No reformation

A fairly cliche POD here but whatever, its been a while.
In the 15th century we get a run of good Popes who cut down on corruption in the church and basically create a semi-counter-reformation without their being a reformation first.

In with the current TL I'm on with this happens. Its not too unlikely I think- just get rid of some of the worst offenders and you're there.
However...Religion was largely just an excuse in the reformation. There was so much more to it than that. Economics, social issues, etc...

So, in my TL I've created something called 'Diemenism' (named after the town in Holland and its creator Martijn van Diemen, also sounds sort of satanic which is cool :p)
Basically its sort of protestatnism without the religion. Or anti-protestantism. A capitalist version of 19th century communism was sort of the thinking.
His book 'the way of the world' is about the rising power of the merchants and craftsmen and how power should rightfully move more into their hands rather than the established order.
Of course there'd be different takes on this; a few totally radical ones who are fanatically anti-religion and anti-nobility and the more moderate ones who just favour a more powerful version of their respective houses of commons.


Yes, I probally confused you there with just writing down my thoughts but meh. Thoughts?
 
Note that for centuries, there was not might outright anti-religion. It was more critique of certain aspects of certain churches (*cough Catholic cough*), but the goals were to re-form (in the traditional sense) the church... general anti-religion would not come until the Enlightenment.


Also, any philosophy that advocates changing the status quo is going to be met with a coalition of every monarchy in Europe to crush the heretics. That would be even worse than Protestantism, a movement that threatens the entrenched nobles and promises to give power to the merchants (which outside of small city-states was an alien concept then).
 
well protestantism suceded becouse it worked for the rising midle class citisens, but those people were fanatically religious, antireligious sentiments probbably apeared here and there, during the 30 year war for instance or after Rome was sacked, it is safe to asume that the vacuum of values and religious hegemony in such critical moments led some individuals to contemplate atheism, but those were ususally killed on the spot and that was that

especially if chatolicism is still the officiall standard in most of europe, there is no chance what so ever any anti-religious movement rises to any importance, especially among the merchant/craftsmen class, wich basically slept with a bible under their pillow
to have a ideology that is apealing to those people you cant have anithing that somehov destroys or revolutionises current order, you need something that explains everithing in a polite and plesant way, and alows for the maintanance of the curent order so that they can acumulate their property keep the poor behind high walls and maintain their family walues in peace and general godlines

actually in a chatolic world the opposite is posible, a movement of citisens living in early capitalism, that focus on piusnes and voluntary poverty as the basic principles of christianity, but still maintain the production of capitall, in a capitalist economy, olnly one that is owned colectivelly by a church, as it would be by a bank or a holding, as a christian is not suposed to actually own things, but there is still the whole work ethics, and wenture capitalism that started in the 1700/1800
then they decide the noblemen are not suposed to own things ider if they want to be christian and it starts from there

i think there was an actuall protestant movement that worked something like that, they were organised into courts or something such, and they would anex all private propperty in the name of the church and handle it more or ess like they were running a company, they got exterminated during the 30 years war i think, i could be wrong
 
Last edited:
I'm not meaning that by being without the religion here such a thing here is anti-religion (though some extremist groups do take that- but I'm thinking for them it's more anti-clericalism than outright athiesm which would mean a swift death indeed...), just it doesn't deal with religion, it's a strictly secular movement that doesn't really say anything about faith.
 
Top