"A Century of Dishonor" in Ancient Rome

In a geopolitical sense, you'd probably have pogroms without the Church. Without belief-as-source monotheism, as opposed to action-as-source monotheism as a unifying identity, shit like the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition are hard to imagine. The question is why Islam did not develop Crusades and Christianity did develop them. The answer lies in the difference between praxis-based religion and doxis-based religion.

Not to call out the obvious but there are crusaders (or a close equivalent) and inquisitions (in Iran) being done by Islam right now. The equivalent of the Cathar Crusade would be many sunni/shiite oppressions that also occur in the modern era. That aside, the Islamic World didn't need a holy call to arms, because officially speaking their ruler was their equivalent of the Pope, so a caliph's war is god's war. So far as belief-as-source monotheism goes, I don't consider Judaism or Islam to be more successful in motivating their members (except, of course, by intimidation) then Christianity. Christianity just named things in order to justify them (didn't really work, for the record, most learned people were well aware of the hypocrisy of the Crusades.)

I'm sorry to say this but aside from (from the most anti christian line I can see) some more torture, the Inquisition was founded on principles that would have been carried out by monarchs anyway. It had a religious name and some religious overtones, doesn't make it necessarily a religious group at its core.

To weigh in on the original topic, I think they would have ignored anyone who condemned Ceaser's slaughter. Its not like they had any real fondness for the gauls.
 
Out-group charity. That was one of the things I was thinking of when I was thinking about Christianity improving Western society's morals, only I didn't really know how to say it properly.

(I think I did hint with the "Romans didn't mind genocide, provided it didn't happen to them")

That's not quite the same thing, though. Most Romans were very worried about the idea of fighting a wrongful war because by their lights, that was one of the most immoral things imaginable (good thing that there were so many legitimate causes of war). Out-group charity doesn't mean feeling sorry for the Gauls (plenty of Romans did). It means thinking that anyone not a member of your own group is as deserving of help as anyone in it (and acting on that principle). This is pretty rare - the Christian world, for example, abandoned it for over a millennium after inventing it.
 
The fun question here is "what is a christian nation?" and "would they have done it given the chance?" There are many intolerant butchers throughout history who simply lacked the power and assembly line mentality of Hitler and Stalin.

The questions are complicated, IE is Hitler a christian? My answer, for practical argument (my definition being: One who professes to believe in Jesus Christ the son of The Living God, who came to earth and died for the sins of men and rose from the dead. I use this definition purely for cultural argument, I'm a christian and I believe quiet firmly he will go to hell.), is yes. Were his actions strongly influenced by the Church as founded? Somewhat, its not a sufficient cause.

How would you come to the conclusion that Hitler was Christianm? I camn't recall any instance of him ever professiong faith during his politzical career - respect for the Church and high regard for Christian culture, yes, but faith not.

then again, as was pointed out before, you can't grow up in a Christian society and not pick up some Christian values, so the point is a bit moot.

Was the church complicit (and this is the important part)? Maybe. Maybe not.

It all depends on when the Church learned of it. According to some readings, the Catholic Church knew well before the allies, whereas according to other sources the Catholic Church didn't know until it was announced by the allies and the Catholic Church doesn't need to have a papal statement to condemn mass murder.

It is not just about the Shoah. Many Christians in Germany and elsewqhere stood up against Nazi dictatorship, and they did so in direct contravention of the word of the established churches. Catholic and Protestant churches signed concordates with Hitler early on (you could argue a degree of ignorance) and stood by them (which puts the kibosh on that defense). Church archives were opened to registry officials in 1935 for the purpose of defining whose ancestors were baptised Jews. Church-owned businesses and charities used convict and slave labour. Church authorities reprimanded, sanctioned and fired people who spoke up against the system. If that isn't complicit, it is hard to say what degree of cooperation would be. Neither church operated death camps.

