After the year 1525, how can we get Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox Church to see each other as common allies against the Catholics as opposed to merely seeing each other as another heresy as otl? While Protestants have moved historically to work with the eastern churches at times, was there anything that could be done to make the orthodoxy more willing to cooperate? Only possibilities that immediately come to mind are Sweden and Moscow agree to partition Poland or Prussia promises to liberate the Ukrainian Cossacks in return for cooperation against Poland (Poland is likely to get hurt a lot in these tls).
AHC: Protestant-Orthodox Alliance
- Thread starter Kaiser Tito
- Start date
The main problem is that a fairly large number of basic Protestant tenets are as unacceptable to Orthodoxy as they were to Catholicism.
I don't think a Russo-Swedish alliance seals it; in fact it more likely sets up an opposition between a Protestant and an Orthodox power that may well end up sparking mutual hate, rather than the relative lukewarm relations of OTL.
I think stronger Ottomans could do it, especially if they end up emphasizing their Romanness, fighting the Pope a lot, and thus supporting the Protestants out of convenience and them being more willing to emphasize similarities and maybe slightly mollify some of the least acceptable tenets.
I don't think a Russo-Swedish alliance seals it; in fact it more likely sets up an opposition between a Protestant and an Orthodox power that may well end up sparking mutual hate, rather than the relative lukewarm relations of OTL.
I think stronger Ottomans could do it, especially if they end up emphasizing their Romanness, fighting the Pope a lot, and thus supporting the Protestants out of convenience and them being more willing to emphasize similarities and maybe slightly mollify some of the least acceptable tenets.
Are you suggesting improved Russo-Ottoman relations because otherwise the Ottomans were a Muslim power.
My point started from the fact OTL the best dialogue between the two denominations was hosted by the Patriarch, so building off that seems like a logical idea. Maybe you can have a stronger, Catholic PLC be a formidable enemy of both, giving them reasons to be both (uneasy) allies and supportive of Protestantism. Russian Orthodoxy also was fairly neutral towards Protestantism when Russia looked at Germany for inspiration, so there's that, too.
Could my idea of an independent Ukraine work with them allying with Prussia and/or Sweden due to being fertile land surround by empires each laying a claim to it?
Well the biggest hurdle is see is this. Ultimately despite the very clear theological and structural differences between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism they still come from the same tradition and have more in common than either does with the Orthodox. Martin Luther was of course quite familiar with the "Church fathers" and the later Martin Chemnitz read Greek and did try to familiarize somewhat with the Eastern Orthodox but I think their concept of who Christ was and how men came to salvation ultimately was more like Rome's.
As for the other major group of Protestants, the Reformed/Calvinist side? I think that's a complete nonstarter. Calvin saw all of the sacraments in terms of obedience to God and that alone. At least the Lutherans for their rejection of most sacraments at least understood those they held on to with a similar understanding to Rome.
I hate to refer to anyone as a "heretic" since I'm not a member of any religious group and couldn't even tell you whether there's a God or not, but to an early modern Eastern Orthodox clergyman Lutherans are heretics enough themselves, Calvinists must be something far beyond even that. I just don't see this as a successful path.
As for the other major group of Protestants, the Reformed/Calvinist side? I think that's a complete nonstarter. Calvin saw all of the sacraments in terms of obedience to God and that alone. At least the Lutherans for their rejection of most sacraments at least understood those they held on to with a similar understanding to Rome.
I hate to refer to anyone as a "heretic" since I'm not a member of any religious group and couldn't even tell you whether there's a God or not, but to an early modern Eastern Orthodox clergyman Lutherans are heretics enough themselves, Calvinists must be something far beyond even that. I just don't see this as a successful path.
The problem is that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants weren't a series of monoliths. Even if a Catholic power manages to annoy a Protestant and Orthodox power simultaneously, the worst that's likely to happen is that those particular Protestant and Orthodox powers gang up against that particular Catholic power, not that Protestants and Orthodox in general gang up against Catholics in general.
I don't think that's really true. The visual differences between Catholicism and Orthodox are quite striking, but in terms of fundamental theology they have more in common with each other than either does with Protestantism. It's telling that, whereas there have been several (parts of) Orthodox Churches which have reunified with Rome, there's only been one (part of a) Protestant Church which has done the same.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky allied with Protestant Transylvania, the Radziwills, and Sweden against Poland in the 1650s in the treaty of Radnot.
The PLC would have been partitioned between protestant and Orthodox powers. In Ukraine Protestant nobles either fled to Poland, eventually converting to Catholicism for the most part, or remained and converted to Orthodoxy, see Yuri Nemyrych. So, political and military cooperation was quite typical.
Theologically though the protestants are "worse" than the Catholics from the Orthodox perspective. They are essentially outright heretical. Considering that the two most popular forms of protestantism in eastern Europe were Calvinism and Unitarianism/Arianism/Socinianism that makes things even worse, because the Lutherans are "wronger" catholics, the radical protestants are downright heretical and blasphemous. Calvinism feels like the polar opposite of Orthodoxy frankly.
Now, could a different Protestant movement align with the Orthodox? In the PLC Nemyrych tried to engineer a Unitarian "return" to the Greek Church as it was then called, this wasn't particularly popular and the authenticity of his conversion has been consistently called into question. Maybe if there was an Orthodox power further west than Muscovy, it could take advantage of the early protestant reformation to try and engineer a western rite orthodox movement out of a branch of protestantism. That would be interesting, but would require many early PoDs.
Iconoclasm is one of the founding principles of the Reformation movement. Iconodulism is one of the founding principles, if not the founding principle, of Eastern Orthodoxy. I don’t see this working for the definitions of “Protestantism” that anyone is likely to agree upon.
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"The Protestant view is closer to Catholicism than to Orthodoxy" =/= "Catholicism has more in common with Protestantism than with Orthodoxy".
By way of analogy, Scotland is closer to Cambridge than to London, but Cambridge is still closer to London than it is to Scotland.
Maybe just the opposite, actually. I seem to recall the pope at one point during the Italian Wars proposed a papal-Ottoman alliance to fend off the French in Italy. If such an alliance were to come about in an ATL 16th century, then it would instantly make the Catholic Church the common enemy of all other Christians.
Was that the main reason Orthodox Christians scream "Heretic!" at us or are there other major differences that make cooperation difficult? I know that Protestantism and the Orthodoxy have many difference but I don't remember there being any major ones that'd make us worse than the Catholics.
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Didn't some Protestants reach out to one of the Orthodox patriarchs and get thoroughly rejected back in the day?
I mean, the theology notwithstanding, since that's not my area of expertise, just compare an Orthodox Church to a Lutheran one. Orthodox chruches and their practices are very very different, the Orthodox make excellent use of ornate icons and vestments, incense also iirc. Protestant churches are usually just kinda drab and empty, whereas it's not uncommon for the entire interiors of Orthodox Churches to be painted in icons and frescoes/murals. See the painted Churches of Moldavia, even the outside is covered in icons. I've never heard of monasteries belonging to protestants in eastern Europe, I assume Calvinists and Arians didn't have them, whereas in Orthodoxy, especially in eastern Europe the monasteries played a key role in daily and intellectual life even outside of religion so great was their importance. If you had an Orthodox power influential enough around the beginning of the protestant reformation you might be able to create a western rite branch of Orthodoxy, as exists today, parralel to the Eastern Rite Catholics.
There are some points agreed upon, allowing priests to marry, for instance, that aren't shared by Catholics. By and large, protestants agree more with Catholics than Orthodox, certainly that seems to be the case in the 16th century at least, I don't know about nowadays.