.

[WarMaid]

Yes, the middle east did have a big influence on Medieval Europe. So did migrant steppe tribes. Frankly, so did India; even China had periodic influences.

But the game is not about those places.

Moreover, even in places with "religious freedom," it would mostly be for commoners. You won't find tons of Christian knights running around holding lordships in Fatimid Egypt. A very few perhaps, but not many. The Byzantine Empire had a few high-ranking Muslims in its later days, if I remember correctly.

If a realm RPed itself as allowing religious freedom, but nobles of religion X received 1/2 has large of oaths, or perhaps paid 2x as high of duchy taxes, that might be realistic. But even that is a stretch, given that most Medieval powers, even the Arab ones, had state religions. Some limited exceptions do exist in China and India at times, and I'm unclear what the religious status of nobles in Moorish Spain might be. But, by and large, religious diversity among the nobility was tightly restricted, even more than among the commoners.

Since we don't have a Catholic Church and we don't have Christendom but rather dozens of completely contradictory religions, we can't really use Medieval Europe as a particularly good model for how religion should be handled in Battlemaster.  There's no correspondence between them.

[Vellos]

Since we don't have a Catholic Church and we don't have Christendom but rather dozens of completely contradictory religions, we can't really use Medieval Europe as a particularly good model for how religion should be handled in Battlemaster.  There's no correspondence between them.

Doesn't matter.

It's based on Europe.

It's not about correspondence in detail, but about correspondence in spirit. If you can find a mechanic of religious toleration that fits with the Medieval spirit, you go right ahead. Some models might be in Sicily, Moorish Spain, some Balkan states, and a few others. But the litmus test is if it fits, if it seems plausible, with Medieval Europe.

From the wiki:
"Additionally, you should keep concepts from other real or fictional worlds out of BattleMaster. If you want to play a game about ancient Rome, there are some around. If you want to play a Tolkien game, or a Star Wars game, or a Warcraft clone or whatever else you like - then go and play one of the many games in those genres. But BattleMaster stands on it's own."

It's not an importation of Medieval Europe, but it is certainly derived from and indeed based upon Medieval Europe.

[vonGenf]

It's not about correspondence in detail, but about correspondence in spirit. If you can find a mechanic of religious toleration that fits with the Medieval spirit, you go right ahead. Some models might be in Sicily, Moorish Spain, some Balkan states, and a few others. But the litmus test is if it fits, if it seems plausible, with Medieval Europe.

Or Western Europe between 500 AD and 700 AD. It took some time for the church to really impose itself.

[Vellos]

I include 500-700 as Medieval.

Ideally, I like things to fit the period 800-1300; but, as long as it's 500-1400, I generally don't complain.

[Gustav Kuriga]

The Church wasn't in the supreme role it would take from 1000 on during 500-700. So if you include that, it wouldn't necessarily be true that a religion has to be singular in a realm.

[Vellos]

No, it doesn't. But it is increasingly dominant throughout that time.

When Clovis converts, it is symbolic of a conversion of all the Franks. They were pagan or Arian before, Catholic afterwords. Again, to my knowledge, there is no instance of, say, Arian and Catholic nobles sharing a realm. By the period of Alfred the Great, Christendom is certainly a political unit. Guthrum's treaty and conversion make an interesting study in that regard.

One exception might be the Byzantine Empire during various doctrinal controversies, but those are not quite the same, due to being broadly in-house disputes within a religion rather than differences between religions.

[vonGenf]

While it is true that you did not have much religious freedom, the "realms" had different religions in 500.

If I look at the western europe part of this map, I have the following realms:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/The_world_in_500_CE.PNG

Hibernian Tribes - Celtic religion, christianizing
Britain - Mix of Catholic and Germanic pagan kingdoms
Franks - Catholic
Vasconia - ? probably indigenous pagans
Suebi - Germanic Pagan, towards Arianism
Visigoth - Arianism
Ostrogoths - Arianism
Burgund - ? Converted to catholicism in 516
Alemani-saxon-Fresian - Germanic Pagan
Angle - Danes - Scandinavian pagans

[Vellos]

Oh, absolutely there is division across realms. No disputing that. But that's an entirely different issue.

[Glaumring the Fox]

I have said this before, some realms in Dwilight have more than one religion out of necessity and population that obviously cannot mimic real world scenerios. I doubt many of these real world kingdoms were ran by ten people anyways. So yes we aim for realism but sometimes there has to be somethings that happen that are beyond realities control as long as it is within reason etc.

[Vellos]

I have said this before, some realms in Dwilight have more than one religion out of necessity and population that obviously cannot mimic real world scenerios. I doubt many of these real world kingdoms were ran by ten people anyways. So yes we aim for realism but sometimes there has to be somethings that happen that are beyond realities control as long as it is within reason etc.

Tolerance of necessity makes sense: there is some precedent for that in Spain, Sicily, Malta, Cyrpus, the Byzantine Empire, and other places. But institutionalized liberalism is wholly different from "We'll put up with your heathenism because we need you." Once you no longer need them, you darn well better be having the occasional pogrom, even if it's non-systematic.

[Naidraug]

Well if you consider the entire medieval time, that starts on the 5th century with the fall of the Roman empire and ends on the 15th century, there is quite a change on religion.

Considering only the middle part of the medieval time(when all barbarian tribes are settled and Europe as we know is starting to form), you can say that the religion of the people is the same religion that it´s king.

