WI: Europe Not Totally Christianized

Christianity is one religion. Christians in Spain, Italy, and France would have rivalries and fight wars with one another but they would also unite against non-Christian enemies (a la Crusades). If there were non-Christian states in close proximity they would probably be even more united. Paganism on the other hand is not a single religion. Norsemen may not feel any more kinship with Pagan Celts then they do with Christian Franks. (I think this is debatable. I mentioned it earlier)

The Crusades are a pretty tepid example of Christian unity even at their best. To paraphrase someone from (admittedly) the 16th century, enough Christian strength lies in the grave from fights between Christians to fight a crusade against the Turks.

And this was the normal state of affairs
. Hell even in Iberia, you see the Christian kingdoms bickering with each other as eagerly as carrying out the Reconquestia.

There may be times when Christian nations would go to war and each ally with different pagan nations against each other. But at the end of the day, they would still acknowledge other Christian nations above others. What I am trying to say is that I am unsure if Pagan nations would have the same sort of implied kinship with each other since "Pagan" is not a religion. A unified Christian world has a better shot at developing wealth and projecting its influence than a series of independent isolated Pagan states.

Except that there isn't a united Christian world any more than there was OTL, which is to say not in the least.

(If it isn't already abundantly clear I am not implying that Christianity as a religion is inherently better equipped for empire building than any other religion. If "Pagan Europe" was united under a single Pagan religion my argument completely goes out the window. Hence why I mentioned the possibility of a united Scandinavian-dominated Northern Europe.)

The only way Christian Europe would in any way shape or form be better off would be if either pagans were even more belligerent (difficult) than OTL Christians or if Christianity was superior.

United in a single religion is not unity in peace at any point between AD ~500 and the Reformation. And even within the Catholic world specifically for example, France-Habsburgs.

The idea that one religion means anything here just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
 
The Crusades are a pretty tepid example of Christian unity even at their best. To paraphrase someone from (admittedly) the 16th century, enough Christian strength lies in the grave from fights between Christians to fight a crusade against the Turks.

And this was the normal state of affairs
. Hell even in Iberia, you see the Christian kingdoms bickering with each other as eagerly as carrying out the Reconquestia.



Except that there isn't a united Christian world any more than there was OTL, which is to say not in the least.



The only way Christian Europe would in any way shape or form be better off would be if either pagans were even more belligerent (difficult) than OTL Christians or if Christianity was superior.

United in a single religion is not unity in peace at any point between AD ~500 and the Reformation. And even within the Catholic world specifically for example, France-Habsburgs.

The idea that one religion means anything here just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Whoever said that quote from the 16th century is right. Christians in Europe fought each other more often than they fought Muslims. As I said, they would fight each other in this TL too. They would also fight the Pagans and presumably the Muslims also. This wouldn't change the fact that there would be a division in Europe between the two faiths.

There was certainly a sense of 'Christendom' OTL. Catholic monarchs sought the approval of the Papacy, even if it was a formality. They intermarried their royal families. Their elite spoke the same language because it was a liturgical language. Obviously Christian Europe was not a single state but they had bonds because of their religion that they did not have with outsiders. This would likely be even more pronounced if there were a number of Pagan states bordering most of the Christian world.

I just don't see how Europe would just be a collection of nations, some Christian and some Pagan, but that their religion would have no effect on their relationship with each other. In OTL the Christian world did not live in harmony but they certainly identified as the Christian world and this affected the way they dealt with each other.

Could you give some details on the Spanish kingdoms bickering with each other as often eagerly as they carried out the reconquista? I am aware that Castile gradually took over the other kingdoms (Leon, etc) but I was under the impression it was relatively peaceful precisely because they shared a religion with another hostile (in their eyes, not really in practice) religion next door. In fact, that was an example I was looking to for hypothetical Christian-Pagan relations. I'm not trying to be snarky here, I am genuinely very interested in Medieval Spain and would like to know more about the Christian kingdoms as my knowledge is primarily focused on Al-Andalus.
 
There was certainly a sense of 'Christendom' OTL. Catholic monarchs sought the approval of the Papacy, even if it was a formality. They intermarried their royal families. Their elite spoke the same language because it was a liturgical language. Obviously Christian Europe was not a single state but they had bonds because of their religion that they did not have with outsiders. This would likely be even more pronounced if there were a number of Pagan states bordering most of the Christian world.

And those "bonds" did absolutely nothing whatsoever to make them less inclined to fight with each other.

That's the problem. There was no "we're Christians, we stand on the same side on the big issues." because the big issues were within Christendom for 80% of Christian kings 80% of the time (80% of statistics are made up on the spot, but you get the point). England's kings spent more time fighting France's kings than either realm's monarchs spent on crusade, the Holy Roman Emperors spent more time fighting their (nominal) subjects in Italy than crusading, the Spanish realms fought over borders and succession and all the usual stuff, the Polish dukes under the fragmentation fought each other . . .

