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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Warrior Poet" data-source="post: 1777961" data-attributes="member: 1057">Any historians out there, please contribute and correct me if I'm wrong.  Thanks.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I think that, in many ways, the idea of the cleric did come to its most recognized incarnation due to its development in D&D, but perhaps not entirely without historical precedent.  Bishop Odo (although there does seem to be some question as to whether he was an ecclesiastical figure) was half-brother to William the Conqueror (William the Bastard of Normandy), and commissioned the Bayeaux Tapestry.  I believe Odo was something of a bad man on the battlefield (present at Hastings?), wore armor, charged a Saxon shield wall, and wielded a mace or flail or club that was good for bashing armor.Anyway, the holy warrior has long been a historical figure, throughout many cultures.  Part of the convention of the armor-wearing mace-swinging priest is tied to the larger issue of the medieval western-centric setting which (correctly or not) has long held up the armored knight as the symbol of its age.  And the church of that era and setting, while not "officially" fighters, had plenty of people aligned with them to shed blood, often in an "official" capacity.  But other cultures may have had divinely-related figures that also contributed to combat.  3.0/3.5 D&D seems to have a lot of spells from the cleric that are about buffing the party, not entirely about slaying enemies.  That seems consistent with a lot of religious figures across various cultures, i.e. praying for help for a cause, using magic and prayer to augment the faithful, witch doctors and shamans preparing warriors for battle to make them impervious to attacks, etc.Anyway, this rambling, probably nonsensical post brought to you by someone probably not well-versed enough in history and anthropology/archaeology.  So I await correction if these things are not the case. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Thanks,Warrior Poet</blockquote>

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