Lets take the Inquisition for instance, that looks like a really evil thing, church sanctioned. And indeed it was both, but here's the issue, you know why the Inquisition in France killed a handful of people and the Inquisition in Spain killed hundreds? Because the government pressured them, because it pushed and controlled them. The Inquisition was just a Gulag with a religious name stuck on and a less efficient application. Would the inquisition have been kinder or colder without the Church? I do not know, maybe they would just be burned or flayed or tortured without any chance of getting out of it. Maybe the inquisition would have just chopped off some heads. I certainly don't know.

Again, you can't be born in a Christian country without picking up Christian values - that goes for the kings of Spain as much as for modern secularists. The Inquisition is more than a secret police because of its remit. Rome's frumentarii and delatores were as paranoid and ruthless as they come, torturing and murdering whoever they thought a danger to the regime. Many dynasties in China ran similar operations. The idea is so common that even the Zulu are supposed to have had something like it. The difference was, though, that these agents were focused on individuals who committed certain *acts* (even if that act was no more than an incipient conspiracy). This could go as far as the worst excesses of mass paranoia do, though these instances are rare and temporary. The Inquisition (it shares this distinction with many organisations in the world after the October Revolution, both Communist and non-Communist) prosecuted people for beliefs that they held. This was not incidental, it was central (and the reason why they handed witches and active heretics over to the secular arm - they had committed criminal acts, so the fathers washed their hands of them). An institution that has free rein in prosecuting thoughtcrime is a relatively new invention that you can only get if you marry religious orthodoxy to state power - invented (probably independently) in imperial Rome, Liang China, Sassanid Persia and the Muslim world.

The question of whether or not Christianity is a positive influence is absurd because there is no way to prove it, one way or another. The only way to prove it would be to see a world without it. And, as we all understand here at Alternate History Dot Com, there's always butterflies.

It would always be possible to point to South and East Asia as a quasi-experiment. As far as I can see they have broadly the same level of nastiness, but less systematic internal savagery (until they catch Westernitis) and about the same level of personal morality based on roughly the same precepts.
 
The Islamic World did not have Crusades?

Within a few months of Mohammed's death, the armies of Islam had already set off to conquer half the classical world.
 
Adolf Hitler was raised a Catholic by his family, and was a catholic, on and off, for most of his life. In most of his speeches, he even stated Christianity as his main motivation for his antisemitism.

He was also particularly fascinated with the Muslim faith as well, up to a point. In the 40's, he recruited hundreds of islamic Bosnians and Croatians in the "13 Mountain Division of the SS Handschar" to assist the regular German forces in the occupation of the Balkans.
 
Learned people in Catholic Europe? This is news to me.

Oh yes, very much so. Read, frex, what St Bernard of Clairvaux wrote about the greed and sinfulness of the crusaders.

The hypocrisy of the endeavour they mostly pilloried, though, was that of trying to do God's work in a state of sin, or worse, pretending to do God's work while seeking one's own profit.
 
Adolf Hitler was raised a Catholic by his family, and was a catholic, on and off, for most of his life. In most of his speeches, he even stated Christianity as his main motivation for his antisemitism.

He was also particularly fascinated with the Muslim faith as well, up to a point. In the 40's, he recruited hundreds of islamic Bosnians and Croatians in the "13 Mountain Division of the SS Handschar" to assist the regular German forces in the occupation of the Balkans.

Yes, but he also said at one point he'd rather the Germans be Muslim because then they'd be more ferocious in battle and, had they been converted in the early days, would have replaced the Arabs as rulers of the Islamic world.

Hmm...I still an AH challenge...
 
Adolf Hitler was raised a Catholic by his family, and was a catholic, on and off, for most of his life. In most of his speeches, he even stated Christianity as his main motivation for his antisemitism.

This must be why fully one third of the Catholic priests in Germany were at some point killed/imprisoned/arrested/beaten up during his rule.
 
Yes, but he also said at one point he'd rather the Germans be Muslim because then they'd be more ferocious in battle and, had they been converted in the early days, would have replaced the Arabs as rulers of the Islamic world.

Hmm...I still an AH challenge...

One wonders if he would have actually went all the way with it.
 
This must be why fully one third of the Catholic priests in Germany were at some point killed/imprisoned/arrested/beaten up during his rule.

