Posted on 09/21/2010 8:41:25 AM PDT by pinochet
Yes, and history is repeating itself.
The Tudors did not repeal Magna Carta. Elizabeth respected the prerogatives of Parliament and the aristocracy. She was constantly politicking to get the appropriations she needed.
In France, I had the Bourbons in mind. So, by your definition Henry VIII was an authoritarian because he took England Protestant but France was not, even though Richelieu actually made war on the French Protestants. And by your definition Louis IV wasn't an authoritarian King, even though he is universally regarded as such.
“They tried. Henry succeeded.”
Tell that to the Knights Templar.
(King owed them money, basically ram-rodded the Pope into screwing them. Church recently admitted it was used.)
I think you still miss my point. Ecclesiastical authorities (spiritual authorities) were imposing temporal punishments (depriving people of property, torture, death) for spiritual offenses. It may not have been as widespread as some would like to make it appear, but I don’t think anyone denies that it happened.
No they weren’t. You really need to study up a bit. Temporal punishments were meted out by temporal authorities.
Because, you see, there was a distinction between two two forms of authority.
You’ve read too much Enlightenment cavilling at the Ancien Regime (during Absolutism) and too much Dan Brown.
Yeah. That’s what I meant when I wrote that the French kings succeeded more than previous kings and emperors.
But there’s a huge gap between that instance of kings abusing power and Henry’s de jure creation of royal absolutist supremacy over the Church.
Thomas More would never have given his life to resist the French king’s abuse of power. He gave it rather than acknowledge the king’s claim of absolute supremacy over the Church. If you can’t see the difference, then, I guess there’s little point in continuing the conversation.
No, you distort what I wrote. I’m simply saying that in England royal absolutism was de jure over the Church as of Henry VIII and growing in all other areas until it reached its zenith under James I. Parliament was increasingly being reduced to rubber stamp, which is why the Civil War erupted. Please don’t tell me Elizabeth was some kind of nicey, nicey respector of liberties. For her courtiers and allies, yes. Her enemies got the the rack and sword.
I do not judge the degree of absolutism in terms of the treatment of the CATHOLIC church. That’s just plain false. I judge it in terms of de jure and de facto. It was de jure in Protestant territories, not just England but Zurich etc.
It was de facto in Spain and France. It became de jure in Austria at the tail end of the absolutist period.
I make no brief for Louis XIV or Richelieu. They were scoundrels. But the church was not reduced de jure to a department of state—that attempt came with the French Revolution and it failed.
Where in heaven’s name did I say that Louis XIV was not authoritarian? What part of de facto absolutism don’t you understand? It’s authoritarian for sure. De jure a settlement was reached (Gallican settlemetn) that left the Church freer than if it were a department of state. Not much, but some.
The situation in France was bad, but it’s not the same as Henry’s de jure act of supremacy. The popes fought against the de facto absolutism in Spain and France.
Absolutism was in the air. Both Protestants and Catholics embraced it. But Protestants are the ones who created the state church. Period. Catholic monarchs had to stop short of that, not because they wanted to—they’d have gladly created a state church just as much as Protestants did. But they had to stop short because the kings were still Catholic and reducing the church to a department of state could not be done de jure in a Catholic framework. So monarchs like Louis XIV had to work around it—de facto.
First of all, I’ve never read any Dan Brown at all, so I do expect an apology for that slander. Secondly, if the Inquisitions were established and authorized by the Papal Bulls, you cannot divorce them from Ecclesiastical Authority. Charles Manson didn’t actually murder anyone in the Tate-LaBianca killing spree, but he gave the order for it to happen, and every rational person agrees that he is the one who bears the lion’s share of the blame in the matter.
The suggestion James I was an absolute monarch is laughable. Yes, he believed in the divine right of kings, but he was constrained by the English constitution. He quarreled with Parliament throughout his reign because they wouldn't give him the money he wanted. He repeatedly prorogued Parliament in fits of pique only to call them back later when he ran out of money again. For his time his policies toward Catholics were benign. He never really had the time to try to establish an absolute monarchy anyway because it would have interfered too much with his hunting and other sports. The Civil War broke out because his son Charles foolishly tried to implement ideas the old man wisely didn't.
No, they were bad rulers, among other things, because they were absolutists. But they were not alone in that.
I didn’t divorce the two, temporal and spiritual authority. I distingushed the two.
If you don’t know that the temporal rulers took over control of the Inquisition in Spain, then you don’t know much modern history. If the one who gives the orders is the one most responsible then I have a simple statement for you:
the
one
who
gave
the
orders
to execute
heretics was . . . . . . .
THE TEMPORAL AUTHORITY.
I’m glad to hear you haven’t read Dan Brown. You’ve gotten your propaganda lessons elsewhere—the Anglo-American textbooks and culture are full of it—Church as bogeyman, while making apologies for the tyrannical temporal governments. There’s blame to go around, but you, apparently, simply must put it predominantly on the Church.
The problem is that the by 1500 the emerging State (there was no such thing in the Middle Ages) had seized most power for itself. That’s just a fact.
Every historian of the period that I know considers James an absolutist.
Yeah, he and Charles eventually provoked Parliament to revolt.
But
why
do
you
think
that
happened?
