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    1. Xilaw 10 yrs ago

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My point is that the idea of the divine right to rule of kings is as old as civilization, and not at all a characteristic of medieval society. In fact, the monarchies we typically associate with that kind of posturing came after the Renaissance.
Alright.
Wiki Quite a long list.
As can be seen from the list, the biggest achievements of the era came from outside of Europe. The ones from Europe are involving military and some "new" technology in agriculture. Quite an accomplishment. Only noteworthy advances are those concerning architecture.
Yup, the medieval period was characterized by these things. But how is that any different from any other pre-industrial period? From Rome to 18th century Germany, population growth was glacial, pandemics were epidemic, famine was the family friend of every peasant. The medieval period (and again, lumping together 1000 years of history under one period is a gross oversimplification) wasn't any more bleak or bright than previous or following eras.
Ancient European civilizations had sewers, public toilets and baths. They had running water, cold and warm, and sophisticated heating systems. Soap was brought to Europe from the East by the Crusaders. Clearly when it comes to hygiene Ancient world was lightyears ahead. They had less plagues and less famines. When it comes to culture I have to say that medieval Europe was lacking in a lot of things that were lost in time from the ancient era. Every progress of those that lived before them was lost. As for the rest, I'll concede. It's true, famine and sickness remained a problem even after that. Some things don't change, I suppose. We had one of the most powerful royal families in the world believe a person should only bathe once a year. And this was in the Renaissance. However, the period after the Medieval ages has seen advancement in a variety of topics which were paused since the ancient times.
I'm not talking about religious dissidence, I'm talking about conflict for religious authority. Both King Henry and Emperor Henry engaged in ugly squabbles with the papacy over this.
Why is this even relevant? Pope remained a powerful figure throughout the Medieval Ages. This is a fact. His authority began to decline after Europe began to emerge from the Dark Ages. I don't think this is helping your cause.
It's an anachronism in that the church had nowhere near the authority to hunt down dissenters in the time period known for the divine right to rule of kings.
Yet, it did. We're talking about Medieval Europe when Church was one of the most influential states on the continent. It had the power to call other Christian states to join their Crusades and they had the power to establish the Inquisition against anyone that was in any way preaching against common Christian dogma. Popes gave crowns to monarchs and chose electors of the HRE. Is that not authority? They practically controlled the entire political scene in Europe of that time. Those rulers that were against the pope would get excommunicated. This actually meant something back then and the excommunicated ruler would risk losing stability in his country, among other things. It had far-reaching political consequences as well.
No. Kings in the 17th century certainly ruled with a divine right to rule, but that's been pretty much standard for all of history- every despot since the cavemen claimed to rule with the mandate of heaven. And throughout that history, it was never enough to just shut everyone up- whether the people accepted an autocrat was largely dependent on the man's political strength. I mean, the 17th century saw ol' Charlie of England- one of the great proponents of the divine right to rule, mind you- be overthrown and executed, largely because of his attemps to control everything.
What are you disagreeing with? You are practically repeating what we already established which is that no one questioned why someone is born to rule over others. Sure, rebellions happened, monarchs were killed, and crowns shifted hands, but at the end of the day those peasants that rose up would go back to their fields and just work for the next guy that comes along claiming he is destined to rule them. They accepted it as a normal thing because they never left their little bubble of ignorance. Progress of philosophy was crippled by Church who insisted that every new idea must be explained and be connected to God. Everything else was sacrilegious. You can clearly see the difference in philosophy of the Medieval ages and that of the Renaissance and the Enlightment, for example reading works of Machiavelli and Hobbes, who are mocking the way society works. If this was done in the Medieval times the author would be punished, most likely by death.
The second assertion I'd like to contest, and one that makes me cringe in terrible agony every time I see it, is everything you said about the so called 'dark ages'. Apparently, everything between the fall of Rome in the 400s and the renaissance was anarchy and cultural stagnation, which lasted over a thousand years. Except for, what do you call it, the Carolingian renaissance of the 700s, or the cultural brilliance of the Byzantines and the Islamic world, ect, ect. /Sarcasm
I don't deny there has been civilizations in the Medieval Ages. It's called the Dark ages because scientific progress was relatively stagnant. Sure, it's not exactly historically accurate to call it Dark ages as it implies nothing significant happened. Obviously this is not true. However, there was no progress in neither medicine nor literature (most of it revolved around religion), science was practically non-existent and anything that remotely went against contemporary standards was frequently dubbed witchcraft. Contrast to this is the Renaissance and the Enlightenment period when literature and art flourishes, science is still somewhat held back but is making break throughs in secret. Criticizing Church is slowly becoming acceptable. This is the era when Europe is slowly leaving it's conservative cocoon. We're talking about Europe here, I'd leave the Islamic world out of it, who by the way, was ahead of Medieval Europe in a lot of aspects, including mathematics, astronomy, astrology, anatomy, physiology, philosophy etc. We can see this by the fact that Europe had to gather and translate old scripts from the Arabs, who unlike Europeans, wrote down and preserved literature of the ancient times and built upon the foundations laid down by the ancient Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and other great civilizations.
My point here is that calling the 400-1400 period the 'dark ages' is a gross oversimplification, one which reduces the greatness of the countless civilizations that rose and fell in that period (yes, civilization did exist).
