[Premodern history] the year of the two fatal eruptions

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Premodern history] the year of the two fatal eruptions

lobotomy molo: May 7, 2007; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Nebakenezzer posted:

So I assume that the Harem had byzantine rules for what emperor bastard child had what rank? When you think the Saudi Royal family has something like 25,000 members, it seems like something you want sorted early

nah, that kinda sorts itself out. give it a good civil war or two, and that�ll be down to 0-25 members before you know it.

# ? Jan 15, 2021 04:41

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 17:54

Tulip: Jun 3, 2008; yeah thats pretty good

So different dynasties handled it a bit differently, but usually all sons were equal options, and the emperor would designate one as the heir. This process itself was heavily politicized, and could be...undermined by clever bureaucrats. When Qin Shi Huangdi died, for example, his inner circle didn't like his first, or second, choice for heir, so they hid that he died and forged letters ordering the suicide/execution of those sons and renaming the son that was the most easily manipulated.

On the other hand, when the first Emperor of the Tang, Gaozu, was getting old, his large adult sons started to get antsy about who would inherit, and while Gaozu was out sailing one of them lured the other two to a big meeting and shot one to death and rode the other down with cavalry, presented their heads to his dad and said 'time's up old man' and that's why that brother gets to go down in history as Tang Taizong, greatest emperor in history.

Azathoth posted:

I seem to remember reading that when they found his tomb, one of the first indicators that they might have the right place was that the ground was still massively contaminated with mercury. Some quick googling seems to suggest that's true, but I always figured it might just be a bad translation / good story someone made up.

It's still sealed b/c last I checked we still weren't sure how to open it up without creating a giant death cloud from the very likely massive amounts of pressurized mercury vapor.

# ? Jan 15, 2021 05:00

Stairmaster: Jun 8, 2012

What if he's still alive in there

# ? Jan 15, 2021 05:17

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Stairmaster posted:

What if he's still alive in there

Then move over Chairman Xi, Qin Shih Huang is back in town.

# ? Jan 15, 2021 06:38

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

Azathoth posted:

I seem to remember reading that when they found his tomb, one of the first indicators that they might have the right place was that the ground was still massively contaminated with mercury. Some quick googling seems to suggest that's true, but I always figured it might just be a bad translation / good story someone made up.

as i recall there are historical records indicating that there's supposed to be this massive scale model of the entirety of china and the surrounding areas in the tomb of qin shi huangdi where the rivers and oceans are made of mercury

as i also recall most everybody thought that this was some fanciful exaggeration until they found the place and noticed that the mercury levels are through the roof

# ? Jan 15, 2021 08:58

Communist Thoughts: Jan 7, 2008; Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!

Tulip posted:

On the other hand, when the first Emperor of the Tang, Gaozu, was getting old, his large adult sons started to get antsy about who would inherit, and while Gaozu was out sailing one of them lured the other two to a big meeting and shot one to death and rode the other down with cavalry, presented their heads to his dad and said 'time's up old man' and that's why that brother gets to go down in history as Tang Taizong, greatest emperor in history.

lol it really is always these types

# ? Jan 15, 2021 16:06

babypolis: Nov 4, 2009

weird question but if you are one of these potential heirs, dont have much ambition and also dont want to be executed or kill your own family is there a way to say "im chill pls dont kill me" or are you just hosed

# ? Jan 17, 2021 02:08

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

babypolis posted:

weird question but if you are one of these potential heirs, dont have much ambition and also dont want to be executed or kill your own family is there a way to say "im chill pls dont kill me" or are you just hosed

�become a monk� worked ok in the West and Near East, I�d assume there�s something like that everywhere

# ? Jan 17, 2021 02:10

Tulip: Jun 3, 2008; yeah thats pretty good

Yeah there were Buddhist monasteries. That said sometimes people came back from being a Buddhist monk to take on a lot of power, most famously the emperor Wu Zetian was a Buddhist nun for a while.