BECAUSE JAMES WAS AN ABSOLUTIST. HAD HE BEEN a nicey nice respecter of Parliament, guess what? Maybe, just maybe, the Civil War and the triumph of the bourgeoisie would never have happened.
“. . . the consensus is Elizabeth was one of the most successful and popular of the English monarchs. And no autocrat.”
I don’t know what history books you get this from. Sir Walter Raleigh might beg to differ.
Look, you could be a Protestant advocate without having to defend the indefensible. A lot of people I know do that. I don’t defend the de facto absolutist Catholic Monarchs. I just draw a distinction between de facto and de jure and point out that the de jure was justified, in part, by the Protestant ecclesiastics. But you have to whitewash Elizabeth’s autocratic rule for some reason. Why not call a spade a spade? The kings of the time were tyrants and because they reduced the Church, de jure and de facto, to subserviance the Church was split into national units, ending the last obstacle to rampant nationalism which produced four centuries of blood and gore, culminating in 2 world wars.
Had the kings and princes not glommed on to the theological disputes of the time, those theological disputes might have been resolved and we might have muddled through without the nationalism and done a smidgen better. Not a whole lot better, to be sure, but smidgen.
How’s that for “what might have beens”—with which this thread started? Two can play that game.
“If you don’t know that the temporal rulers took over control of the Inquisition in Spain, then you don’t know much modern history.”
Of course I know this, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were acting with the authorization of the Church. The Church allowed the temporal authorities to oversee the Inquisition, and mete out temporal punishments for spiritual offenses.
You say “There’s blame to go around, but you, apparently, simply must put it predominantly on the Church.”. Ok, we can agree at least that the Church bears some blame, even if others bear blame as well. At first, you seemed to be saying the Church was blameless and had nothing to do with it, which is untrue.
My point is that, there was a similarity to Islam, in allowing and authorizing people to suffer these punishments for spiritual offenses. The Church might not have been able to stop it entirely, if the State authorities were bent on doing this, but they did let the genie out of the bottle and I think they certainly didn’t do enough to denounce it later.
Actually much of what the French and Spanish “Catholic” monarchs did in the 1500s and 1600s was against the authorization of the popes, who protested again and again. Sorry you don’t know that aspect of modern history.
Even the initial papal authorization of the Spanish Inquisition was clouded by the pope being at the mercy of Spanish troops for protection from his enemies.
But you will blame the Church above all others no matter what. I spread the blame out.
You can have it your way in your own little world.
“Even the initial papal authorization of the Spanish Inquisition was clouded by the pope being at the mercy of Spanish troops for protection from his enemies.
But you will blame the Church above all others no matter what. I spread the blame out.”
I guess you didn’t even bother to read what I wrote, since I did say that there was blame to be placed on others. However, Kings will be Kings, and they are not held to the same standard as those who are supposed to be shepherding Christ’s flock.
The Church may have tried to reign in the worst excesses, but the fact remains that it set up the Inquisition, with Inquisitors appointed by, and acting under the authority of the Pope. The Inquisition employed torture as a method of operation, and meted out temporal punishments for spiritual matters. This isn’t something that I can imagine Christ, or Peter, would ever have approved of, even if they had been at the mercy of Kings.
Protestants also engaged in this behavior, and I condemn them as well. No Christian should have taken it upon themselves to persecute heretics or unbelievers in these ways, and we shouldn’t make excuses for their behavior.
Thanks for your thoughtful insights, Mrs. Don-o. I am well aware that many of the media reports on Catholic abuses, are being driven by secular liberals who hate the Church and what it stands for. The same Hollywood liberals who defend the movie director, Roman Polanski, who raped a 13 year old girl - are the same liberals who are condemning the abuses in the Catholic Church.
The vast majority of priests and bishops in the Catholic Church are good and decent people, who live according to the religious vows they made, and they proclaim the gospel of Christ in an admirable way. The Catholic Church continues to receive millions of converts every year, which shows that the Church is guided by a higher power, that is greater than the fallible humans who control the Church.
I want to leave you with a quotation by the great American intellectual, Dr. Russell Kirk, who converted to the Catholic Church in 1964 at the age of 46. Kirk described what attracted him to the Catholic Church:
“What I found in the Church was Authority. Catholicism is governed by Authority; Protestants, by private judgment. I had become painfully aware of the insufficiency of Private Judgment in the twentieth century—every man creating his own morals. In my search, over the years, for a sound apprehension of the human condition, I came at last to recognize in the Roman Church the elements of Truth, as sustained by two thousand years of continuity; by the wealth of wisdom in the Church’s pronouncements; by the lives and words of Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Gregory the Great, particularly, among the Church Fathers; by Acton’s observation, if you will, that no institution purely human could have survived, over the centuries, so many blunders”
Here is the article that had that quotation from Dr. Kirk: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-05-035-f
In fact, I am going to print it out and give it to a friend of mine from church: he is the sort of soul who will appreciate Russell Kirk, if he does not know him and love him already. He is thinking of the end of his life (he is in his mid-80's) and I reckon this will cheer him.
Thank you again, very much!
I'm tired of you trying to argue Catholic v. Protestant polemics through history you know nothing about.
Buh, bye.
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