[HN Gopher] The Wrongs of Thomas More (Wrong 5)
___________________________________________________________________
The Wrongs of Thomas More (Wrong 5)
Author : robinhouston
Score : 58 points
Date : 2025-02-24 11:46 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nealstephenson.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nealstephenson.substack.com)
| codeulike wrote:
| Thats fascinating. Wolf Hall has a lot about Thomas Moore in it
| ... I should note Wolf Hall is essentially fiction but largely
| based on things that did happen - I guess you can view it as
| "lets imagine how the story of Henry VIII would work if much
| maligned Thomas Cromwell was actually the good guy"
|
| ... anyway in Wolf Hall, the character of Thomas Moore as written
| is largely consistent with what the OP is finding in that old
| manuscript - someone quite keen on their own cleverness and
| relatively comfortable with interrogations and burning people at
| the stake. In Wolf Hall his death is stubborn and needless, and
| in defiance of the wishes of his wife and daughter. At first I
| took those parts of Wolf Hall as an exercise in "lets see if its
| possible to invert the plot of A Man For All Seasons". But then
| this document "A dialoge concerning heresyes" seems to actually
| back up the Wolf Hall picture of Moore.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| As an aside, the "inversion of A Man For All Seasons" aspect is
| brilliant. The scene of More and Cromwell together in the Tower
| of London has this incredible exchange where Cromwell predicts
| that their dispute will be replayed throughout time and he
| fears he is being already typecast as the villain. I don't have
| the book in front of me, so I'm likely misremembering it. But
| the way that it tips its hat to the play was really moving to
| me.
|
| I'm obviously preaching to the choir, but damn, Hilary Mantel
| was brilliant.
| tptacek wrote:
| The burning of Thomas Hitton plays a role in Mantel's book,
| too.
| gwd wrote:
| Interesting deep-dive; but I'm afraid the diagnosis for
| authoritarianism at the end doesn't really ring true to me. He
| sees More defending things he must know deep down can't be true;
| but he doesn't actually see why, he's only making conjectures. So
| I don't think his model will be very useful in helping inoculate
| people against authoritarianism, or cure them once they've been
| infected.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > He could have simply agreed with them.
|
| Ha. That's the most brilliant joke in this whole write-up. Of
| course he _could not_ agree with them. Just as Luther simply
| could not stop himself from raising his 95 questions.
|
| > No reasonable human, then or now, believes that there's any
| institution, made up of fallible humans, that's never wrong.
|
| One of the basic tenets of (both Orthodox and Catholic) Christian
| theology is that the Church, _as the whole_ , can't be wrong
| because it is explicitly guided by the Christ himself through the
| Holy Ghost. That's why ecumenical councils were (and are, in the
| Orthodox branch) considered so important: if the brightest and
| most pious would come together and, while praying for the divine
| guidance, try to resolve a theological matter, then they _will_
| come to the correct answer. The Catholic church, as I understand
| it, has largely decided that this approach is overly cautious and
| expensive since a decision of a single person (by the virtue of
| being the pope of Rome) is already guaranteed to be correct.
| bombcar wrote:
| That was basically my reaction to the whole thing - I was
| expecting some amazing expose of More but it was ... More being
| More.
|
| And 1+ billion Catholics believe that the specific institution
| of The Church, which is made up of fallible humans, is never
| wrong _on matters of doctrine and morals_ - because it _is_ the
| Body of Christ and cannot be wrong.
|
| They may get into major arguments and quibbles about exactly
| what that _means_ but the concept of infallibility is pretty
| well cemented.
|
| Wait until the author digs deeper and learns that many, many
| intelligent people of the time and before thought burning at
| the stake _was the best option for the burned_ - and really,
| truly believed that, and had deep arguments for why.
|
| Also I have to love the recency bias, clearly Henry VIII can
| only be understood through the lens of a recent and current
| president!
|
| To further confuse our friend, he can visit the Church of
| England's website: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-
| worship/worship-t... and search "Thomas More" finding July 6th.
| Juliate wrote:
| > And 1+ billion Catholics believe that [...] The Church
| [...] is never wrong on matters of doctrine and morals
|
| It's a bit exaggerated to say that. Not all Catholics believe
| in the infallibility, neither in every single dogma, which
| are not articles of faith (and not believing in them,
| discussing them doesn't make one less Catholic than an
| other).