Sure, civilizations existed, but was there much progress in anything other than in art of warfare? It was a time of wars, poverty, famine, plagues and death. On top of that, it was an era of little to no hygiene. Byzantium can be somewhat excused as far as that goes.
Finally, you seem to imply that the 'church'- by which I assume you refer to the Roman Catholic Church- was not only a proponent of the divine authority of Kings, but actively hunted those who opposed their tyranny. This is a ridiculous concept; for one thing, the popes would never impart divine authority on kings, authority they guarded as their own.
Was it not the Popes that gave the titles to European monarchs? If I recall correctly, the Catholic Church was the founder and supporter of Spanish inquisition. Was this not tyranny against those that opposed them? Crusades? Slaughter of fellow Christians, even those who had slightly different teachings than the ones preached from Rome. I'm talking about the Cathars who were systematically hunted and killed by Catholics.
The thousand years you clumped into the 'dark ages' saw a constant struggle between the papacy and the European Kings for religious authority.
Papacy wouldn't be as strong as it was if the monarchs wanted all the power for themselves. Fact is, they acknowledged Pope as the religious leader. The Pope literally had the authority to stop two kings fighting each other and make them fight together against a common enemy which is the case with Crusades. This 'struggle' for power only culminated in the 16th century with the emergence of Protestant church and even then Kings only joined it for completely unrelated reasons, for example King of England converted because he wanted a divorce. King of Denmark converted because he needed the money from confiscating church lands after his country was broke following a civil war. By this time Europe was already largely in Renaissance period.
And even if one were to ignore that and pretend that the popes loved these Kings, it ignores the simple fact that your statement is an anachronism. By the 17th century, the roman church was already spiraling into its political decline. A third of Europe had broken off and formed their owned reformed churches, and even in those catholic nations that remained, papal authority was almost non-existent.
If I'm not mistaken, 17th century is 100-150 years after the Medieval ages. How is it anachronism?
Thanks for the support guys. Anyway, I can't think of anything I need help with at the moment. Here's the progress: I am not done yet, there are still a few things to be added but yeah. I also said to myself fuck it and didn't go full detail with this map. Towns and castles are kind of historical but not in the right places. Some names are made up or just modified. Also, I've included a few places that bear the same name as the royal families of some of you guys. This doesn't necessarily mean that place will be awarded to your royal family though.
Ahhh yeah that sounds like it would be a bit of a bore. I have to say it is impressive how much effort you are putting into this.
gowia
To be honest, I wish I wasn't. But I keep wanting to do more and it's more or less a waste of precious time, especially in the middle of exams heh. I'm almost done with the maps and all, and then I will start writing the events. After I write down a few I will then work out all the mechanics, rules, etc. and open up the thread in the Roleplay section. Should be within this week.
I know that feeling :P Place names are the best bit. Creating your own lore i found much nicer than posting existing info.
gowia
Yea, but the trick with German towns is that they have prefixes and suffixes that somewhat describe them. Burg means borough while Berg means mountain. Dorf is village etc. So I have to look at google maps and then back at my map to see where I put down the settlement. It's a drag :|
Literally it is all fantastic. I can see this will be a very very good RP and cannot wait for an OOC and then an IC.
gowia
If only I put as much effort in my studies as I do in drawing maps of fictional lands :D By the way, I chose the shittiest piece of land to place our realm so now I pretty much have to make up names of towns, castles, etc. That corner of Austria has no important cities, never had, and the villages and towns that are there have the worst names.
Jesus someone has worked their little socks off...I sit down to you sir.
gowia
German clusterfuck gave me brain splinters. I am still not sure if I got all of them right. I used wiki, my pixelated map and google maps and it's difficult to pinpoint where exactly something is. The capitals are somewhat in the right place, they weren't randomly put either. I'm already working on another map, this one is based on our realm and the close surroundings.
I can't believe I did this. This took longer than I was hoping. If you can't see it very well, right-click it and open in another tab. It should enlarge it quite a bit.
So wait will we do an actual family app or just a family name or something and work it down from that.
LordZell
You make it up. You don't actually play your RL family. Make up a German sounding name and work your way down. I will post my family tree so everyone can see what it should look like.
I don't think anything was questioned back then. Everyone just accepted it as it was, either because they were illiterate and uneducated or because they feared the almighty church that was out to get anyone who was going against it's teachings. Dark ages, indeed.
Xilaw
Let's simply say they had more... 'pressing' troubles to overcome. And by that I mean: The end of the world, famine, wars, epidemies, poverty, slavery etc. etc. They had really little time to question themselves from where the sovereignty came from ^^'
TwistedSun
Yes, but we had those things even in the Enlightment era. Heck, we even have these things in the modern era. The only two world wars happened in the last century, we've had several deathly epidemics just in the past two decades, last of which is ebola. Poverty and famine is still a major problem in a lot of countries. The only improvement is slavery and even that is not entirely eradicated. There have been cases of slavery in Europe in the 21st century and other western countries. I think it has more to do with education than anything else. Majority of the population was illiterate and couldn't expand their knowledge. On top of that, church was extremely powerful which slowed down the pace of innovation and evolution of thought and science. Any research that gave birth to ideas that were against the religious dogma were frowned upon and people would be prosecuted because of it. We have monarchies even today, despite a huge step forward in evolution of critical thought, like democracy. I find it ironic that some of the most democratic and prosperous countries in the world are in fact monarchies- Sweden, UK and Belgium for example :D
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