AHC: Protestant Reformation More-Or-Less Shatters Catholicism

For the purpose of argument, assume that there is no higher deity guiding the course of the history of human religion.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to, with a POD no earlier than January 1, 1400, come up with the worst case scenario for the Catholic Church. No conquest by outside religions is allowed (so no Super-Ottomans overrunning all of Europe), nor is any kind of massive natural calamity. Bonus points if there are fewer than 20,000 Catholics in Europe by January 1, 1700.

My thoughts generally lean towards there being some kind of massive Schism at the worst possible time, or possibly somehow getting a Holy Roman Emperor to convert. But I'm not sure. What do you all think?

Well, I'd imagine that you'd need an incredibly incompetent pope, or even several in a row, for Catholicism to break down large scale. Perhaps the Ottomans are more successful in invading Italy, and do to the pope what they did to the Patriarch of Constantinople, namely turn him into the sultan's pet Christian. The monarchs of Europe become incredibly disgruntled over the Pope promoting an Islamic empire over his own flock, and at right around the same time protesantism appears and offers a solution. The timing would need to be perfect, as Protestantism would need to hit its full potency right when the Papacy falls to Ottoman influence, but you would probably have a more powerful reformation. After that, the problem becomes Kings who want to create their own pope and not follow the Ottoman one, thus remaining Catholic but with their own pet pope. I imagine that as liberalism kicks off the people under the kings with pet popes can come to see Catholicism as associated with the aristocracy and thus an object standing in the way of freedom. Even then, you need quite a bit of luck in having the revolutions succeed, and you probably wont get to under 20,000, but at least you have Catholicism as a minority without any states that consider it their official religion.

As a Catholic, I don't think I can do any more than that to screw my church

have a Pope try to fight King Louis XIV about this you end up with France Pulling a Henry VIII

Gosing said:

For the purpose of argument, assume that there is no higher deity guiding the course of the history of human religion.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to, with a POD no earlier than January 1, 1400, come up with the worst case scenario for the Catholic Church. No conquest by outside religions is allowed (so no Super-Ottomans overrunning all of Europe), nor is any kind of massive natural calamity. Bonus points if there are fewer than 20,000 Catholics in Europe by January 1, 1700.

My thoughts generally lean towards there being some kind of massive Schism at the worst possible time, or possibly somehow getting a Holy Roman Emperor to convert. But I'm not sure. What do you all think?

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I can see France, and more German states breaking from Rome. However, what about Spain, Portugal, and the Italian states? That seems really hard to do, even if the Holy Roman Emperor went Protestant as suggested.

It'd have to be another Western Great Schism, with several anti-popes claiming authority.

Get an incompetant liberal Pope who tries to put in place a Counter Reformation that is earlier, faster, more radical and dumber leading to rival conservative anti Popes schisiming off. Then a failed attempt at backtracking and moderate compromise that pleases nobody with the next Roman Pope while the conservative anti Popes scream about any reform at all and excommunicate each other and start getting loopy ideas, think Old Believers writ large.

A Church rite practiced nowhere but Spain, Portugal and parts of Italy is not Roman Catholic anymore. Just sayin'.

The Ottomans in Italia sounds like a very good plan (and I suspect it won't actually take that much precision).

I recall concluding that if Columbus had sank, the RCC was utterly screwed - delay the colonization of the New World by even 20 years and there's no Spanish gold to fuel the Counter-Reformation, resulting in an all-Protestant Germany trying to evangelize in Italy; there's Poland to try and mediate, but basically the RCC becomes Spain vs France, which have enough irreconcilable differences that they probably devolve into national churches a la England.

Eastern Orthodox?

Is there any way that we can have Poland go from Catholic to Eastern Orthodox? Poland sort of stood as the Bulwark "protecting" Catholicism from the Orthodox peoples to the East of it...

I dont really think this works, you'd need a completely idiotic series of popes/a series of deep cover lutheran spies destroying the church from within to get it to happen. In the end they will compromise in a way that gets rid of most of the anger with the pope highly weakened. Although earlier pods could be interesting, if there where more threats to papal power in various parts of Europe like a heretical group threatening Spain and possibly Hussites taking Poland and Bohemia. then the church may be in trouble if it goes along with a fully converted germany and France at Spains throat.

Shawn Endresen said:

A Church rite practiced nowhere but Spain, Portugal and parts of Italy is not Roman Catholic anymore. Just sayin'.

The Ottomans in Italia sounds like a very good plan (and I suspect it won't actually take that much precision).

I recall concluding that if Columbus had sank, the RCC was utterly screwed - delay the colonization of the New World by even 20 years and there's no Spanish gold to fuel the Counter-Reformation, resulting in an all-Protestant Germany trying to evangelize in Italy; there's Poland to try and mediate, but basically the RCC becomes Spain vs France, which have enough irreconcilable differences that they probably devolve into national churches a la England.

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I am intrigued and skeptical. Any sources?

willbell said:

I am intrigued and skeptical. Any sources?

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History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918, Robert Kann? He didn't explore the counterfactual, but did a good job of showing how the counter-reformation in Germany was almost entirely financed by Spanish gold extracted from the Aztecs and then Incas.

Shawn Endresen said:

History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918, Robert Kann? He didn't explore the counterfactual, but did a good job of showing how the counter-reformation in Germany was almost entirely financed by Spanish gold extracted from the Aztecs and then Incas.

Click to expand...

To be fair, the Spanish made a lot of money through the Spanish Netherlands as well. They'd still be rich and powerful.

I think the easiest thing to destroy the Catholic church as we know it is to have the Hapsburgs go protestant. There's clear incentives to that, as naturally in such a case the Emperor would have a say in distributing church property throughout the Empire. And of course then the Protestant church would be organized centrally throughout the whole Empire with the Emperor gaining influence into church matters not seen since the Ottonians.

Now with Germany by and large Protestant, Protestantism would also spread into adjacent regions. Venice already was very liberal, and once everything up north goes protestant they might follow. Hungary under the Ottomans was largely Protestant. Poland ITTL is isolated between Protestant and Orthodox powers. France at least should have more Protestants than IOTL. That's not counting any missionary "manifest destiny" of the Protestant empire - which likely would happen in the same way as the Catholics IOTL fought to preserve their faith. ITTL, Protestantism would be a lot more powerful and the princes wouldn't object using religious arguments to promote expansion.