|
| Even wondering what proportion of Catholics know about all of
| them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There is a rather important distinction, in that Papal
| infallibility and the patriarchs and ecumenical councils all
| apply to very narrow circumstances.
|
| The Church is a duality that mirrors Christ's dual nature: as
| both mortal man and God the son, so too is the Church made up
| of mortal people and God the holy Spirit. The divine part is
| infallible, the mortal part is still very much human.
|
| All of which is to say that yes, Catholics and Orthodox
| Christians both agree that the institutions _can_ get things
| wrong, most especially when people in power fail. After all,
| the Pope was once one of the patriarchs of what is now the
| Orthodox Church. It is impossible for the two to be in schism
| if the institution was infallible prior to the schism itself.
| achierius wrote:
| > After all, the Pope was once one of the patriarchs of what
| is now the Orthodox Church
|
| This isn't true: the formal institution of the Pentarchy
| (ordering the Church under five patriarchs -- Rome,
| Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch) was only
| introduced by the decrees of the Quintisext Council (692),
| which the Pope notably refused to ratify. In essence, the
| eastern patriarchs declared there to be a Pentarchy with the
| Pope as 'first among equals' (a "prerogative of honour"),
| while the Pope continued to claim a position of pre-eminence
| over all other bishops.
|
| > It is impossible for the two to be in schism if the
| institution was infallible prior to the schism itself
|
| The Catholic position is essentially that ratification by the
| Bishop of Rome is a pre-condition for the Church to make a
| declaration on matters of faith or doctrine. With that in
| mind, divergences like the Quintisext Council or the
| Iconoclast Crisis are at best local policies, at worst
| heresies, but certainly not "teachings of the Church" which
| later had to be "reverted". The later schism is also just
| that -- the Patriarchs in the East choosing to break off from
| the "primary body" of the Church, moving from a state of
| union to a state of disunion, but leaving the Church itself
| still secure.
|
| While I'm not quite as well-versed as with Catholic doctrine,
| my understanding is that the Eastern Orthodox position is
| symmetrical, though less strictly defined since the Orthodox
| tend towards a less legalistic expression of Church
| hierarchy. They believe that the Church speaks through a
| consensus of its patriarchs, and therefore that the Pope has
| simply broken off of the Church by declaring otherwise. In
| their case, cases like the Council of Hieria (the council
| which instituted Iconoclasm) are invalid because neither the
| patriarchs nor their representatives were present at the
| council -- so heresy was never professed by the Church.
| vessenes wrote:
| Hmm. I think Neal is aware of the ins and outs of this portion
| of Christian religious culture and history.
|
| The question of infallibility was not open then or now to most
| 'thinkers' in the church: that is while it was a matter of
| public doctrine and thus a rule for the parish, in private
| elites debated and discussed. More was a contemporary of
| Erasmus, and the church had an entire concept of anti popes for
| goodness sake, popes that had deceived the church. These are
| frameworks for acknowledging precisely this point - mistakes
| are made, new things happen.
|
| Modern Catholicism (to this outsider's eye) has many vigorous
| sects and differences of opinion carried out regionally and
| locally. Perhaps on those terms More was correct - if you stop
| burning people at the stake they tend to disagree more volubly.
|
| What Neal sketches and I think is intriguing is that More seems
| to have had the bad taste to have been a hard hard ideologue,
| principled in that he died for his ideology, but not someone
| who say wanted to stick around to be father to his daughter or
| husband to his wife if it meant turning a blind eye to Henry
| VIII's marriage plans.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think part of it is that most people can agree that someone
| could believe in something so strongly that they wouldn't
| compromise it, even if it meant death.
|
| The hard part is understanding someone doing that about
| something YOU wouldn't care about.
| achierius wrote:
| I don't know if he is. A lot of people, even historians, do
| not understand traditional medieval Christian (i.e. what is
| today Catholic and Orthodox) dogma, and so are often
| surprised when people historically act in ways that "don't
| make sense". I suspect the reason is because in today's
| America-centric world, the most visible strain of
| Christianity is Protestantism, which functions very
| differently.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| You misunderstand what an Antipope is. It is not "a pope who
| deceived the Church", it is someone claiming to be a pope
| while he is not. And that notion is in no way abandoned,
| there have been a number of antipopes in contemporary
| history, see Peter II, Gregory XVIII and Peter III of the
| Palmarian Church as the most notable examples.
