3,911
edits
Culture of Faneria: Difference between revisions
m
→Religion: eh can't do much more rn
m (→See Also) |
m (→Religion: eh can't do much more rn) Tag: 2017 source edit |
||
| Line 14: | Line 14: | ||
=Religion= | =Religion= | ||
==Pagan Antiquity== | |||
Fhainnin from the Ninerivers, West, Transisthmus, Nordskan coast, and the Interior varied significantly in ancient worship rituals, with the Nordskan and Transisthmus communities worshipping Gothic deities, while the remainder fused ancient Fenni gods with the more diffused Celtic concepts of many spirits. This lead to the formation of a pagan faith which worshipped both a primary pantheon of gods by various names as well as a number of spirits, primarily based around bodies of water and family units. As a result, Fhainnin pagans worshipped one or several of the gods of their pantheon while also paying homage to the local river or lake spirit. The concept of ancestor spirits eventually evolved into the practice of interring the dead first beneath the home after cleaning the bones away to ward off scavengers, and later cremating and interring ashes inside a family shrine nearby. The original Celtic invaders who conquered the Fenni continued to build cairns for several centuries but increasingly adopted local burial rites even as the local language was extinguished by Celtic legal and trade tongues. | Fhainnin from the Ninerivers, West, Transisthmus, Nordskan coast, and the Interior varied significantly in ancient worship rituals, with the Nordskan and Transisthmus communities worshipping Gothic deities, while the remainder fused ancient Fenni gods with the more diffused Celtic concepts of many spirits. This lead to the formation of a pagan faith which worshipped both a primary pantheon of gods by various names as well as a number of spirits, primarily based around bodies of water and family units. As a result, Fhainnin pagans worshipped one or several of the gods of their pantheon while also paying homage to the local river or lake spirit. The concept of ancestor spirits eventually evolved into the practice of interring the dead first beneath the home after cleaning the bones away to ward off scavengers, and later cremating and interring ashes inside a family shrine nearby. The original Celtic invaders who conquered the Fenni continued to build cairns for several centuries but increasingly adopted local burial rites even as the local language was extinguished by Celtic legal and trade tongues. | ||
| Line 30: | Line 30: | ||
* Cerunnast: God of birth, death, and the night sky. | * Cerunnast: God of birth, death, and the night sky. | ||
* Epona: Goddess of beasts, hunting, and war. | * Epona: Goddess of beasts, hunting, and war. | ||
== Christianization == | |||
Christianity in the form of [[Levantine Catholicism]] was introduced to Faneria beginning in the Fourth Century AD, with a number of travelling preachers moving into the Vandarch and finding refuge with the few surviving latin coastal colony towns initially. Missionaries found integrating Christ as a deity within the polytheistic faiths of the northern Basin easy, but the transition to full Christianization was agonizingly slow by the standards of the era and did not reach a majority of the population until the Twelfth Century. The gradual replacement of existing traditions and the syncretic sects that formed as a result eventually grew to be a severe issue in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Eventually, the locals translated the Bible directly into two local dialects - a transgression so severe that it incited several Christian states around the Vandarch to go on crusade against the developing Northern Rite, pushing outright pagan worship out of the lowlands in the 10th Century. This shattered the tolerance between pagans, Northern Rite syncretic, and hardline Catholics, and removed Pagans from the heights of political power in northern Levantia permanently. | Christianity in the form of [[Levantine Catholicism]] was introduced to Faneria beginning in the Fourth Century AD, with a number of travelling preachers moving into the Vandarch and finding refuge with the few surviving latin coastal colony towns initially. Missionaries found integrating Christ as a deity within the polytheistic faiths of the northern Basin easy, but the transition to full Christianization was agonizingly slow by the standards of the era and did not reach a majority of the population until the Twelfth Century. The gradual replacement of existing traditions and the syncretic sects that formed as a result eventually grew to be a severe issue in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Eventually, the locals translated the Bible directly into two local dialects - a transgression so severe that it incited several Christian states around the Vandarch to go on crusade against the developing Northern Rite, pushing outright pagan worship out of the lowlands in the 10th Century. This shattered the tolerance between pagans, Northern Rite syncretic, and hardline Catholics, and removed Pagans from the heights of political power in northern Levantia permanently. | ||
==Mythologies== | |||