babypolis posted:

weird question but if you are one of these potential heirs, dont have much ambition and also dont want to be executed or kill your own family is there a way to say "im chill pls dont kill me" or are you just hosed

I don't think there's any trans-dynasty reliable technique to unambiguously signal "I have no intention of taking power." It was fairly safe to be an imperial prince - there's some fairly complicated and frequently implemented rules for 'succession via uncle,' which wouldn't have mattered much if emperors normally consolidated power by slaughtering potential pretenders. It was fairly common for the emperor to have a decent number of kids and not that uncommon for an emperor to be succeeded by their own brother, particularly when they died from an illness or accident young (yeah yeah some were probably assassinations, but this was also before penicillin and a lot of these guys thought that getting wasted and then trying to do horse flips was a good idea).

That said the Tang dynasty did tend to be pretty fuckin' stab happy.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 02:46

Zedhe Khoja: Nov 10, 2017; sürgünden selamlar
yıkıcılar ulusuna

there was an ottoman prince who pretty specifically did not want to be emperor and tried very hard not to be murdered by his brothers.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 02:54

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Stairmaster posted:

What if he's still alive in there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hbo6OyYKc

# ? Jan 17, 2021 03:00

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

Zedhe Khoja posted:

there was an ottoman prince who pretty specifically did not want to be emperor and tried very hard not to be murdered by his brothers.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ottoman-empires-life-or-death-race-164064882/

Apparently in later years the bloodbath system was changed to a "house arrest" being under guard in the palace.

The other weird tradition was a grand vizier who received the death sentence still had a chance to be let off the hook by winning a foot race from the palace to the Fish Gate. I imagine the odds of winning against someone who did this for living was similar to the chance of the random Braves fans beating the "Atlanta Freeze".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7asw5Vd8lIY

quote:

The executioners of the Ottoman Empire were never noted for their mercy; just ask the teenage Sultan Osman II, who in May 1622 suffered an excruciating death by �compression of the testicles��as contemporary chronicles put it�at the hands of an assassin known as Pehlivan the Oil Wrestler. There was reason for this ruthlessness, however; for much of its history (the most successful bit, in fact), the Ottoman dynasty flourished�ruling over modern Turkey, the Balkans and most of North Africa and the Middle East�thanks in part to the staggering violence it meted out to the highest and mightiest members of society.

Seen from this perspective, it might be argued that the Ottomans� decline set in early in the 17th century, precisely at the point when they abandoned the policy of ritually murdering a significant proportion of the royal family whenever a sultan died, and substituted the Western notion of simply giving the job to the first-born son instead. Before then, Ottoman succession had been governed by the �law of fratricide� drawn up by Mehmed II in the middle of the 15th century. Under the terms of this remarkable piece of legislation, whichever member of the ruling dynasty succeeded in seizing the throne on the death of the old sultan was not merely permitted, but enjoined, to murder all his brothers (together with any inconvenient uncles and cousins) in order to reduce the risk of subsequent rebellion and civil war. Although it was not invariably applied, Mehmed�s law resulted in the deaths of at least 80 members of the House of Osman over a period of 150 years.

These victims included all 19 siblings of Sultan Mehmed III�some of whom were still infants at the breast, but all of whom were strangled with silk handkerchiefs immediately after their brother�s accession in 1595.

The executioners of the Ottoman Empire were never noted for their mercy; just ask the teenage Sultan Osman II, who in May 1622 suffered an excruciating death by �compression of the testicles��as contemporary chronicles put it�at the hands of an assassin known as Pehlivan the Oil Wrestler. There was reason for this ruthlessness, however; for much of its history (the most successful bit, in fact), the Ottoman dynasty flourished�ruling over modern Turkey, the Balkans and most of North Africa and the Middle East�thanks in part to the staggering violence it meted out to the highest and mightiest members of society.