| vessenes wrote:
| Thanks for the additional education. My religious
| upbringing claimed all popes were antichrists so I have to
| come at catholic history cautiously at best :)
|
| That said do you think the main point stands, that
| doctrinal debate is a thing that happens out of the public
| eye in the history of the church? It certainly seems that
| way to an outsider.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Interesting, but I believe Stephenson is completely wrong about
| the motivation. Thomas More, as his writings in Utopia make
| clear, was most worried about the all-against-all that comes from
| anarchy. Moreover, in some sense, he and his fellow anti-
| Reformation thinkers were correct; the Reformation did lead to
| enormous trouble.
|
| The Wars of Religion, from Luther's 95 Theses to the Treaty of
| Westphalia, lasted for 100 years
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion). The
| anti-Reformation thinkers could see perfectly well that they
| would be the near-inevitable result of letting just anybody set
| forth their own interpretation of Scripture. From our own vantage
| point, the Reformation was undoubtedly a good thing, even if you
| are Catholic, because it established freedom of thought
| (relatively speaking), but it was several generations of conflict
| that was often vicious even by the standards of war.
|
| If More had had perfect knowledge of the future, looking at the
| Wars of Religion that the Reformation would lead to, he would not
| have been at all surprised. If he thought that burning half a
| dozen heretics was preferable to several generations of civil
| war, well, he might have been incorrect, but it doesn't make him
| a monster. It makes him a man afraid of the storm that's coming,
| and desperate to avoid it by any means possible.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It's widely forgotten that burning heretics was widely accepted
| in Christian theology, especially at the time.
|
| The rationale is quite simple: They believed in an eternal
| Hell. Unrepentant heresy places you in eternal Hell. Hell also
| has levels and is not the same for everyone; not necessarily
| Dante's circles, but not far off. This is easily proven, just
| look at Saint Thomas Aquinas, who warned that sins against the
| deliberate intellect (heresy, blasphemy, schism) are much more
| inexcusable than sins of the passions and nature (lust, sloth);
| even if both are damnable. Vice versa, Heaven also has levels,
| and it was (and is) a pious opinion that no two people are ever
| at exactly the same level.
|
| If Hell is eternal, and it is possible for you to make your own
| Hell worse, killing you if you refuse to repent directly
| prevents you from making your eternal punishment worse. It also
| prevents bringing other people with you, and the guilt you
| would bear for influencing other people. In a way, it is an act
| of charity to other people and yourself; causing some Saints
| and scholars to comment at the time to do otherwise would
| actually be _hateful_. There 's also the issue of, if someone
| was going to repent, the logical assumption that going to the
| noose or stake is a much stronger motivator than dying in your
| sleep at 73.
|
| In line with the above, the very act of burning itself was seen
| as somewhat of a charity. A public spectacle to warn against
| following them (charity to the viewers); but also a constant
| suggestion, even to the end, to the burned of what is waiting
| for them eternally, giving them one last chance to repent. For
| what it's worth though, Historians tell us that most of the
| burned died by suffocation and not by the actual burning, which
| would have been probably also been known at the time.
|
| (Worth remembering, both the Reformers and the original
| Catholics burned at the stake for similar rationales.)
| flerchin wrote:
| They burned people, alive, for literally nothing. Your 4
| paragraphs of apologia are simply that.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I have no doubt, nor question, that some people were burned
| alive, for no actual crime; just as I have no doubt, nor
| question, that some people are imprisoned for stupid
| reasons today. The principles matter; and explaining the
| cold logic behind it, should not be interpreted as an
| apologia.
|
| On that note, "for nothing" implies an automatic bias
| towards lack of belief; not shared by the majority of
| people on earth. While Christians no longer burn at the
| stake, Islamic countries still stone for adultery.
| fifticon wrote:
| if it matches what happened in my country during the
| witch hunt era, people were often burned so other people
| could take their loot. That is, there was a strong
| alignment between who drove the accusations, and who
| stood to gain from the victim's untimely death.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Quite possibly; however, it's very difficult to say due
| to lack of data and no way to prove it one way or the
| other. I do know that within Christian theological
| circles, this would have been considered an abhorrent
| crime of bearing false witness, just as it has always
| been.
