Of Church and Council
Of Church and Council
By Bob the Skull
Despite the official doctrine of the Catholic Church on magic and the occult ranging from disbelief at best to hostility at worst, the latter of which claimed many lives through the ages, some with the spark of talent many without, the White Council has always maintained a line of communication, some might even say influence in the highest circles of Church power. It goes back to Rome, most things so. When the last Emperor fell and the Goths and later the Franks raised their realm in the shadow of the Colosseum and the Forum they had little interest in southern sorcerers nor in truth did the fledgling White Council have an interest in playing that part. The Merlin had learned well the lessons of the old Hermetic Circle, but Rome remained a trove of ancient lore which fell, like many things in those days, into the keeping of the Church.
Most likely the transfer was amiable and may have included whatever keepers had been set to guard the tomes and artifacts in the wake of the chaos taking their vows. While many older wizards were still pagan at this time, the younger generation had converted in large numbers, as large as one can speak of with regard to the pre-modern White Council. If you are imagining two people in white robes handing those books off at this point you may not be far wrong. In either case no one wanted a repeat of the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria.
Dark powers swelled though the chaotic final years of the Empire in the West, demons, hauntings and hunters of men rode through the night and only those powers that had been bound to the now much withered cities like the White Court suffered for the scattering of the population, the strife and ill speaking between Germanic rulers and Vulgate speaking locals. You would be surprised just how much mischief can be done by targeting people who can't or won't ask for help and no, that's not just my biases speaking. Especially following the Plague of Justinian a strain of extreme practicality marked the actions of those bishops assigned to deal with matters occult, nothing else would serve in the spirit of the times. Even later though as the Council not only mentained its presence in Spain after the Muslim Conquest but expanted it to the rest of the Arab world, reaching as far as India and Southeast Asia long before any merchants had sailed that way, the position of the Holy See remainted that it was better for wizards to dwell apart rather than offer advantage and temptation to kings and princes of all stripes. The White Council of the time encouraged this view of itself as quasi-monastic with Neo-Platonic accents, a relic of another time slow to change but harmless.
Consider how some people, naming no names because she scares me, bury their magic in part or in whole from their understanding of what faith requires of them? Well that isn't accidental, at least according to what wizards though. Factions within the Church, especially the inquisition hoped to strangle the Council of new members under the guise of doing the same to much more harmful groups. But for all Rome's reach was vast in those days it never lived up to its boast, never universal. In any case there are always going to be people who do not want to pass up on phenomenal cosmic power and for all its ups and downs in leadership, and there were some very deep downs there, the Church always at least saw an apprenticeship in the White Council as the lesser of two evils.
The Reformation was the moment when things almost broke down, amid accusations that magic had been used to drive common and royal folk alike from the arms of the Church. It certainly did not help when England threw its lot in with the heretics, nor the rumors that Anne Boleyn was in truth a witch. She might have had a minor talent for glamor-craft and not even have been aware of it by accounts later collected.
Cooler heads prevailed when a team of Wardens helped prevent an eruption of Mount Etna in 1555 precipitated by a striga cult that would have killed thousands quickly and most likely millions slowly by illness and starvation. The fact that the Protestants were even more likely to burn witches calmed fears about a political power play.
OOC: Since we do not have an update today, here's some historical background that occurred to me when we were speaking about magic and religion.
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