Crusades: Difference between revisions

Considered a proto-Crusade, the Tonsure Wars were a series of doctrinal and military conflicts between Latinic Alvarians and the Gaelians in Northern Levantia in the 8th century. It was named for the style of monastic tonsure worn by the clergy of each ethnic group. Alvarians monks wearing the coronal tonsure espousing a direct and puritanical application of Catholic rites and the Gaelians monks wearing the Celtic tonsure and embracing a more colloquial form of Catholicism. At the insistence of the clergy in Alvaria, in 738 an edict was passed that all monastic orders in Gaelia must conform to the "regular traditions and trappings of the Papal orders" with specific language regarding the cutting of hair and the wearing of plain robes, not to be colored in the "patterns of the forest". The edict was largely ignored as the Alvarians had no interest in enforcing the ruling and the clerics had no jurisdiction. In 754, a group of monks and mercenaries set out from Marialanus to "implore" Gaelian monks along the border to conform to the edict. The mercenaries looted the monasteries and got drunk on the beer and wine causing havoc and the venture was called off. In 768, another party was formed, this time with the blessing of the Archbishop of Rabascall, and the monks themselves had been given dispensation to take up arms. Additionally, the Pope had declared Celtic Christianity a pagan and blasphemous church the year before. This gave the monks dispensation to convert or "dispatch to God's judgment" the monks of Gaelia. The warrior monks descended upon the border regions and attacked a number of churches. The King of Gaelia formed and army and dispatched the Alvarian monks quickly. The Pope saw this as the temporal kingdom taking arms against Levantine Catholic Church and the Alvarian and Fanerian armies were called to bring the Gaelians back into the fold. A series of battles ensued and Gaelia was greatly diminished to the benefit of Alvaria and Kistan. In 783, the edict of 738 was adopted across Gaelia and the practice of shaving the Celtic tonsure ended as a common practice. Some remote monasteries continued the practice into the 1200s but it eventually fell out of style. The practice reemerged in the 1830s after the Northern Levantine Mediatization War and continues in some places to this day.