Seen from this perspective, it might be argued that the Ottomans� decline set in early in the 17th century, precisely at the point when they abandoned the policy of ritually murdering a significant proportion of the royal family whenever a sultan died, and substituted the Western notion of simply giving the job to the first-born son instead. Before then, Ottoman succession had been governed by the �law of fratricide� drawn up by Mehmed II in the middle of the 15th century. Under the terms of this remarkable piece of legislation, whichever member of the ruling dynasty succeeded in seizing the throne on the death of the old sultan was not merely permitted, but enjoined, to murder all his brothers (together with any inconvenient uncles and cousins) in order to reduce the risk of subsequent rebellion and civil war. Although it was not invariably applied, Mehmed�s law resulted in the deaths of at least 80 members of the House of Osman over a period of 150 years. These victims included all 19 siblings of Sultan Mehmed III�some of whom were still infants at the breast, but all of whom were strangled with silk handkerchiefs immediately after their brother�s accession in 1595.

Osman II: death by crushed testicles. Image: Wikicommons.

For all its deficiencies, the law of fratricide ensured that the most ruthless of the available princes generally ascended to the throne. That was more than could be said of its replacement, the policy of locking up unwanted siblings in the kafes (�cage�), a suite of rooms deep within the Topkapi palace in Istanbul. From around 1600, generations of Ottoman royals were kept imprisoned there until they were needed, sometimes several decades later, consoled in the meantime by barren concubines and permitted only a strictly limited range of recreations, the chief of which was macram�. This, the later history of the empire amply demonstrated, was not ideal preparation for the pressures of ruling one of the greatest states the world has ever known.

The uniform of a Ottoman Executioner:

etalian has issued a correction as of 03:26 on Jan 17, 2021

# ? Jan 17, 2021 03:20

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

A short pope story:

One of the John Popes assumed the throne, and then Emperor No-nose (Justinian II) became the only Roman Emperor in history to be deposed and have his loving nose cut off, only to come back reclaim the title. Anyway, if Emperor No-nose was chill back in his complete face days, (remember, this is the dude that sent a bodyguard of his to kidnap the pope) those days were most definitely over. Once No-Nose retakes Constantinople, he pays the Patriarch back for his treachery by gouging out his eyes, and then sending him to Rome with a message for the pope: the exact same not-at-all official rule changes for the pope's approval that he sent several years ago.

Now on the one hand, everybody knows there is no way Pope John can approve any of this. On the other, the messenger is a ex-patriarch with his eyes gouged out. So Pope John...sent the blind man back to the Emperor with the note, but with no communication whatsoever. Kind of a return-to-sender deal.

This pope is also notable in how he died. Apparently he was caught loving another man's wife and was beaten to death by the husband.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 03:26

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

Nebakenezzer posted:

This pope is also notable in how he died. Apparently he was caught loving another man's wife and was beaten to death by the husband.

Maybe the modern pope descends from this pope, given how the current Pope liked the twitter account of italian model?

# ? Jan 17, 2021 03:28

Zerg Mans: Oct 19, 2006

you know the ironic thing about that Ozymandias poem is we know far more about Ramses II than most other pharaohs because of his works.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 03:29

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

etalian posted:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ottoman-empires-life-or-death-race-164064882/

Apparently in later years the bloodbath system was changed to a "house arrest" being under guard in the palace.

The other weird tradition was a grand vizier who received the death sentence still had a chance to be let off the hook by winning a foot race from the palace to the Fish Gate. I imagine the odds of winning against someone who did this for living was similar to the chance of the random Braves fans beating the "Atlanta Freeze".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7asw5Vd8lIY

The uniform of a Ottoman Executioner:

it�s weird to draw the conclusion that willingness to murder family necessarily leads to competent rulers, but it�s another level of insanity to assert that the level of cruelty of the murders also played an important role in determining leadership ability

# ? Jan 17, 2021 03:31

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

Tulip posted:

Yeah there were Buddhist monasteries. That said sometimes people came back from being a Buddhist monk to take on a lot of power, most famously the emperor Wu Zetian was a Buddhist nun for a while.

