The Missionary Sisters of the Office

While I was writing out my thoughts on Andalusada's differences from IRL two nights ago, I came up with the Heretical Hero as an archetype. And then, between that, Taiping China, and my drabblings of writing about the Maroons (out when they're done), I came up with another tropey character, the Maud Missionary.

I really should have written up her first, because while I know that the Maud Missionary is the perfect and rightful heir of St. Matilda, I don't know anything about the movement she's a part of. So little, in fact, that I've been hammering myself for hours about what they're named.

To that end, a conversation with Ebola gave me the working name, and the one I'll be using for the URL: "the Missionaries of Hegemony."

The Order of Saint Gonzalo

Right now there's nothing in Andalusada called the Order of St. Dominic, and even if there are "Dominicans" they have nothing to do with the Dominicans IRL. That's because that niche evolved differently, and the organization filling it is the Order of Saint Gonzalo, commonly the Gonzalans.

Dominican Gonzalan spirituality 101

Because of Rule of Canny, Gonzalan spirituality looks understandably like the Dominican spirituality it replaces. (At one point, I described Franciscan and Dominican spiritualities as being "Christocentric" vs. "Logocentric"; in Andalusada, the distinction is better incarnational vs. evangelical.) The first and most glaring distinction is that Gonzalo did something Domingo didn't: by adopting (and adapting) the Rule of Saint Stephen from Stephanines, he circumvented a papal ban on establishing new rules.

"The one rule of our salvation and of all others'," the Rule begins, "is the Gospel of Christ..." - and it goes from there, in a fairly stark fashion. More specifically, the Rule is followed by a distinctly Augustinian, southern, and... well, let's be honest, openly schismatic reading of it, which lead to hundreds of Stephanines defecting to Gonzalo's side when it became known to them. That southern-Augustinian-dissenting addendum moderates the Muretin starkness, but in doing so also emphasizes the features of it that are most recognizably Dominican.

(This means that, from the very start, a case could be made that Saint Gonzalo wasn't following his own Rule. It also means that, unlike the Dominicans IRL, it's both meaningful and possible for there to be Capuchin-style strict-observance orders. Some of those strict-observance sausage parties were probably key figures in the rise of the Sodality.)

The Order of St. Stephen

In 1076, St. Étienne of Muret founded a own hermitage in the wasteland that was Muret, France. He gathered a following, which relocated to a new location in 1150, set up a proper priory, and became known as the Grandmontines after it. It was like nothing else at the time - and after 1185, when for the first time (but not the last) its members overthrow their prior, it more or less ran out of steam and got supplanted by the rise of 13th-century mendicancy. The Grandmontines puttered along, tiny and marginal, until the French Revolution finally put them out of their misery and ended their unique spiritual tradition forever.

IRL, anyways. In Andalusada, their name's changed - they are the Order of Saint Stephen (O.S.S., Ordo sancti Stephani), or Stephanines for short. And I have some very lofty plans for that ascetic movement from northern France - because a movement whose founding document baldly states "Our rule is the Gospel of Christ" is too good to pass up.

Grandmontine Stephanine spirituality 101

Let's start with the most basic thing: the Stephanines have their own rule. The Rule of St. Stephen, written down by the fourth head of the Order in 1124. In Andalusada the words will understandably be somewhat different, but in spirit with the original (excerpted from here):

• Prologue: "The one primary and fundamental Rule of Rules for our salvation and all others derive from [the Gospel]. We are all Christians, living the Rule of the Gospel, which is the root of all Rules."
• Ch. 39: "We forbid you absolutely to receive women into your observance."
• Ch. 54: "The better part which the Lord praised so highly in Mary, we impose upon the clercs [sic] alone.... [w]e entrust the temporal care of the monastery to the convers alone; in matters worldly and all other business, they are to command the other brethen, both clercs and convers..."

After that my sources (namely Wikipedia and Philip Sheldrake) give me very conflicting details about the Order, which is fine with me. There were arguments over whether the IRL Grandmontines were more Benedictine or Augustinian in their rule (it varied with time, apparently...), because they didn't see themselves as monks or hermits or canons regular, but as all three. (What tore them apart IRL was probably differing takes on how to actually be that.)

The other thing to note about the Stephanines is the fact that they had a mind-bogglingly democratic structure from the outset. Traditionally both the monks and the conversi (lay brothers) were counted as absolutely equal, and would share common living quarters. (Traditionally, the lay brothers were supposed to outnumber the monks by 2:1; that probably influenced the power struggles too.) It took papal intervention to organize them into a more normal monastic hierarchy.

Introducing St. Matilda

Saint Matilda exists because Saint Dominic doesn't. Per Rule of Canny, Andalusada needs someone to fill his shoes, an that someone is Saint Gonzalo of Lerida - but he's an original character, which means that I have both free room and a lot of details to fill in. And back before his page took on its current form, one of my earliest notes about Gonzalo was something I wanted in his story: "a Gonzalan St. Clare."

For the longest time, this has sat unattended, because the only reason I introduced Gonzalo was because John George wasn't an Augustinian, and I honestly hadn't had any interesting thoughts about it. Last night, though, while trying to rename Catholic orders to fit into my arbitrary naming conventions, I discovered some really cool things, which brought this back to mind - and I'm gonna make the most of it.

