History questions not worth their own thread IV

[History_Buff]

The whole Peace of Augsburg makes that claim look like the steaming pile of dung that it is.

And the only person who's made that claim other than you is one of this forum's two noted blinkered papists, so. It's like using Traitorfish or Cheezy as a reliable source on soshalizm.

Do tell?

I thought one of the biggest draws of Protestantism was that it could be used to assert political independence or autonomy from the Pope/Emperor as appropriate. Certainly the popular narrative of Henry VIII's departure from Catholicism was to allow himself to divorce people, and possibly expropriate church lands to the state. Certainly the actual religious practices at the time of his death weren't really different from the Catholicism that came before it.

And again inside the Empire, where so much land was ecclesiastical, Protestantism allowed rulers the chance to divert those revenues to the state. I'm not trying to say that their reasons for converting weren't genuine, since the Catholic church seems to have been enormously corrupt at the time, but political aspects must have been a great reason not to reconcile with the Church.

Had the rulers come to some sort of arrangement with the Pope/Emperor, I don't doubt that the Jesuits would have stamped out Protestantism in due time.

Edit: also, the last thing I'm trying to do is make a pro-papacy argument. I was raised Catholic, and while I think they're a touch better than their Protestant brethren, they're both pretty wacky. Certainly the Catholics of the time were (and really still are) treading dubious moral ground.

 

[Traitorfish]

This is all pretty much bollocks one way or the other. It's been well established that Protestantism was the religion of the rising bourgeoisie, developed in opposition to the feudal religion of the Catholic Church.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Yep, Seventh-Day Adventism is the religion of the working-class oik like me

 

[Domen]

the feudal religion of the Catholic Church.

The what?

The what kind of religion? Feudal religion?

Explain how a religion can be "feudal".

 

[Leoreth]

You might want to readjust your sarcasm meter.

 

[Domen]

Readjusted.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Explain how a religion can be "feudal".

I feel compelled to point out that there are historians like Elizabeth Brown that flat out reject the idea that Feudalism exists (with or without religion).

 

[Traitorfish]

Far as I understand it, feudalism was more an ideal than anything that actually existed ever, and one that only came into being once the social mode it purported to describe had already began to come apart. The word only has any value describing an economic system, and even then you're better off with something like "manorialism", which is both more to the point and that doesn't come with the same Jacobin baggage.

 

[Flying Pig]

I feel compelled to point out that there are historians like Elizabeth Brown that flat out reject the idea that Feudalism exists (with or without religion).

How did they decide that?

 

[LightSpectra]

And again inside the Empire, where so much land was ecclesiastical, Protestantism allowed rulers the chance to divert those revenues to the state. I'm not trying to say that their reasons for converting weren't genuine, since the Catholic church seems to have been enormously corrupt at the time, but political aspects must have been a great reason not to reconcile with the Church.

Had the rulers come to some sort of arrangement with the Pope/Emperor, I don't doubt that the Jesuits would have stamped out Protestantism in due time.

"Enormously corrupt" is not a measured, or indeed even useful, descriptor. While there were confirmed cases of corruption, Johann Tetzel's being the most famous, describing a huge organization in a very long (and unquantified) time period is a worthless bit of analysis for the stream of events. Indeed, one could even say that the late Renaissance was a pick-up for the Catholic Church compared to the Avignon Papacy or pre-Gregorian Reforms coexistence with the Salian Kaisers.

Far as I understand it, feudalism was more an ideal than anything that actually existed ever, and one that only came into being once the social mode it purported to describe had already began to come apart. The word only has any value describing an economic system, and even then you're better off with something like "manorialism", which is both more to the point and that doesn't come with the same Jacobin baggage.

It sort of helps that there's no universally accepted definition of 'feudalism' and thus means whatever a particular historian or author wants it to. Not unlike the word 'religion', which I've harped about for a long time.

 

[ParkCungHee]

How did they decide that?

They looked at the definition of feudalism and couldn't find any examples of that.

 

[Traitorfish]

It sort of helps that there's no universally accepted definition of 'feudalism' and thus means whatever a particular historian or author wants it to. Not unlike the word 'religion', which I've harped about for a long time.

Making "feudal religion" a doubly trolltastic idea.

 

[Phrossack]

They looked at the definition of feudalism and couldn't find any examples of that.

Pardon my ignorance, but is there any term that describes the leasing of land or its revenues (e.g. timars, pronoiai or however it's spelled, fiefs, iqta, etc.) in exchange for military service or political fealty?

 

[LightSpectra]

Pardon my ignorance, but is there any term that describes the leasing of land or its revenues (e.g. timars, pronoiai or however it's spelled, fiefs, iqta, etc.) in exchange for military service or political fealty?

Serfdom, albeit that's also a frustratingly nebulous term as well, with its own historiographical controversy over its imprecision. However, that's at least a describably real thing for some points in history. Exempli gratia, the relationship between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties clearly had a facade of vassalage that reflected similar contracts of much less important folk, even though the reality of their diplomacy was nothing of the sort.

Feudalism doesn't just refer to the practice of serfdom, but (though again, this can deviate depending on who is talking) the entire medieval model for binding military-economic contracts in the social hierarchy. As you can imagine, it's not a very useful term at all. Imagine if historians two centuries from now used the term "corporation" to describe any sort of nonpersonal holder of finances. We would think it bizarre and a ridiculous oversimplification.

 

[Phrossack]

Serfdom, albeit that's also a frustratingly nebulous term as well, with its own historiographical controversy over its imprecision.

Feudalism doesn't just refer to the practice of serfdom, but (though again, this can deviate depending on who is talking) the entire medieval model for binding military-economic contracts in the social hierarchy. As you can imagine, it's not a very useful term at all. Imagine if historians two centuries from now used the term "corporation" to describe any sort of nonpersonal financial interaction. We would think it bizarre.

Knights, timariots, iqta'dar, and pronaiarioiaioiGreekishardoi weren't exactly serfs, though. I'm more referring to a military-political system than an economic one.

 

[LightSpectra]

There is no one word to describe it all. Perhaps vassalage is closest to what you're looking for.

 

[Virote_Considon]

Why would they think that? We all know corporations are people!

EDIT: X-post

 

[Virote_Considon]

There is no one word to describe it all.

Hmm... We seem to be at something of an impasse.

On the one hand, there is no word to describe this.

On the other, Feudalism doesn't actually describe anything...

 

[Flying Pig]

Cleruchy?

 

[LightSpectra]

Hmm... We seem to be at something of an impasse.

On the one hand, there is no word to describe this.

On the other, Feudalism doesn't actually describe anything...

To be fair, there is some vague sense that 'feudalism' is something, so it's not a completely worthless item. But if a historian wants to talk about it, he has to essentially provide his own definition, defend it, and then explicitly exclude anything that could-potentially-be-but-is-not 'feudal'.