I just finished the tale of the Heike (which is I guess technically fiction? but based on actual events) and after minamoto no yoritomo finally wins he starts hunting down every taira he can get his hands on, and dealing with them with more brutality than I think is present elsewhere in the story (for example taira no kiyomori first comes to power by putting down the genji/minamoto* and doesn't exterminate them, which is a mistake yoritomo has clearly learnt from)

quote:

They cruelly went looking for Heike children and found many.

They would present the pretty, pale-skinned son of any nobody, describing him as Captain So-and-So’s boy, or Lieutenant Whatnot’s, and claiming, despite the parents’ tears and entreaties, “His guardian identified him,” or “His nurse says that’s who he is.”

Tokimasa’s men drowned or buried the babies and smothered or stabbed older boys to death.

No words can describe the mothers’ grief, the desperate laments of the nurses. Tokimasa, a father himself and a grandfather many times over, hated to do it, but there it is: Such are the exigencies of duty.

Of special interest was Rokudai, Koremori’s son and a grandson of Shigemori.

The scion of the senior Heike line, he was now growing up. Tokimasa sent out search parties to capture him, but without success.

They track down rokudai and are taking him back to Kamakura to be executed, when a Buddhist monk attempts to intercede on his behalf by running ahead to see yoritomo and ask that the kid be allowed to become a monk

yoritomo is not mad keen on the idea because he really wants to exterminate the taira once and for all, but he owes the monk a favour due to some frankly batshit shenanigans involving his traitor father's skull

quote:

On the twenty-second of the eighth month, the holy monk Mongaku, of Takao, hung around his neck the genuine and authentic skull of Minamoto no Yoshitomo, Lord Minamoto no Yoritomo’s father, and around a disciple’s neck the skull of Kamadabyōe Masakiyo.

So equipped, he set off for Kamakura. The Yoshitomo skull he had given Yoritomo in Jishō 4 was not the real one, [1180] just some old skull that he had wrapped in white cloth and presented to Yoritomo to goad him into rebelling. And rebel Yoritomo did, seizing power over the land in full faith that the skull really was his father’s.

Now here came Mongaku again, down to Kamakura, with another he had turned up. A certain indigo dyer long favored by Yoshitomo, pained that his master’s head should hang year after year at the prison gate without anyone to pray for his happier rebirth in the hereafter, approached the then-chief of the police, who allowed him to take it down. “Yoritomo is in exile,” he reflected, “but he will come into his own in the end.

When he does, he will start looking for his father’s skull.” So the indigo dyer secreted it at Engakuji, in the Eastern Hills. Apparently Mongaku heard about this and took him along to Kamakura. On learning that Mongaku was to reach the town that day, Yoritomo went out to meet him at the Katase River.

He then changed into mourning gray and returned to Kamakura in tears. He seated Mongaku on the veranda and stood below him, on the ground, to receive his father’s skull. The warriors great and small present for this touching moment wept.

Yoritomo cut away mighty rocks and erected a new temple, dedicated to his father, that he named Shōjōju-in. The court, too, moved by his gesture, announced at Yoshitomo’s grave his appointment to the second rank and the post of palace minister.

so anyway, yoritomo says ok but don't ask me for anything else, the monk races back and arrives literally just as rokudai is about to be executed because tokimasa got tired of waiting around for the monk, and rokudai lives happily ever after

...until about 20 years later yoritomo dies and his successor (or probably his regent**) decides he doesn't owe the monk anything and has rokudai executed anyway, just to make sure

quote:

All this while, Rokudai had been quietly pursuing his practice at Takao. “Look at whose son he is, and whose disciple!” the great lord in Kamakura often remarked.

“No doubt he has shaved his head, but not his heart.” And so it was that Andō Sukekane was ordered to seize him and bring him down to the Kanto.

At the Tagoshi River, Okabe Gonnokami Yasutsuna then executed the command to behead him.