|
| The other reason it's difficult is the sheer prevalence,
| even in our modern culture, of the _Black Legend_ which
| injected all sorts of myths regarding the Inquisition and
| Medieval culture. For example, the Inquisition rarely
| used torture, Torquemada only had 1% of his heretics
| executed, and there is only one documented instance of a
| woman ever being racked (and it wasn 't even part of the
| Inquisition). The effects of the Black Legend were so
| extreme, that to quote the modern European historian
| Elvira Roca Barea:
|
| "If we deprive Europe of its hispanophobia and anti-
| Catholicism, its modern history becomes
| incomprehensible."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend
|
| Or, if that sounds too boring, broad, or controversial,
| here's _History for Atheists_ admitting the Inquisition
| and witch hunts is one of the dumbest arguments for
| atheism, due to heavy involvement of commonly accepted
| myths:
|
| https://historyforatheists.com/2024/02/the-great-
| myths-14-th...
| jandrese wrote:
| People like to paint the witch burners as ignorant, but
| they knew exactly what they were doing. Evil people using
| religion to give cover for their actions goes back
| forever.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Having just lived through a period where witch hunts were
| popular, my impression is very much that most people
| involved in them were misguided and perhaps only a select
| few were truly opportunistically evil.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think you underestimate how many people are willing to
| play dumb if it will get them out of trouble.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Right. And understanding the why requires one to put aside
| their feelings and analyze the unsavory. Reducing
| everything to knee-jerk call outs does nothing for anyone.
| bregma wrote:
| It seems to me "Thou shalt not kill" is pretty clear and
| unambiguous.
|
| All I can say is history is inevitably determined by the sick
| fucks that rise to the top.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Even an amateur Christian theologian can tell you that this
| only refers to unjust death / murder; as the original
| Hebrew text also espouses more clearly than the English
| translation (l trtskh - _lo tirtsah_ , form of _ratzach_ ,
| murder). The Ten Commandments also come from the book of
| Leviticus Chapter 19 and not just Exodus, and Leviticus 20
| onward is well known for the death penalty for several
| offenses described in the broader Mosaic Law; forming the
| religious objection that otherwise, God's chosen leader
| (Moses) himself ordered violations of the 10 Commandments
| in the very same book.
| krapp wrote:
| It isn't, because there are numerous instances in the Bible
| of God directly commanding people to kill, and even
| punishing people for showing mercy.
|
| "Thou shalt not kill" isn't a sin because human life is
| inherently valuable to God (reading the OT, it clearly
| isn't) but because humans are God's property, and so only
| God, who created humans, has the right to decide when and
| how they die. Under the particularly cruel and brutal
| Bronze Age ethics from which the Abrahamic God as a concept
| was derived, killing is perfectly justifiable when God
| wills it, and is only a sin otherwise because it defies
| God's will.
|
| ...which shouldn't even be possible if God is omnipotent
| but that's a whole other can of worms.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I don't think you grasp what "omnipotent" means. That
| literally means unlimited power, which would actually be
| an argument for why God has this authority.
|
| On that note, who is being cruel here: A God who imposed
| rules on how he wants his creatures to behave to his
| other creatures; or a creature who hurts his other
| creatures, and then calls God cruel for stopping it?
|
| Edit, to your reply:
|
| > I know what omnipotent means. The contradiction is that
| it shouldn't be possible to violate the will of an
| omnipotent God.
|
| You will have to provide some citations for such an axiom
| that aren't based on an atheist stereotype of
| "omnipotent" and "will."
|
| TLDR of a Christian perspective:
|
| God is love. Love does not exist outside of God. Love is
| defined as willing the good of another person. As such,
| love is fundamentally a choice. As such, humans must have
| a choice to love. To do otherwise, would make a human a
| robot. God knows what choice we will make, but does not
| force it. (A parent who knows the teen will not resist
| the cake on the counter, does not force the teen to eat
| cake.) It does not follow, that if humans refuse to love,
| God should nullify all consequences.
|
| On that note, Hell was not made for humans but for Satan,
| and we as humans have only the ability to choose love
| (God) or absence of love (Hell). A person who has chosen
| to not love, logically cannot live with love itself.
| Viewing it as humans choosing to damn themselves by
| refusing to love, would be a more accurate perspective.
| krapp wrote:
| I know what omnipotent means. The contradiction is that
| it shouldn't be possible to violate the will of an
| omnipotent God.
|
| You can invoke "free will", but that's just another layer
| of abstraction for the same problem. If free will truly
| exists, then God isn't omnipotent. If He does, free will
| cannot exist.
