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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26703 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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So I am willing to bet that even today Catholics and protestants know that it was mostly political strife. As were the other major Christian schisms and fights. If you look it is very often some inter elite fight.

I can maybe believe that the elites were primarily motivated by real politik, but masses and mobs really did murder each other on the streets throughout the era. I find it hard to believe that their true motives were stuff like decreasing regional tax-kickups to the Holy Roman Emperor.

I agree characterizing it as an inter-elite struggle I think is incorrect. But I think even for the hoi polloi, I think the violence while on the surface religious, was mainly executed politically. The differences in dogma providing a patina to cover what really can be seen as later as grasping for political control even for the common rabble. I don't have a good quote but I found this source interesting on the period: https://archive.org/details/voraciousidolsvi0000wand

Which might be a salient message for the conflicts in our own age.

I find it hard to believe that their true motives were stuff like decreasing regional tax-kickups to the Holy Roman Emperor.

I don't know much about the continental side but in Ireland a lot of sectarian mob violence in the 17th and 18th centuries can be explained by fear of another Jacobite rebellion or unwanted economic competition from Catholics:

The winter of 1795–6, immediately following the formation of the Orange Order, saw Protestants drive around 7,000 Catholics out of County Armagh. In a sign that tension over the linen trade was still a burning issue, 'Wreckers' continued the Peep o' Day Boys strategy of smashing looms and tearing webs in Catholic homes to eliminate competition. This resulted in a reduction in the hotly competitive linen trade which had been in a brief slump. A consequence of this scattering of highly-political Catholics, however, was a spread of Defenderism throughout Ireland.

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