They say that Rokudai owed surviving from his twelfth to his thirtieth year entirely to the grace of the Kannon of Hasedera. So at last ended the Heike line.

so at least in this instance, even renouncing the world isn't really good enough

I think there are also some other people earlier in the story who wanted to become monks but just get their heads chopped off instead (a lot of heads get chopped off)

* just completely different ways of pronouncing the same characters with the same meaning, because Japanese likes to do that

** so after yoritomo's death his successor yoshiie is basically a puppet of his mother/grandfather and gets completely owned by them

quote:

After his father's death in 1199, the 17-year-old became head of the Minamoto clan and was appointed sei-i taishōgun in 1202.

He was, however, criticized for his abandonment of his father's policies, and his mother forbade him from any political activity. On June 30, 1203, his remaining powers were formally taken from him and assumed by a council of 13 elders, headed by his grandfather Hōjō Tokimasa.

He ordained as a Buddhist monk. Yoriie, in turn, plotted with the Hiki to subjugate the Hōjō clan. However, he failed, and was put under house arrest, where he was forced to abdicate. Then in July 17, 1204, he was assassinated in his mansion in Izu. Yoriie was succeeded by his younger brother Sanetomo, the last of the Minamoto to rule over Kamakura.

so I don't know a huge amount about the Kamakura period, but I think you had the shikken ruling on behalf of the shogun who ruled on behalf of the emperor. looks like the later shogun's were imperial failsons because they were easy to control (like most emperor's really)

basically it's a pretty cool book and all sorts of wild/bloody/supernatural poo poo happens in it

I've started on the tale of genji which is a lot less exciting, but still interesting as a cultural study of the period and a historical artefact

genji is a serial rapist and paedophile, which makes it a bit less fun, but I found this paper which suggests he's not meant to be seen as (entirely) sympathetic and it's a bit nicer thinking that the text is explicitly making him out to be a terrible person, rather than him just being a terrible person because terrible things were (more) normal back then

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42772059

e: oh also the hojo who end up controlling the shogunate are apparently a heike/taira cadet branch of some sort, so they might have had the last laugh (apart from the fact the actual heike were all extremely dead)

XMNN has issued a correction as of 04:21 on Jan 17, 2021

# ? Jan 17, 2021 04:14

babypolis: Nov 4, 2009

Zedhe Khoja posted:

there was an ottoman prince who pretty specifically did not want to be emperor and tried very hard not to be murdered by his brothers.

well? how did it go?

# ? Jan 17, 2021 04:17

etalian: Mar 20, 2006

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYk0GH5iFYI

# ? Jan 17, 2021 04:22

PawParole: Nov 16, 2019

Constantine killed every member of his family except his 3 youngest sons (who murdered each other) and Julian the Apostate ( who didn�t appreciate his dad being killed by the first Christian emperor)

# ? Jan 17, 2021 04:23

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

XMNN posted:

so I don't know a huge amount about the Kamakura period, but I think you had the shikken ruling on behalf of the shogun who ruled on behalf of the emperor. looks like the later shogun's were imperial failsons because they were easy to control (like most emperor's really)

oh I forgot about the tokuso

quote:

Tokusō (Japanese: 得宗) was the title (post) held by the head of the mainline Hōjō clan, who also monopolized the position of shikken (regents to the shogunate) of the Kamakura shogunate in Japan during the period of Regent Rule (1199–1333). It’s important not to confuse a regent of the shogunate with a regent of the Emperor (the latter are called Sesshō and Kampaku). Shikkens were the first regents to the shogunate.

The tokusō from 1256 to 1333 was the military dictator of Japan as de facto head of the bakufu (shogunate); despite the actual shōgun being merely a puppet. This implies that all other positions in Japan—the Emperor, the Imperial Court, Sesshō and Kampaku, and the shikken (regent of the shōgun)—had also been reduced to figureheads.

medieval japan just really loved ruling through puppets I guess

# ? Jan 17, 2021 04:31

exmachina: Mar 12, 2006; Look Closer

PawParole posted:

Constantine killed every member of his family except his 3 youngest sons (who murdered each other) and Julian the Apostate ( who didn’t appreciate his dad being killed by the first Christian emperor)

This isn't right. Constantine executed his eldest son Crispus, famously after he was accused by Constantine's wife Fausta of rape or attempted rape. We assume it was false charges because Fausta was executed soon afterwards.

