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Message: <blockquote data-quote="edgewaters" data-source="post: 3460261" data-attributes="member: 51529">Conversions at swordpoint are suspect, though. Conquistadors are a different era altogether, and one with a drastically different theological outlook than an era such as the Carolingian period. The Song of Roland and the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico are worlds apart in ethical approach. Depends on the era of course, and whether we are speaking of archetypal ideals of the period (Roland) or the actual reality (Godfrey de Bouillon etc). One was austere, merciful, uncompromising, a defender of the weak, and courageous; the other was swathed in luxury, proud, and full of temerity rather than courage. Remember that the archetype epitomized in Roland is everything that the most ascetic, penitent monk is, but armed to defend the defenceless and for no other reason. The reality need not even show mercy to Christians, if they were not of noble birth ("The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, And the flesh’d soldier, rough and hard of heart, In liberty of bloody hand, shall range, With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants . . . What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation?")Killing is always a spiritual loss in Christian theology, especially out of wrath or pride (which are cardinal sins). Killing infidel for not being Christian would typically violate both and possibly other cardinal sins, and requires a good degree of abstract rationalizing before it was ever received as permissable. An example of a justifying argument would be that anything that threatened to destroy Christendom might extinguish the light of redemption and damn all mankind, or things along that line. "He who can think of war and can support it without great sorrow is truly dead to human feelings," in St. Augustine's words.Killing them doesn't save their souls, but it might save them time in purgatory if they were generally good people. It might also save other souls, if the heathens in question happened to be of a proselytic faith such as Islam or one popular among the locals such as paganism, or a schismatic heresy such as Catharism.Again this is typified by St. Augustine's theories on war and violence, in which he insisted that Moses condemned the idolators worshipping the golden calf to death out of charity and not wrath, as he was preventing them from living in sin.</blockquote>

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