I just don't see how Europe would just be a collection of nations, some Christian and some Pagan, but that their religion would have no effect on their relationship with each other. In OTL the Christian world did not live in harmony but they certainly identified as the Christian world and this affected the way they dealt with each other.
Tell that to the Scots in the path of Edward I's armies, the French in the path of Henry V's, the Italians in the path of Frederick I's, or any of countless other examples of Western Christians fighting each other.

I'm sure that some - maybe even most - Christian kings would, if they for some reason wanted a fight with a pagan Britain (for example) consider it being pagan to be fair game, but that's in practice no worse than say Prince Louis (Louis VIII after his father's death) invading England.

Or William the Conqueror invading.

There might be more slaughter of the clergy, and "convert or die" may enter in - but the idea that the Christian realms would largely stand together is not even remotely close to how they acted OTL.

It's not so much that pagans would be treated as "part of the family" as that the "family" didn't get along.

Could you give some details on the Spanish kingdoms bickering with each other as often eagerly as they carried out the reconquista? I am aware that Castile gradually took over the other kingdoms (Leon, etc) but I was under the impression it was relatively peaceful precisely because they shared a religion with another hostile (in their eyes, not really in practice) religion next door. In fact, that was an example I was looking to for hypothetical Christian-Pagan relations. I'm not trying to be snarky here, I am genuinely very interested in Medieval Spain and would like to know more about the Christian kingdoms as my knowledge is primarily focused on Al-Andalus.

http://www.san.beck.org/7-6-SpainPortugal.html#a1

Alfonso X fighting Portugal, for example. Or Castile and Aragon fighting over some disputed castles in 1356.

Other examples out there, but that's what came to mind first.
 
And those "bonds" did absolutely nothing whatsoever to make them less inclined to fight with each other.

That's the problem. There was no "we're Christians, we stand on the same side on the big issues." because the big issues were within Christendom for 80% of Christian kings 80% of the time (80% of statistics are made up on the spot, but you get the point). England's kings spent more time fighting France's kings than either realm's monarchs spent on crusade, the Holy Roman Emperors spent more time fighting their (nominal) subjects in Italy than crusading, the Spanish realms fought over borders and succession and all the usual stuff, the Polish dukes under the fragmentation fought each other . . .


Tell that to the Scots in the path of Edward I's armies, the French in the path of Henry V's, the Italians in the path of Frederick I's, or any of countless other examples of Western Christians fighting each other.

I'm sure that some - maybe even most - Christian kings would, if they for some reason wanted a fight with a pagan Britain (for example) consider it being pagan to be fair game, but that's in practice no worse than say Prince Louis (Louis VIII after his father's death) invading England.

Or William the Conqueror invading.

There might be more slaughter of the clergy, and "convert or die" may enter in - but the idea that the Christian realms would largely stand together is not even remotely close to how they acted OTL.

It's not so much that pagans would be treated as "part of the family" as that the "family" didn't get along.



http://www.san.beck.org/7-6-SpainPortugal.html#a1

Alfonso X fighting Portugal, for example. Or Castile and Aragon fighting over some disputed castles in 1356.

Other examples out there, but that's what came to mind first.


I can argue with your point about European kingdoms fighting OTL. They certainly did. Made quite an art of it, really. I'm just not sure France and England would be as quick to ignore their shared religion if, say, Scotland, the Low Countries and Germany were all pagans. They would definitely still have wars from time to time though. I am not trying to paint a picture of a happy Christian empire basking in the mediterranean sun while the pesky barbarians tear each other apart. Everyone would fight, but the Christendom thing might be more meaningful when there are pagans all around you.

I've veered away from more original argument though, which was the Christian Europe would be wealthier, more united, and better equipped to colonize the New World (if that is even a possibility) than Pagan Europe. I still think all those things are likely, although I think you've made some valid points and I will concede that I probably exaggerated the significance of "Christendom" both in OTL and this hypothetical timeline.

Southern Europe was wealthier than Northern Europe for most of the period we are discussing in OTL and probably would be in this TL also. Iberia led the charge to colonize the New World. As for the "united" thing- The word "united" may be a bit strong but my point was that "Christian Europe" would be more of an entity than "Pagan Europe". They would still bicker, wage war and stab each other in the back but at least there would be something that unites them, however slightly, whereas there may or may not be any sort of shared identity amongst the pagan kingdoms.

Thanks for the link. Seems like a good read. And thorough. It looks like I will be wasting even more time than usual today.

Scratch that. Time is never wasted when your learning something.
 