Even if, for the most part, Kings doesn´t have much power, his figure as choosen by god, is respected. He is seen as having the power to heal and helping, truly speaking for God, this is also represented by the Pope (or a church representative) crowning the king, this is God giving power to a men(wich is why it was bad for Napoleon to have crowned himself in France).

Now there were religions existing in the same place, at the same time, but when the king is from religion A and you have commom people (all the nobles were expected to follow the king´s religion, at least in public) in a village from religion B, they are usually a minority and considered second class people, that should be untrusted and usually lost everything in disputes.

But this is Europe...

most islands in BM don´t follow this, or the medieval like line of tought....even dwilight has a few flaws...but that´s the fun, and it is acceptable if we make a few changes to improve our experience in BM, not History.

[Haerthorne]

I am really surprised no one has brought up Iberia before the fall of the Caliphate. We have plenty of evidence that people, especially in areas with greater religious diversity and less centralised control, were not wholly segregating themselves based on faith. Christian rulers in Spain had Islamic vassals and vice versa.

In Byzantium you could claim they had proper religious freedom, both in the capital (where I have heard they built a Mosque before the Ottomans conquered - [insert citation]) and in the borders which inspired the Akritan sagas. The borders between Christian and Islamic lands often became filled with mixed religious alliances, with both sides allying with each other against their respective central authorities. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II married a Christian Albanian and the Caliph of Egypt prior to the crusades was raised by a Christian mother and managed a kingdom with both Christian and Islamic subjects. The Byzantines also didn't have the Jizya, but though their tax system was more uniform in distribution it was at times just as heavy. The moment that Islam began its spate of warfare and conversion was the exact point that the Sassanid and Byzantine empires had just finished a long period of warfare over a hundred years which climaxed in the war from 602-628. The Persians managed to conquer almost the entire Byzantine Empire up to Constantinople and were then pushed back after years of hard campaigning, with both sides raising taxes and levying every single able bodied man they could find until by the end virtually everything from Nicaea to Tehran was ruins. Both empires dismantled their armies afterwards in order to recuperate, and then Islam decided to go on the warpath. Economically the Jizya was less of a burden than the post-war taxes.

http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/xstnc-5.html (analysis of the Jizya with reference to different Muslim sources)

As for Christian-Heretic and Christian-Pagan interactions, they became more violent only as the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople tried to exert greater control over the faith and material control over their own resources and independence. To do that they had to better define what it actually meant to be Christian (as the Nicaean Creed leaves a hell of a load of questions, no matter how "essential" it is). The conflict with the Cathars and the Waldensians in the 1200's was not a predictable display of force and aggression by the Church, but provoked the mainstream Catholic Church to become more stringent with its identity. In response it pioneered a form of statement of uniform faith that was more comprehensive than previous efforts to be made by people being examined by the inquisition. Many heretics got off the hook because they were called to the Church Councils to reason their beliefs and be informed as to what the actual church doctrine was. The fact that these changes took place is because of a series of very ambitious and very aggressive popes who sought to increase their power every way they could. The Papus Dictatum which stipulated that the Pope could dissolve a vassals oath to his liege came about in response to Rome being invaded by the Holy Roman Empire (irony), since the whole basis of his power was his vassals. Did it work at first? No, political reality trumped ideals of faith and most of the Bishops of Germany supported the Emperor anyway.

The conversion of the pagans by peaceful means continued well through 1000AD, and the reason it happened was often more because of the implied benefits of conversion; being welcomed into the Christian sphere of trade, technology and relatively more peaceful diplomacy. All of that equals money and power. Hungary, Russia, the Balkans and Scandinavia converted due to a combination of conversion from below and conversion from above.

Damnit, I'm ranting again. Anyway, point trying to be made is that religious freedom existed (or didn't) due to a variety of political realities and ideological stances which changed over time.

[Fleugs]

Using the term religious freedom in a medieval setting is like talking about a Roman chariot racer using a Ferrari in ancient Rome. The term does not work in the setting. With this I would like to tackle the initial title of the topic. You have to be very careful when you use terms that you are used to today, when you apply them to a different time setting. Time and reasoning go hand in hand and only by trying to "adopt" medieval reasoning, you can truly try to "act" as a medieval person. Drop modern day concepts such as "religious freedom", "equality", "racism", "slavery", .... We have all formed clear and defined concepts about those words in or head that differ much from a medieval setting, if they even existed.

I see that people are trying to use "examples" of religious freedom during the middle ages here, in an attempt to prove that it existed back then. It didn't. The absolute maximum "freedom" one could have (linking it to the modern day term) is "tolerance". You might be tolerated for having another religion. This toleration, which was indeed more common for muslim societies than christian ones, was not funded upon the idea of a free mind or whatever French Revolution idea comes to our mind nowadays. The most plausible explanation for a religion being tolerated was that its members (NOT the religion) contributed something to the society (Jews, anyone? They were tolerated, but not at all liked. They just had the bling.) that the leaders did not want to have removed (instantly).

When push comes to shove though, most players of Battlemaster will look for the "exception" and try to "be" that in the game as well. It is how we humans are made to think in the modern day society: we want something unique, out of the ordinary. If you want to hang on to the absurd idea of religious freedom in your realm, then please feel free to do so. I won't, I'm in it for the medieval experience. That means a full on religious domination by one authoritarian Church that pretty much decides everything in your day-to-day life.

I could go on about how many modern day concepts that are more or less not home in the medieval setting of Battlemaster, but that might overload the forum. So I'll do it gradually.