Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2887669" data-attributes="member: 22779">Bugger.  I always got those two terms mixed.  Thanks for the catch.  One thought about religion in this sort of setup.  Instead of a given principality (I use the term to mean any group of people from a thorp or clan all the way to a nation state) having a number of small (ish) competing religous groups, it would greatly help both a religious group and a temporal leader to unite.  In this concept you wind up with a sort of patron system where Religion A backs Political Leader A and together, they have the power to run the principality.  Whether or not competing religions are tolerated would vary wildly, but, in each principality, you would have one single dominant (or perhaps a very small number of dominant) religions, all with very close ties to the crown (or whatever the leader is).Thus you wind up with something like Athens, if Athene actually existed and her priests could actually cast miracles.  A powerful city state where the rulers and the clergy work hand in hand to maintain power.To me, this could be a very stable relationship.  Both sides benefit and neither side benefits if the other is disadvantaged.  And, neither side really benefits from the other side ceasing to exist.  If the given religion takes over the principality, their god may come into direct conflict with the god of another principality.  Most pantheons frown on this.  And, a principality without patronage is greatly disadvantaged.Scarred Lands, in some ways, uses this system.  Each group of people has a patron diety and the patron dieties are reluctant to get involved personally with day to day issues.  Thus, there is some separation of church and state, but, both lean heavily on eachother in a symbiotic relationship.</blockquote>

Verification