While some Pagan religions may not try to convert, others would, afterall their are very few religions that don't try to convert or proselytize.

There are religions that don't try to convert people. Or more commonly, there were. In a competition between two religions, where one surrenders to that extent, it tends to lose, hard. The only non-conversing religion I can think of that seems stable at the moment is Judaism.

My personal theory is a major reason for Judaism not seeking out converts is that for a large chunk of Jewish history, that would have provoked a pogrom and they were smart enough to know that.

Edit. A major reason why Christians fought each other more than they fought non-Christians was that the non-Christians were far away and hard to get at. The proposed world is one where they are not.
 
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Southern Europe was wealthier than Northern Europe for most of the period we are discussing in OTL and probably would be in this TL also. Iberia led the charge to colonize the New World. As for the "united" thing- The word "united" may be a bit strong but my point was that "Christian Europe" would be more of an entity than "Pagan Europe". They would still bicker, wage war and stab each other in the back but at least there would be something that unites them, however slightly, whereas there may or may not be any sort of shared identity amongst the pagan kingdoms.

I'm not sure that Southern Europe was necessarily wealthier than Northern Europe, depending on where we draw the border and what we're measursing (I mean, Florence might be richer than any individual city in England, but I'm not sure how it compares to the whole kingdom).

And I cannot overestate that it doesn't in any practical sense unite them. For example, take Spain and Portugal. They're not allies in pursuit of dividing the New World in amicable terms, they're rivals out to snatch as much as they can and screw the other. What possible unity is there that compares better than a pact conceived in self-interest between the North (Scandinavia) and Britain?


Jinx999: There were nonChristians perfectly within reach for anyone who wanted to go out fighting them.

I'm not going to say the Christians either OTL or TTL will more eagerly fight "fellow Christians" than pagans, just that there's no reason for "fellow Christian" to mean anything more than occasional and very short lived alliances.
 
There are religions that don't try to convert people. Or more commonly, there were. In a competition between two religions, where one surrenders to that extent, it tends to lose, hard. The only non-conversing religion I can think of that seems stable at the moment is Judaism.
.

Hinduism is a much better example
 
I can argue with your point about European kingdoms fighting OTL. They certainly did. Made quite an art of it, really. I'm just not sure France and England would be as quick to ignore their shared religion if, say, Scotland, the Low Countries and Germany were all pagans. They would definitely still have wars from time to time though. I am not trying to paint a picture of a happy Christian empire basking in the mediterranean sun while the pesky barbarians tear each other apart. Everyone would fight, but the Christendom thing might be more meaningful when there are pagans all around you.

I've veered away from more original argument though, which was the Christian Europe would be wealthier, more united, and better equipped to colonize the New World (if that is even a possibility) than Pagan Europe. I still think all those things are likely, although I think you've made some valid points and I will concede that I probably exaggerated the significance of "Christendom" both in OTL and this hypothetical timeline.

Southern Europe was wealthier than Northern Europe for most of the period we are discussing in OTL and probably would be in this TL also. Iberia led the charge to colonize the New World. As for the "united" thing- The word "united" may be a bit strong but my point was that "Christian Europe" would be more of an entity than "Pagan Europe". They would still bicker, wage war and stab each other in the back but at least there would be something that unites them, however slightly, whereas there may or may not be any sort of shared identity amongst the pagan kingdoms.

Thanks for the link. Seems like a good read. And thorough. It looks like I will be wasting even more time than usual today.

Scratch that. Time is never wasted when your learning something.


They might be a bit more likely to unite, but would they?, Would they really be serious enough about proselytizing to put aside their probably centuries old rivalries, just for the sake of converting some pagans?
 

katchen

Banned
Mongols in 1241 and Maris now feasible survival of non Christian religion in Europe