* The Wyrm of Whyllisge was a legendary monster with six legs and a serpentine body roughly a hundred and eighty hands long that lived on the coast of the Vandarch Sea, slipping ashore to steal livestock and the occasional person for food. It also supposedly was capable of speech, and was possessed of a fickle nature, at times trading favors and bountiful catches of fish for toys and trinkets and at others tearing fishermens’ nets to ribbons or even attacking and sinking small ships. Some versions describe it as a demon possessing a sea monster. The Wyrm was supposedly killed when a Priest came along to Christianize the coastline where it prowled, and depending on the version you hear, either the Wyrm was killed instantly by the priest speaking the name of God, or the Wyrm was hunted and killed by a band of knights called the Four Fellows. In either version, the Wyrm is cut apart and its pieces thrown back into the Vandarch. Water serpents were one of many minor objects of worship in pagan times, and the Wyrm of Whyllisge in particular is a conglomeration of sea monster tales and an allegory about the Christianization of most of the Ninerivers. There is no known place named Whyllisge on the Vandarch coast (there is a town inland named after the legend, however), which continues to puzzle scholars. The Wyrm myth is known to have had at least some roots in myths of krakens and sea serpents spread through trade with other early civilizations, but the earliest literature describing it is heavily damaged and currently preserved in a sealed case in the vault of the ''Peoples' National Grand Library'' in Teindún out of concern for its condition. | * The Wyrm of Whyllisge was a legendary monster with six legs and a serpentine body roughly a hundred and eighty hands long that lived on the coast of the Vandarch Sea, slipping ashore to steal livestock and the occasional person for food. It also supposedly was capable of speech, and was possessed of a fickle nature, at times trading favors and bountiful catches of fish for toys and trinkets and at others tearing fishermens’ nets to ribbons or even attacking and sinking small ships. Some versions describe it as a demon possessing a sea monster. The Wyrm was supposedly killed when a Priest came along to Christianize the coastline where it prowled, and depending on the version you hear, either the Wyrm was killed instantly by the priest speaking the name of God, or the Wyrm was hunted and killed by a band of knights called the Four Fellows. In either version, the Wyrm is cut apart and its pieces thrown back into the Vandarch. Water serpents were one of many minor objects of worship in pagan times, and the Wyrm of Whyllisge in particular is a conglomeration of sea monster tales and an allegory about the Christianization of most of the Ninerivers. There is no known place named Whyllisge on the Vandarch coast (there is a town inland named after the legend, however), which continues to puzzle scholars. The Wyrm myth is known to have had at least some roots in myths of krakens and sea serpents spread through trade with other early civilizations, but the earliest literature describing it is heavily damaged and currently preserved in a sealed case in the vault of the ''Peoples' National Grand Library'' in Teindún out of concern for its condition. | ||
''Generally, the local faiths held that you could only experience the things you did to other people after death, and people who were evil either stopped existing or doomed themselves to an eternity of reliving what they did to others, depending on the local specifics. Good people supposedly got to be stuck in a dream/trancelike state. Since the afterlife was based on others' perception of you, slander was considered a crime comparable to murder in the more extreme areas and could easily lead to a duel or feud'' | ''Generally, the local faiths held that you could only experience the things you did to other people after death, and people who were evil either stopped existing or doomed themselves to an eternity of reliving what they did to others, depending on the local specifics. Good people supposedly got to be stuck in a dream/trancelike state. Since the afterlife was based on others' perception of you, slander was considered a crime comparable to murder in the more extreme areas and could easily lead to a duel or feud'' | ||
== | ==Reformation== | ||
==== | ====Northern Rite==== | ||
==== | ====Gearai==== | ||
The Church of Corrective Truth (Gearann Fìor) was a Protestant sect founded in western Faneria in the 1430s. Originally formed by the same pressures as the Northern Rite, the Gearann Fìor Church continued to radicalize against mainstream Catholic teachings, inspiring rebellions against Latin feudal traditions which had begun to take hold in northern Ultmar. While the Gearai were successful in intimidating local lords, Vicar-Princes and the Throne of the Fhainn ultimately cracked down on the cult after it attempted to form a secessionist holy state around the city of Kurikila. | |||
The tenets of Gearaism were originally established in 1438, and most notably included the rejection of the human form in artistry, a lack of belief in transubstantiation (substituting instead a belief in consubstantiation), an emphasis on suppressing idolatry in the form of prayers to saints, statues, pilgrimage, displays of wealth by the church, and later a tradition of laymen preachers. These heresies broke the faith from communion with the Catholic Church, but it was protected prior to the First Princes' War by statutes of toleration originally created to prevent pogroms against the sizeable remaining pagan and syncretic populations. During the First Princes' War, Faneria was briefly ruled by a dynasty of Protestant converts of the Denesist persuasion, after which the Gearann Fìor Church rebelled against the Catholic victors and was broken apart into sects that were absorbed by other Protestant branches. | |||
====Imminentists==== | |||
Imminentism is a sect of Protestant Christianity emphasizing the near return of Christ at any point formed in the 1500s. While its core tenet is a feature of many Protestant sects, Imminentists eschew 'wasteful' pastimes and consider pilgrimage, religious veneration and proselytizing, and intensely repetitive prayer as key to ensuring access to Heaven. Imminentist sermons are only held on Sundays and last for six hours, with separate rituals for the blessing of bread and wine, public declaration of sins by the laity, and the reading of whole chapters of Scripture and detailed theological lectures by the clergy. Imminentists have become increasingly decentralized since the 1700s, and their communion with other churches is unclear, as some Imminentists follow varying rites adopted from Coscivian, Protestant, and even Orthodox churches. | |||
==Modern== | |||
=Sciences= | =Sciences= | ||