The role of Clerics and Paladins in medieval europe

[Tonguez]

Most people never journeyed more than 10-20 miles from their home, save in grave circumstances. They're certainly not going to travel all the way to some city far away.

Um then how do you explain Pilgramages to Holy Sites? At the time many would undertake such a journey often for the purpose of healing. For Muslims of course the Haj remains a religious obligation.

Also many clergy travelled to Rome at some point in their lives from as far distant as Ireland and others studied at the University in Paris . Then of course there is the whole Crusades era when 'Clerics and Paladins' rode forth to reclaim the holy land.

Also the lives of the saints create excellent models for Cleric adventures and also explains the heavy armour proficiency of a priest. For instance St Francis of Assissi was an accomplish fighter and was inline to becoming a Knight had he not recieved his vision and become a Priest.


St Thomas Aquinas is another who I have used as a NPC imc, with the PCs having to negotiate his return after he was kidnapped by his brothers (who did not approve of him taking Holy Orders).

 

[fusangite]

I thought that paladins' healing ability was supposed to be based on those stories in which eg. Perceval, Lancelot, and Galahad healed the wounded and cured the sick by laying on their hands.If you want to go for the Holy Fighting Orders, though, I might incline more to the Hospitalers than the Templars.

Agback, I like the schema suggested by you and other posters that crusading orders would be clerics and paladins would be very special, rare knights, favoured by God. So, I'll alter my internal model accordingly (fortunately, my current campaign is unaffected).

I wasn't aware that Perceval, Lancelot & Galahad had had the capacity to heal as all the grail lore I've read is 13th century or earlier. Are these abilities they develop in later works?

As for ideas about travel,
(a) adventurers are exceptional people; rpgs are never about what the 90% do but about what the 10% do
(b) trade was a huge business throughout history
(c) the crusading and mendicant orders were charged with wandering about the world -- thousands of people in holy orders were supposed not to be tied down

As for the commonality of healing, take off your 21st century glasses and look at the situation from the point of view of medievals. They believed physicians, barbers and clergymen healed people all the time. The fact that our modern view suggests that they were wrong about that is irrelevant.

Most Saints' divine powers were not displayed until after death but this was not universal -- St. Theresa, St. Francis of Asisi, as well as early saints like Christopher are remembered for the miracles that surrounded them in the course of their lives.

 

[Thorntangle]

As for the commonality of healing, take off your 21st century glasses and look at the situation from the point of view of medievals. They believed physicians, barbers and clergymen healed people all the time. The fact that our modern view suggests that they were wrong about that is irrelevant.

I'm still not convinced about this. Healing by clerics produces immediate, visible results for even the most serious of injuries or afflictions. Wounds knit closed, blindness is lifted, rotting diseases are immediately cured and insanity is lifted. What could a barber or physician do about Cancer? Leprosy? Schizophrenia? A bleeding arterial wound?

And as a side bonus, the healing is divine energy coming from a god. How sweet an experience to be healed by your god. Healing from a physician or barber is not immediate, prescribed medicine is probably vile and treatment can sometimes be repulsive and/or painful.

If I were nobility, I would want a cleric on retainer for my family at all times and perhaps even be a constant escort for myself or loved ones.

There would be a difference on the order of magnitude between the healing services of physician/barber and a cleric.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The quality of experiencing a god's presence would probably vary considerably depending upon how you stood in relation to him. For that matter, that's probably true of his/her servants as well. In Biblical accounts, the first emotion that anyone usually felt upon seeing an angel was terror. This is also true of some New Testament accounts of encounters with miraculous workings of the divine as well. The question "What must I do to be saved?" probably doesn't come from a sweet experience. Saul of Tarsus used a lot of words to describe his experience on the road to Damascus but sweet and pleasant weren't among them.

If the hypothetical medieval Europe is given a religion where the God or gods are not simply buddies or therapists writ large but are truly aweful (and awesome) supernatural powers who make definite moral demands of their followers, any experience of their power is going to be far more mixed and complex (and ultimately more life-changing) than you seem to suppose. I can imagine a good number of people actually choosing to submit to vile and repulsive medical treatment in the hopes of avoiding an experience with God or the gods.

And as a side bonus, the healing is divine energy coming from a god. How sweet an experience to be healed by your god. Healing from a physician or barber is not immediate, prescribed medicine is probably vile and treatment can sometimes be repulsive and/or painful.

 

[Agback]

I wasn't aware that Perceval, Lancelot & Galahad had had the capacity to heal as all the grail lore I've read is 13th century or earlier. Are these abilities they develop in later works?

That is correct. Miracles (mostly healing of wounds, curing of diseases, and resurrections of unjustly killed foes) are used to indicate the faith and piety of the good knights in the 19th and early-20th Century versions I read as a boy, but they do not occur in, for instance, Mallory (15th Century), at least not that I recall (the healing of the Dolorous Stroke by Perceval is a special case). (My original layer of Arthurian lore was Roger Lancelyn Green's version, with a layer of TH White over the top.)

I have a faint recollection that Lancelot resurrects a fallen foe in the movie Excalibur, but it has been 20 years or more since I saw it, and I might be confusing it with something else (perhaps even Camelot)

By the way, I have quite a lot of info on the Holy Fighting Orders to hand if you want it. I think I posted it in Plots & Places a few months ago, too. And I can strongly recommend "The Monks of War" by Desmond Seward (ISBN 0-14-019501-7) as a interesting book and good read.

