Catholic Church: Difference between revisions

* [[Hendalarsk]]: Catholicism was brought to Hendalarsk in two waves. The first, unsuccessful missionary effort took place in the early seventh century AD. A Gothic slave-boy, originally from the lower [[Zalgis]], was freed when his slavers were shipwrecked. The boy, near death, was washed up on the Vandarch shoreline of [[Anglei]], and taken in by monks there. Raised and educated as a member of the monastery, he eventually opted to return home to spread the Word to his countrymen, and landed at the mouth of the Zalgis in 608 AD. As the Gothic societies along the Zalgis were at this point non-literate, little reliable evidence of the mission survives, beyond a later Khunyer chronicling of the story which purports to have been handed down by descendants of the original converts. In this telling, the ex-slave brought all manner of signs and wonders to the Zalgis, eventually gaining the approval and conversion of the legendary chief [[Agnauts]] in 621 AD after healing his son. Agnauts, however, was killed by some of his more staunchly pagan retainers after attempting to destroy a sacred grove, and those retainers wasted no time in sacrificing the ex-slave to the Zalgis to appease the river-goddess. The martyr is today venerated as [[St Adáldrig]] by both the Catholic and Hendalarskara Catholic churches.<br><br>The second wave of Christianisation commenced around 150 years later, when the [[Khunyer]] - who had themselves been converted to Catholicism centuries previously during their time as ''foederati'' on the [[Great Levantia|Great Levantine]] frontier - migrated and conquered their way into the Zalgis watershed, founding the [[Khunyer Empire]] in the process. The Khunyer did not aggressively proselytise to the conquered Gothic peoples, since they were mainly concerned with maintaining a reliable supply of tribute from the Goths, but a process of acculturation nevertheless took place over decades, in which particularly ambitious Gothic chieftains sought to take advantage of the added legitimacy and administrative strength they might gain from the new religion. A syncretic faith began to develop along the Zalgis, which upheld the orthodox approach to the Trinity and the sacraments but which assimilated sacred groves into Christian teaching as reflections of the Garden of Eden, while rivers have become venerated as divine instruments for creating and maintaining life rather than as deities in their own right. This faith, institutionalised as what would become the [[Hendalarskara Catholic Church]], was professed by the ur-Hendalarskaren in the Lordship of the Great Valley when they asserted independence from the crumbling Khunyer Empire in 890 AD. The Hendalarskara Catholic Church's self-description as 'Catholic', despite the religion's many peculiarities, remains a bone of contention in ecclesiastical relations with the Levantine Catholic Church. The Khunyer, by contrast, have largely remained orthodox Levantine Catholics, the march of secularism notwithstanding, while many Gothic groups in the east of Hendalarsk were also converted by Levantine missionaries from the twelfth century onward. Most [[Nünsyak]] also profess Latin Catholicism, although a substantial minority still hold to the traditional Nünsyi ethnic religion.