|
| >On that note, who is being cruel here: A God who imposed
| rules on how he wants his creatures to behave to his
| other creatures; or a creature who hurts his other
| creatures, and then calls God cruel for stopping it?
|
| God isn't cruel for imposing rules, God is cruel for
| allowing evil to persist and for punishing humans with
| eternal torment for a state of sin they cannot absolve
| themselves of. The God of the Bible is very obviously not
| good, or just, or even self-consistent. More than once He
| just lets humans into heaven because He likes them.
|
| But yes humans are cruel, too.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > If free will truly exists, then God isn't omnipotent.
| If He does, free will cannot exist.
|
| This doesn't seem logical to me, but perhaps I'm missing
| something. Can God not be all powerful and yet decide to
| allow humans to make decisions for themselves?
|
| Just thinking about my own children, while I am not all
| powerful, I certainly am powerful enough to force them to
| comply with most of my instructions. Yet I do not, since
| part of raising them is giving them the freedom to make
| mistakes and (hopefully) learn from them and do better.
| munch117 wrote:
| "Thou shalt not kill" is a rule that appears in every
| shortlist of rules that has been issued by any king,
| ever. The rule is there because every society has that
| rule. It doesn't apply to how you treat people that the
| king doesn't like, of course. But that exception applies
| equally to hittite kings and christian kings.
|
| There are other commandments that are characteristic of
| christianity, but this is not one of them. "Thou shalt
| not" commandments are basically the same in all cultures.
| The "thou shalt" commandments are not.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Lets remember these sickos were usually after power, at any
| cost. The very humans they were supposed to be shepherding
| were considered an asset to be used. (kind of like our
| personal data today, no?) Serf/slave labor was to be used,
| their souls were just a by product to help control them.
| (also like today with evangelicals, except for votes.)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is a historically inaccurate take.
|
| The Middle Ages spanned hundreds of years across
| countries that had very different views from each other.
| If you can think of something strange, it probably
| happened. Just one example: Women might not be able to
| own property in one town, but can literally vote
| alongside princes in another (abbesses in Medieval
| Germany). Stereotypes are rarely directly applicable to
| the whole period, any more than me digging up a
| stereotype of an 1850s Californian would be applicable
| today.
|
| Secondly though, it downplays the likelihood that the
| majority of priests, bishops, and cardinals, did labor in
| good faith and, at least on paper, viewed the rules
| imposed as equally applicable to themselves. Whether they
| followed them or not, even the serf believed God would
| avenge. I would say a more accurate comparison for the
| nuanced authority and love-hate relationship might be our
| modern police.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| <priests, bishops, and cardinals, did labor in good
| faith>
|
| Indulgences, crusades, excommunication, infallibility of
| the popes and only God knows what else. These are not
| stereotypes, they are facts. The belief that God would
| avenge is a Biblical fact, all the others was pure
| fantasy, used as controlling tools. That is history.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yeah, yeah, thanks for announcing your Protestantism as
| the definitely historically accurate opinion.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Don't be offended, protestant atrocities are well
| documented. (Luther and Calvin and others have a lot of
| blood on their hands , to be sure.) Documented history,
| just like the catholic history, both of which are not
| opinions at all.
|
| Facing reality is never easy, just necessary for avoiding
| future calamities. Here in the states, we avoid truthful
| history all the time, hopefully not to an eventual
| disaster.
| amalcon wrote:
| > "Thou shalt not kill"
|
| The word "kill" here is famously a translation issue. The
| original Hebrew word means something closer to (but not
| precisely) "commit murder".
|
| Don't assume that the King James translation would capture
| the kind of nuance you are asserting is absent.
| analog31 wrote:
| In addition, the words of a heretic were believed to be a
| mortal threat to the eternal lives of those who might hear
| them. So heresy was the spiritual equivalent of randomly
| spraying bullets into a crowded place with a machine gun.
|
| The beliefs have not changed, but democratic society has
| moderated their effects.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| There were atheists in every age. I think its pointless to
| blame dead people for dead people stuff but I don't think the
| prevailing belief system exonerates them either.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Nitpick, because it really rubs me the wrong way, to see this
| repeated again and again.
|
| What you are describing as _anarchy_ here, is _anomy_ in
| reality.
|
| Anarchy is basically any society without rule from the top,
| whatever the top may be, replace by reasonable self-rule and
| consensual interactions of that society.