Constantine also killed a some of his in-laws but they were already emperors.

After he died, Constantius II killed a whole bunch of his cousins in order to gain their inheritance, including Julian's father

# ? Jan 17, 2021 05:38

Archduke Frantz Fanon: Sep 7, 2004

XMNN posted:

oh I forgot about the tokuso

medieval japan just really loved ruling through puppets I guess

they backed themselves into a corner by trying to one up china and saying that the emperor was a direct descendant of the gods and was a god themselves so once the first non imperial clan leader did a coup it lead to 1500 years of some very strained justification and titlefuckling to get around this.

the best was just keeping two branches of the imperial family on different sides of town and flipping between the two as needed.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 05:59

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

best emperor is probably antoku who may or may not have turned back into a beautiful dragon girl when his grandmother drowned him after the taira lost the battle of Dan no ura

# ? Jan 17, 2021 10:38

twoday: May 4, 2005; C-SPAM Times best-selling author

So someone brought up something about this thread being called the Ancient History Thread when not all the history discussed is specifically ancient, and some of it is more recent.

When I made this thread it was at the same time as the History thread, which was focused more or less only on modern history. I thought there isn�t much overlap between the two, and that usually discussions of modern history and pre-modern history attract different groups of people, I decided to make a different thread for ancient history. This thread has proven to be a success, but now people don�t post in the modern history thread anymore.

So thread, what do you think, should this thread remain as the Ancient History Thread and the other one be formally renamed the Modern History Thread? Or is it bad to have two separate history threads, and there should just be this one, and this one should be renamed the History Thread?

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:32

frankenfreak: Feb 16, 2007; I SCORED 85% ON A QUIZ ABOUT MONDAY NIGHT RAW AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TEXT

#bastionboogerbrigade

At this point, the other thread has been dead for months and anything that would have gone in there now goes here. And with how it's been going, nobody has been complaining about that, so there's no need to split up discussion imo. Just rename this thread.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:35

Stairmaster: Jun 8, 2012

All history is ancient from now on

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:42

lobotomy molo: May 7, 2007; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

frankenfreak posted:

At this point, the other thread has been dead for months and anything that would have gone in there now goes here. And with how it's been going, nobody has been complaining about that, so there's no need to split up discussion imo. Just rename this thread.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:43

twoday: May 4, 2005; C-SPAM Times best-selling author

Mmk, done.

twoday has issued a correction as of 12:55 on Jan 17, 2021

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:45

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

Ancient history is anything more than eleven days ago, at this point.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:48

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

hells yeah thread title change ok i have a question about the spanish civil war

why doesnt anyone ever poo poo on the catholic church for going all in on franco and fascism it seems like all the usual bugbears of the catholic church being evil have some pretty big caveats they tried to get people to stop burning witches the inquisition was fairly limited in scope they tended to defer to scientists in galileos time the first people to speak out about the new world genocides were priests and in the case of hitler the pope was literally surrounded by hitlers bff and didnt exactly have a lot of wiggle room

but im legit kind of shocked to have read a book about the spanish civil war and learn that the church was hooting and hollering about franco murdering any random person he hastily scribbles communist or victim of communism onto before their body gets too cold even when the people he was killing were priests and nuns and im just thinking what the hell how is this not a bigger deal

# ? Jan 17, 2021 12:52

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

An extremely well‐funded and well‐placed cadre of failsons will use their positions to make your life miserable if dare to criticise the Church in any way.

It�s not a hill worth dying on.

Wait, what century am I writing in?

