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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="briggart" data-source="post: 9361248" data-attributes="member: 6805135">This is a bit tangential to your main point, but I got a somewhat different impression from Bernard of Clairvaux essay. He does indeed say that killing of infidels is justified and should not be consider murder, because he likens that to the killing of a criminal. He also adds that killing of infidels should be avoided if other means to prevent them from oppressing Christians could be found, but says that given the current state of things killing them is preferable to leaving Christians under their yoke. He speaks about expelling Muslims from Jerusalem, of "routing the Nations of the infidels", but I do not see a call for a blank extermination of Muslims. This is specifically about Christian control of Jerusalem and neighbouring territories, which itself builds on centuries of conflict between Europeans and Muslims, going back to the Arab conquests of several territories previously part of the Roman Empire or its successor states. There is no point in denying the various atrocities by the crusaders, but some of your characterisations seem to me partly excessive and partly missing some aspects of the broader context.I don't think this significantly impacts your main issue regarding the uncomfortable parallels between paladins and templars. But other people have already pointed out that in current versions of D&D that connection has been significantly watered down. It's fine if you still find it problematic. It's also fine if you don't have same issues with classes like Fighter and Rogue, whose real life counterparts committed atrocities on par of the crusaders (and in fact, templars were a minority among crusaders, most soldiers would fall under Fighters in D&D terms).We all have a line we are not comfortable crossing, and it may well be that for you things like Rogues and Fighters fall this side of the line while Paladins go too far. But to me where the line is and what falls to either side, boils down to a matter of personal sensibilities and if you agree with this, I think that you'll also agree that this kind of thread likely won't help, even if you mark it with a (+). It's kind of like asking "why am I in love with person X rather than person Y?".</blockquote>

Verification