Europe actually may have come very close to being incompletely Christianized OTL in 1241, which has been the subject of several time lines I haven't read yet since I'm new to this group. That was when the Mongols, after having conquered Poland and Hungary turned right around and went back to Mongolia because Ogadei Khan had died and Batu Khan and Subotai needed to have their forces in Karakorum for the kuriltai to choose the next Khakhan. In that year also (I'm currently reading Greg Bear's epic "The Mongoliad"), the College of Cardinals was stalemated trying to elect a Pope in Rome while the Mongols were only a few hundred miles away. Had Ogadei lived another year or two, a number of time lines diverge, with the Mongols a) disrputing the Papal succession and killing the Holy Roman Emperor then encamped at Rome, b) attacking and destroying the Kingdom of France and forcing Louis IX to either submit or be killed c) continuing on to the Spanish kingdoms of Aragon, Castile and Portugal and the Almohad Caliphate, perhaps even going all the way to Fez in North Africa d) possibly crossing the English Channel to subjugate England and possibly e) conquering Constantinople on the way back to Mongolia (and perhaps Scandinavia if the Mongols have time to be thorough) before Ogadei finally dies.
The Mongols were known for their religious tolerance and non Christians such as the Scandinavians, (and let's not forget the Finns, Esthonians and Livonians who still are not Christian at this juncture) would be free to practice their religion. If the Khanate remained together, those pagan religions would be influenced by Vajrayana Buddhist monks from Tibet, since the Lama Phagsha has great influence at the court of Kublai Khan.
A lot then depends on how long the Mongols hang on, since the later Mongol Khans in Mongolia became rather aggresive devotees of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect of Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhism) and the Dalai Lama, which is quite good at syncretically incorporating shamanistic and pagan religious traditions into it's belief system. Buddhism in general has done this with Shinto in Japan and Chinese pagan traditions as well as the Bon pagan faith in Tibet. All of these faiths coexist right alongside Buddhism and Buddhism could easily give these pagan faiths the intellectual coherence to resist Christianity and Islam. en.wikipedia.org/wiki
By the way, There is one European nation that still practices it's traditional religion and has resisted Christianization sucessfully. The Mari , who live in an Autonomous Oblast between Nizhni Novgorod and Kazan in Russia, are a Finno-Ugric people who have never been Christianized, and as these references show, are currently under a great deal of pressure from the Russian Government after some years of toleration. Their story is fascinating./Mari_people,www.opendemocracy.net/.../russias-last-surviving-pagans-targeted-by-law- enforcement,ouciant.com/2012/12/the-priest-speaks/,www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1qdU1JnSpc,mariuveren.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/europes-last-pagans/
 

Tohno

Banned
If you want to get nitpicky about it, Europe still isn't completely Christianized because Kalmykia is largely Buddhist; and Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia are largely Muslim (as are Lower Thrace and Azerbaijan if you care to include them).

Mari El also, but Mari El is basically Pagan.

My personal theory is a major reason for Judaism not seeking out converts is that for a large chunk of Jewish history, that would have provoked a pogrom and they were smart enough to know that.

In the early christian church they were known as Jews & Judaism was popular/full of converts and those who were friends of judaism (like the term 'jack mormon' or 'fellow traveler') due to dietary restrictions and circumcisions. Before they became known as 'Christians'.


By the way, There is one European nation that still practices it's traditional religion and has resisted Christianization sucessfully. The Mari , who live in an Autonomous Oblast between Nizhni Novgorod and Kazan in Russia, are a Finno-Ugric people who have never been Christianized, and as these references show, are currently under a great deal of pressure from the Russian Government after some years of toleration. Their story is fascinating./Mari_people,www.opendemocracy.net/.../russias-last-surviving-pagans-targeted-by-law- enforcement,ouciant.com/2012/12/the-priest-speaks/,www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1qdU1JnSpc,mariuveren.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/europes-last-pagans/

was going to say this too :p

EDIT: some links are broken please fix em
 

katchen

Banned
From the time of the Code of Justinian, Jews were strictly forbidden by Christian (and later Muslim ) law from accepting converts. This made conversion to Judaism difficult, but law enforcement being the hit and miss thing that it was prior to the 19th Century, not impossible. The DNA evidence suggests that due to Byzantine persecution, there was a major exodus of Jews from Palestine in the 5th Century to Iberia and North Africa by Jewish men who took local wives, if the difference between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA can be believed. And the close similarity between the nuclear DNA of all Jews, even East European with Palestinians and Kurds suggetss that a) the Kurds may well be the descendants of Jewish exiles from the Babylonian Period and b) that a significant fraction of the Palestinian Arab population is descended from Jews who were forcibly converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity by the Byzantine Empire and subsequently converted to Islam; a conclusion that makes neither Jews nor Palestinians very happy. epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/.../shared-genetic-heritage-of-jews-and.html vimeo.com/24556924 www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLSaX1CamTA www.algemeiner.com/.../the-spanish-inquisition-and-the-spread-of-conversos -in-the-americas/ www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jewish-genetics/
Both via a beter understanding of Jewish history and via DNA testing, we now understand that in many parts of the Mediteranean world (North Africa and Aragon-Catalonia in particular) there was a great deal of conversion to Judaism during the 4th-5th Century and even Jewish rulers. For instance, thee was a Jewish Berber queen in Libya who resisted the Muslim conquest from the mountains south of Tripoli. And Septimania (Catalonia) was apparently UJewish ruled, which may have set up the role of Aragon and Langedoc as laterr seedbeds for both Jewish learning and Kabbalah and for Catharism. Plenty of room for alternate history threads here once we research this out.
 
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