# ? Jan 17, 2021 13:04

Zedhe Khoja: Nov 10, 2017; sürgünden selamlar
yıkıcılar ulusuna

babypolis posted:

well? how did it go?

the brother he ingratiated himself to got murked and he killed himself out of terror of the other brother because he assumed his death would just come during the succession anyway

# ? Jan 17, 2021 15:55

Tulip: Jun 3, 2008; yeah thats pretty good

Some Guy TT posted:

hells yeah thread title change ok i have a question about the spanish civil war

why doesnt anyone ever poo poo on the catholic church for going all in on franco and fascism it seems like all the usual bugbears of the catholic church being evil have some pretty big caveats they tried to get people to stop burning witches the inquisition was fairly limited in scope they tended to defer to scientists in galileos time the first people to speak out about the new world genocides were priests and in the case of hitler the pope was literally surrounded by hitlers bff and didnt exactly have a lot of wiggle room

but im legit kind of shocked to have read a book about the spanish civil war and learn that the church was hooting and hollering about franco murdering any random person he hastily scribbles communist or victim of communism onto before their body gets too cold even when the people he was killing were priests and nuns and im just thinking what the hell how is this not a bigger deal

b/c to the Americans who love to poo poo on the papists for not being actually white or whatever, what the church did in the Spanish Civil War was Good, Actually

The witch trials thing is particularly an interesting one b/c the mythology we have is "the church whipped itself up into a frenzy" but it was way more the universities, with the church mostly (but definitely not uniformly) going "whoa hold on we haven't had to go on big lynching sprees for the last 1000 years chill out." Unfortunately nobody in the 21st century wants to say that the big brained nerds were a bunch of sociopaths who used their education to justify atrocities, they want to believe the nerds are and always were dedicated to the betterment of humanity (partially because the only people who give a poo poo at all at this point are the nerds)

Tulip has issued a correction as of 17:25 on Jan 17, 2021

# ? Jan 17, 2021 17:22

Speleothing: May 6, 2008; Spare batteries are pretty key.

The catholic position was typically that real witches don't exist so there's no point in looking for them, though individual prosecutors would sometimes disagree.

Speleothing has issued a correction as of 20:24 on Jan 17, 2021

# ? Jan 17, 2021 20:20

exmachina: Mar 12, 2006; Look Closer

The thing is that despite what people think, the church is not really a top-down organisation. Bishops have a lot of autonomy, even more so for Holy Orders.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 20:45

Antifa Poltergeist: Jun 3, 2004; "We're not laughing with you, we're laughing at you"

If the situation in spain was anything like in portugal, everyone just kinda swept it under the rug.the higher ups where usually all in for the fash, but there was a lot of priests helping the good guys too. And a lot of priest ratting them out to the secret police.some of these left the clergy or disappeared in a hurry after 74.
After the carnation revolution(though there were a couple of dicey years afterwards), a kinda of non official agreement was reached that if the catholic church doesnt mess with politics, outside social causes, then car bombs wouldn't happen.

It kinda worked, because we went from a population where 90% went to church to today where like 20% at most does, in like 3 generations.

# ? Jan 17, 2021 21:29

XMNN: Apr 26, 2008; I am incredibly stupid

anyone got any recommendations for (premodernish) Japanese history books?

or journal articles/textbooks as I've probably got academic access to them atm

# ? Jan 18, 2021 02:13

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

https://twitter.com/RebeccaBuck/status/1349363050722316288/photo/1

so what im getting from this is that after the civil war troops became sleepier but they also werent allowed to use the furniture anymore

Some Guy TT has issued a correction as of 02:23 on Jan 18, 2021

# ? Jan 18, 2021 02:19

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# ? Jun 10, 2024 17:54

Archduke Frantz Fanon: Sep 7, 2004

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/RebeccaBuck/status/1349363050722316288/photo/1

so what im getting from this is that after the civil war troops became sleepier but they also werent allowed to use the furniture anymore

there is also probably 100x as much whiskey

# ? Jan 18, 2021 05:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Premodern history] the year of the two fatal eruptions

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