Being Catholic wasn't enough for some people, like those of Slavic stock in German-occupied territory, from recieving abuse from Catholic Nazis. And prior to the War, the Roman Church were amongst the most prominent supporters of the Nazi regime. I'm sure they were embarrassed about it, but still......!
 
Being Catholic wasn't enough for some people, like those of Slavic stock in German-occupied territory, from recieving abuse from Catholic Nazis.

You really do not have a clue what you are talking about. Nazis cared little or nothing for religion, and everything about race. Being Catholic was neither here nor there.

And prior to the War, the Roman Church were amongst the most prominent supporters of the Nazi regime. I'm sure they were embarrassed about it, but still......!

You are completely ignorant of this topic. Try reading books next time. You are simply making a fool of yourself.

No, they weren't, there was substantial conflict between the regime and the Churches, well above "average" levels of conflict with other elements of civil society. As well as being defenders of Jews or the politically persecuted leading Catholics were also strongly opposed to the regime's eugenics policies.
 

Hendryk

Banned
The Islamic World did not have Crusades?

Within a few months of Mohammed's death, the armies of Islam had already set off to conquer half the classical world.
Not the same thing. The Arab expansion was much like the Norse or Mongol one, except that the Arabs also happened to spread their religion where they went. A crusade, generally speaking, is a war you start for the express purpose of fighting another religion.

The operative criterion is: would the Western Europeans have invaded the Holy Lands without the motivation of religion? The answer is no. While the Arabs would have expanded even without Islam; they just wouldn't have left as enduring a cultural impact.
 
Not the same thing. The Arab expansion was much like the Norse or Mongol one, except that the Arabs also happened to spread their religion where they went. A crusade, generally speaking, is a war you start for the express purpose of fighting another religion.

The operative criterion is: would the Western Europeans have invaded the Holy Lands without the motivation of religion? The answer is no. While the Arabs would have expanded even without Islam; they just wouldn't have left as enduring a cultural impact.

The Norse, like the earlier Germanic migrations, was not a coordinated thing though.

The Mongol analogy is a better one, since there was a centralized gov't/command, but I don't think there was a religious component to the Mongol conquests.

Furthermore, part of the push for the Crusades was all the young nobles fighting each other. If there was no Crusade to get rid of these people, surely someone would get the bright idea of invading somewhere.
 
Furthermore, part of the push for the Crusades was all the young nobles fighting each other. If there was no Crusade to get rid of these people, surely someone would get the bright idea of invading somewhere.

And that somewhere wouldn't have been halfway around what they thought to be the world.
 
You really do not have a clue what you are talking about. Nazis cared little or nothing for religion, and everything about race. Being Catholic was neither here nor there.



You are completely ignorant of this topic. Try reading books next time. You are simply making a fool of yourself.

No, they weren't, there was substantial conflict between the regime and the Churches, well above "average" levels of conflict with other elements of civil society. As well as being defenders of Jews or the politically persecuted leading Catholics were also strongly opposed to the regime's eugenics policies.

Was there any need for that? Did I insult you in some way?

I apologize for my inaccuracy about the "Church's" relationship with Nazi Germany. I forgot that they only allied themselves to the Party in 1933 to combat Communist politics in Europe. My memorys like that.

But keep a civil tongue in your head, would you?!
 
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Was there any need for that? Did I insult you in some way?

I apologize for my inaccuracy about the "Church's" relationship with Nazi Germany. I forgot that they only allied themselves to the Party in 1933 to combat Communist politics in Europe. My memorys like that.

But keep a civil tongue in your head, would you?!

Okay, I am sorry I did go too far, but if you persist on such a topic, and start twisting things around you deserve to be called out on it.

There is no Nazi/Catholic Church alliance or symbiosis, there was a Concordat with the Vatican, it's very different.
 
Okay, I am sorry I did go too far, but if you persist on such a topic, and start twisting things around you deserve to be called out on it.

There is no Nazi/Catholic Church alliance or symbiosis, there was a Concordat with the Vatican, it's very different.

Indeed. The alliance was with the Lutheran church. The catholics have a better sense of history.
 
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