The problem with this correspondence is that the real Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic knights, Knights of Alcantara, and Knights of Calatreva (etc.) were the best-trained, best-disciplined, and most experienced fighters of their time. Elderly masters quite literally cut swathes through armies (eg Matthieu de Clermont, Guillaume de Beaujeu, and Jean de Villiers at Acre in 1291, the unbelievable exploits of Pierre d'Aubusson at Rhodes in 1480, who was made a cardinal for his exploits in battle). If they are getting d8 hit points and +3 AB per four levels, who deserves d10s and +4?

Regards,


Agback

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Well, they obviously had a templar level, Persistent Divine Power, double empowered Bull's Strength, Persistent Divine Favor, and used the Miracle spell for Tenser's Transformation

Hey, you did say they were the most experienced fighters of their time.

The problem with this correspondence is that the real Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic knights, Knights of Alcantara, and Knights of Calatreva (etc.) were the best-trained, best-disciplined, and most experienced fighters of their time. Elderly masters quite literally cut swathes through armies (eg Matthieu de Clermont, Guillaume de Beaujeu, and Jean de Villiers at Acre in 1291, the unbelievable exploits of Pierre d'Aubusson at Rhodes in 1480, who was made a cardinal for his exploits in battle). If they are getting d8 hit points and +3 AB per four levels, who deserves d10s and +4?

 

[Olive]

Actually, that's clerics. This is made explicit in the 1E and 2E books, and the 3E version doesn't change any of the relevant class features.

well i dont have a 1e or 2e players handbook any more, but i'm not sure you're right... after all the templars could use sutting weapons, where as the clergy proper couldn't... and thats where the cleric class' weapons restrictions come from.

 

[Khorod]

Proportionally, even a cure minor wounds would be a huge miracle. And a Cure Light Wounds could certainly restore most people from major bodily injury. 1d8 + 1/level points can net you several multiples of four...

Perhaps healing spells should not heal points of damage, but a percentage of damage. Thus a Cure Light Wounds can restore the hand of a commoner or a hero -- 1 point or, oh, 20.

If a sizeable percentage of shrines have a magic spring, altar, or priest who can whip out a couple Cure Minor Wound's per day, the characters won't be pestered by people with arthiritis, aches, or broken bones - only actual emergencies require the party priest to run to help others.

If you deem a majority of priests to be Experts or Commoners, then the Clerics would certainly take on a certain importance- if they have any reputation, they might be considered to have a status similar to an aristocrat, only it rises with the power of miracles they have performed.

At some point, a high level cleric might be held in greater awe than any king in the land. As a result, only the most humble and helpful of clerics will be crowded by the townsfolk- they will mostly keep back and respectful.

But since Clerics and Paladins are supposed to be elsewhere, fighting evil, perhaps in a real medieval Europe campaign they need to be far away, where they aren't known as living saints.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Well, after some thought on the subject:

I think that Medieval Europe rewrit for the presence of clerical and divine magic of a DnD scale and nature would actually result in a more magical environment than we see in most DnD campaigns.

I mean there are three versions of medieval Europe relevant to the DnD game: There is the literary version that consists of both contemporary and after the fact narratives, the twentieth century historical view of the middle ages, and the idea we have of how people in the middle ages more or less viewed their world.

Two of these versions, 1 & 3, are pretty heavy in elements of the fantastic. One is filled with wizards, paladins, exorcists, saints, and monsters. Lots of magical people. Three is less filled with
magical people, though they may be more potent. But three does have lots of magical features, dragons on the edge of the world, Prester John's kingdom, strange alchemy, faeries, dragons, shrines, demons, miracles, relics, ruins, towers, and the wilderness generally.

The second version denies much of the relevance of magic but still recognizes that it was around. Both in terms of three and in terms of many of the intellectual concerns of the period, particularly in alchemy, religion, and law.

Now DnD itself tends to be 1, 3, & then 2 in terms of priorities of magic to its own system. There do tend to be a lot of magical people around, often equal to or more than 1. But magical places are really rare and largely unknown or created by easily tampered with affects of magical people rather than the other way round. Even the magical radiation of Drow lands is largely gone. And DnD rarely tries to put together magical conceptions of the universe as complex as those that are recognized by the second version.

So if you merge the three version and the DnD version. You end up with lots of magical people, in a very magical landscape, with complicated ideas about how everything works, but a pretty flawed general conception of how it all works.

Even if you just go with three you end up with a good few magical people, only slightly less powered than default DnD, in a really magical world, a lot more powered than default DnD.

 

[jgbrowning]

personally, i'd avoid the use of the word miracle. were magic to really exist in an medieval environment it wouldn't be viewed as any more miraculous than the "magic" of the forge and the creation of metal. If cure lights were being dished out everyday, they'd lose their "miracle" shean and become "I don't know how it works, but it does. The guy doing it says its god, but i talked to Edith the old witch when she cured me yesterday. See, the you can't even see a scar. She said it was the old gods... I don't know which one of 'em's right, but they can both do the same thing."

kinda changes, doesn't it...

just IMHO.

joe b