Dead body paraded around in Britain

[Elok]

How come the Protestant parts of Europe and the Americas industrialized sooner, and had higher literacy rates and an easier transition to democracy than the Catholic parts? Does ignorance and poverty promote Catholicism or does Catholicism lead to ignorance and poverty?

I suspect neither; in America, at least, Catholics were discriminated against until fairly recently. Locke excepted Catholics from his views on toleration on the grounds that they should be considered agents of a foreign power, and the view was still around for JFK to fight in 1960. Catholics in this country were historically poor immigrants at the bottom of (white) society. As for Europe, I don't know. My fairly uneducated guess is that Catholicism only remained strong in areas where princes were not strong enough to undermine it and assert their own authority (which was the big appeal of Protestantism to rulers). Areas without a strong local government would naturally remain weak, as they had been during the middle ages. So that would be #1 of your two options, sort of, but not in the insidious way you imply. Something of a coincidence--if my wild speculation is even correct.

[Kidlicious]

Minority protestant sects were shut out of government and education, but were allowed to set up free enterprise in England. They were like modern day asians.

[Dr Strangelove]

my argument is that you don't know what you're talking about. i would also add, in light of your last post, that you don't understand analogy.

you claimed that the people of the languedoc were subjects of the king of france - which isn't true, as i have already pointed out. you claimed that the papal legate was executed - again not true, he was assasinated (although i accept this may be just a bad use of language on your part). in fact you have at no point demostrated even a basic knowledge of the subject.

you claimed also that the legate's murder was a legitmate reason for the pope to go to war. perhaps you'd like to explain why, giving due consideration to the facts of the matter...

Let me go over it again. The pope decided that Cathars weren't to be tolerated. He asked the Count of Toulouse to exterminate them. The Count, apparently a tolerant fellow, refused. The pope then excommunicated him and sent a legate to inform him of his excommunication. Some of the Count's friends got out of control and killed the legate. The Count was appalled, relented, offered to initiate the removal of the Cathars, but mercy was not on the minds of the King of France, nor on that of the self-appointed representative of Christ on earth. The King sent Simon Montforte with troops to Languedoc, the pope sent abbot, Arnaud Amaury, to provide guidance for the crusade. The first order of action was the sack of Toulouse, where the Count and his family were killed, then under the abbot's direction the crusade went on for 20 more years. If a town or village could not give up some Cathars for extermination then the entire town or village would be assumed to be collaberating with the Cathars and would be put to the sword. There never were very many Cathars, so most towns and villages wound up being put to the sword. Hence the entire region depopulated. The land was redistributed amongst northern French nobility who relocated their own serfs to the area.

[Dr Strangelove]

Minority protestant sects were shut out of government and education, but were allowed to set up free enterprise in England. They were like modern day asians.

Minority Protestant sects were allowed to practice unfettered so long as they swore recgnition of king or queen as head of the Church of England and paid tithes.

[Kidlicious]

Minority Protestant sects were allowed to practice unfettered so long as they swore recgnition of king or queen as head of the Church of England and paid tithes.

Thus, the beginning of religious toleration.

[molly bloom]

Your Celtic ancestors did it Bugs.

Along with displaying the heads of their enemies, fighting naked, painting their bodies with woad and making human sacrifices. Ah, the old style...

[molly bloom]

Beacause Catholics make a point of honoring Christian martyrs?

Like Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Servetus, Hus, Tyndale..... ?


‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as shall never be put out.’

October 16th, 1555
A cross in the road in Oxford’s Broad St marks the site of the execution. Workmen had discovered part of a stake and some bits of charred bone there, in what had once been part of the town ditch. Whether, as the flames were kindled, Latimer really said, ‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as shall never be put out’ is uncertain. The remark, if Latimer made it, came ultimately from the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp in the second century given by the historian Eusebius, an author he knew well. It was in the 1583 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, but not in the earlier edition of 1563. John Foxe was unusual among intellectuals at the time in thinking that burning people to death for their opinions was not an altogether commendable idea...

http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/latimer-and-ridley-burned-stake

[molly bloom]

Why do you keep coming back to this considering how utterly ridiculous you ended up looking last time?

That Irish Protestant Samuel Beckett comes to mind:

Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment [...] the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence. Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.

Samuel Beckett: Proust (1931)

That makes one of us. We were taught about Good Queen Bess and Bloody Mary

Sorry, but I don't believe you. You're simply playing the martyr hari card again.

[molly bloom]

Elizabeth executed more people than Queen Mary ever did, yet she gets a pass because she's on the 'good side', ie, not Catholic.

Length of Elizabeth I's reign: 45 years.

Length of Mary I's reign: 5 years


Mary executed nearly 300, explicitly for the crime of heresy.

Elizabeth I showed toleration to Catholics who supported her as Queen of England, but the Papal Bull which incited Catholics to rebel against her and deprive her of her throne was hardly an inducement to greater toleration on her part. Even so her government made a distinction between heresy and treason.

[Alexander's Horse]

My sons are in Southwell House at their school, named after an English Jesuit martyr, Robert Southwell, hung, drawn and quartered in 1595.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Southwell_(Jesuit)

Terrible things are done in the name of religion.

[molly bloom]

What I have noticed is that historians tend to lie about the Catholic church

You couldn't make it up.

I'm going to need a citation on that.

That's what we often think of your claims.... for instance:

Opposition to the Catholic church in academia today is the standard position. If you're not anti-Catholic or anti-Clerical, you are considered unfit for a position.

Erm, proof, please ?

[molly bloom]

Like Henry VIII? Charles IX of Sweden? Etc. Absolutism wasn't confined to Catholics.

Henry VIII ? That chap who used to be a Roman Catholic ? Then became an Anglo-Catholic ?

[molly bloom]

Going along the lines that the Catholic church taught them to be absolutist, perhaps the Catholic church taught them other things as well. Like how to read.

Or be intolerant to Jews and other non-Roman Catholics.

[molly bloom]

So I was right, the Church did teach people to read. I rest my case.

The Roman Catholic Church taught SOME people to read. Not all. You make it sound as though the primary business of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe was setting up free schools for illiterate peasants. And unsurprisingly, you offer no evidence to support this insinuation or inference.

[Alexander's Horse]

It's never as simple as people make out, there were more Irish catholics fighting for England at the battle of the Boyne, and at other battles than with the Irish. Some of the figure quoted by feminists for witches burnt are just ridiculous, like a sort of medieval holocaust that never happened.

Some of the wars of religion were terrible in terms of loss of life and property but others were mild with populations changing allegiance without too much bloodshed. The Spanish had a lot of trouble getting to grips with the Dutch but in Germany there was much greater suffering if I recall correctly - after the religious disputes degenerated into civil war with foreign intervention and ravenous armies devastating whole regions over long periods of time.

Noble families tended to put family members on both sides of civil or religious conflict - to protect the family property and sucession. In the bio of Southwell it notes his family earlier did very well out of Henry VIII's confiscation of the monasteries. Some of the battles of the English civil wars were bloodbaths but others were noted for their theatricality and display, with kinsmen reluctant to inflict too much damage on each other, and non-professional armies blundering about.

Probably the worst in English history was the Norman conquest, but even there a lot of Anglo Saxon nobility survived with their lands, if somewhat diminished, according to new scholarship on The Doomsday Book. If they were prepared to cooperate with the new Norman overlords. Marriage into Norman families was one way to do this.