|
| Anomy is chaos, ruled by the ones with the biggest bats,
| without any protections against that, for the masses.
|
| That is a _big_ difference.
| sympil wrote:
| _Anomy is chaos, ruled by the ones with the biggest bats,
| without any protections against that, for the masses._
|
| Then anarchy as you describe it can not exist. In a power
| vacuum someone will have the biggest bat and thus be the
| ruler.
| tptacek wrote:
| Despite the obscurity of the book, GPT 4o easily "translates" the
| archaic blackletter and attributes it to More; presumably, it's
| been trained on this text.
| csours wrote:
| Heresy isn't a sin against a man like a pope or a president.
|
| Heresy is a sin against the moral convictions of the in-group.
|
| > They're making a public gesture of submissiveness.
|
| Submissiveness, as seen from the outside. Loyalty, as seen from
| the inside. The head of the group is the standard bearer of the
| group, not just the person in charge.
|
| The concept of loyalty signaling makes a lot of nonsense more
| understandable to me.
|
| ---
|
| On the whole, I think labor unions are net positive benefit - so
| it's hard to point out any problems with them. It feels disloyal.
|
| But one problem is that union representatives have to fight on
| behalf of the worst dues-paying members. If you don't fight for
| them, you get voted out next election. You can't have a disloyal
| rep!
|
| You signal loyalty by pushing boundaries, especially when it's
| time to fight.
|
| I'm loyal to you, I'm fighting for you - so you should be loyal
| to me.
|
| ---
|
| I'm living through my 3rd personal heresy. The first was against
| the church I was raised in, but more importantly against the
| church my family still attends.
|
| It's the 2nd heresy that's notable to this discussion - Heresy
| against the rational skeptics. Debunking was never enough. Being
| right was never enough. There is no such thing as irrational
| thought - all thoughts are reasonable inside a person's head.
|
| There might be such a thing as rational communication - the
| ability to build a common picture in a group of people.
| You're wrong - we are both communicating in the same (or
| proximate) framework or context, but you have incorrect
| observations or conclusions. I don't understand what
| you mean - you need to do more work if you want me to understand.
| You're being irrational - we have a severe context mismatch and
| you need to take my context.
|
| But what we have right now is loyalty signaling in public speech
| It is disloyal to even try to understand the context mismatch.
| People not in our context are dangerous enemies.
|
| The problem with rationality is that we use leaky meat to think
| with, but we pretend like we don't.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| > I was not able to find an electronic copy on the Internet,
| which is surprising given the author's prominence.
|
| I'm not sure if Stephenson is specifically looking for a PDF
| scan, but I found an online copy reasonably easily:
|
| https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A07698.0001.001
| mr_toad wrote:
| > More has to stake out a position, and he has to do so
| "publicly" where the "public" in this case is a few thousand
| literate Englishmen who actually care about such things.
|
| I guess he's saying that only a few thousand people cared about
| More's position.
|
| But as an outsider what has always puzzled me is how strongly
| _common people_ care about what seem to me to be hair-splitting
| religious arguments. Henry's split with the catholic church
| touched off numerous rebellions. And ironically when some later
| Kings tried to become catholic again, there was even more
| violence.
|
| To be it's unfathomable that people who struggle to put food on
| the table will take up arms in the name of quite abstruse
| arguments.
| trhway wrote:
| > how strongly common people care about what seem to me to be
| hair-splitting religious arguments
|
| it wasn't hair splitting. The Reformation coincides with
| nation-forming (and is driven by it). So instead of loyalty to
| the remote Pope, you get loyalty to your nation. The Bible and
| service. etc in your language and so forth. Classic tribalism
| of "us" vs "them" which kings and others at the top happily
| exploited.
|
| The Reformation v0.1 - Jan Huss - was kicking out Germans and
| others out of Prague University on the basis of it being
| Bohemian (i.e. Czech) institution.
|
| >To be it's unfathomable that people who struggle to put food
| on the table will take up arms in the name of quite abstruse
| arguments.
|
| It has been shown many times that those people are the easiest
| to be fired up for some ideological cause. As the bolshevicks
| were saying "proletariat has nothing to lose, but their chains"
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Reformation was an extremely important historical event, with
| very high spiritual, practical and political stakes. This might
| seem strange to people living in today's post-religious world,
| but back then, things were much different.
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