Shugembo

Shugembo, n. Takasagonese. A Franciscan friar.

Oyashima has no "folk Catholicism," because Catholicism in Oyashima is new, and the converts tend to be scholarly, educated, and individual. There isn't much room for popular distortions of the faith when the faith isn't popular to begin with.

But one thing about Japonic Catholicism is globally distinctive, and it's pan-Japonic.

Japanese pop culture holds that nuns are mikos. This trope doesn't exist in Andalusada, for a number of reasons (most notably that Great Japan is a little more aware of Catholicism, what with it being the faith of their Takasagonese overlords) - but it's been replaced by a world-specific trope. Written out in TV Tropes format, it would be something like Friars are Yamabushi.

The rise and fall of the Ryal Kirk

IRL, the medieval Church in Scotland was corrupt. And by corrupt I mean "corrupt by the standards of medieval Catholicism." Come the 16th century Scotland swept away almost every trace of it converting to Presbyterianism, and there were compelling reasons why.

This poses a problem for me, because in Andalusada England doesn't break with Rome. And before the Great Realignment gets underway, before the Imperial Union of England-Scotland, there is Scotland-Norway - and Norway, in Andalusada as per IRL, does break with Rome and become Güntherite.

I know enough about Stuart England to know that the marriage of Reformed Scotland and Anglican England was volatile already, and they were both Protestant. A marriage of Catholic Scotland and Güntherite Norway during the *Reformation period itself is unimaginable - but the Imperial Union is foreordained. And given how recent and contingent ecumenism has been IRL, would the union of *Protestant Scotland and Catholic England really be any more plausible, or functional, than that of Catholic Scotland and Güntherite Norway? I don't think so.

Last night, I found a solution, which I'm going to derp out here. You heard it first, Engel.

The Takasagonese

"If you change it far enough back," I wrote two months ago, "you start getting ethnicities that don't exist IRL." Changing colonial histories, and you get things like most of the American South being French Farrellites... or a Lusophone *Philippines instead of a Hispanophone one, because Cabral didn't sail for Spain... or Yevanic surviving to the present day because there's a totally different Sephardi diaspora. Or, as I started the list with, a Japonicized *Taiwan.

Today, boys and girls, the post is about that Japonicized *Taiwan. Meet the Takasagonese.

The Blackfriars Bible

"One small but important problem," I derped last month, "is that no recognizable brand exists in Andalusada." I retract that statement; this is a big problem. And it's not just guns that are affected: it's everything that I love - food, liquor, philosophy. Even Bibles.

Obviously there's going to be the Günther Bible, and both Oliver Farrell's Vulgate and his translation from the Opus Transtulit. But those aren't the only ones, and the simple fact is that even if Catholicism keeps Latin as its liturgical language and does its utmost to dissuade the vernacular, the vernacular is established by the time they face competition. It's not going to go away; the most that Rome can do is have a say in its relationship to the vernacular Word.

This is particularly problematic to me because, as far as I can tell, Anglicanism doesn't exist: there's no reason to imagine that the British Isles don't stay devoutly Catholic (albeit undergoing some reforms to purge what its elites consider the worst excesses of Mariolatry and the like.) I'm not sure what the successions of kings, English or Scottish, look like - all I know is that even if there is a King James of England and Scotland (and there will be an England-Scotland, mark my words), he is NOT the same King James that gave us the 1611 Authorized Version.

So today I'm going to introduce the KJV's equivalent: the Blackfriars Bible.

The Sodality

IRL, the Reformation gave rise to a new force within Catholicism: the Society of Jesus. A Spanish thing originally, and it really couldn't have formed the way it did by anybody but a Spanish guy (well, Basque, but I'm gonna split the difference and assume no nationalists are gonna hit this blog any time soon.) Or, at least, a guy growing up in that particular Spain. Which, after what happened to Spain way back there at the start, doesn't exist.
It also doesn't help that all two responses to medieval Catholicism are, to say the least, more than a little different from the ones we're used to thinking of. That's what happens when you steampunk social science. Even if the Jesuits existed, the context in which they existed would be quite different; in particular, it's one where the Gonzalans (and thus potentially the Inquisition itself) has already been seriously compromised by the Reformation.*

No, Andalusada needs something different. Something that isn't relying on people well past their allotted century of grace. And that something is *whispers* The Sodality.

Introducing Constantine II of Hungary

"King Constantine." You don't need to name him any more than that; everybody will know who he is, just as well as they'd recognize "Count Dracula." And for the same reasons.

The guy is hated across cultures.

Let's introduce him...

The Guerillas of Toleto

The survival of Moorish Spain (in the form of Seville) effectively stalls the southern expansion of the Roman Rite. Under various iterations of Moorish rule, the Mozarabic liturgy survives long past the point where it died out IRL.

It also means that the struggle within the Spanish Church over which Rite to use is more pronounced, and much more politicized, because the major players - Aragon and Catalonia - are extremely tied to the Roman Rite. Their efforts to push south (and not purely military ones; witness the Gonzalans) are going to be resented, and perceived as imperialism, by the Christians living under Moorish rule.

This most frequently comes to a head in the Primate of Spain: Toleto, a city (like Batallos) on the edge of both the Christian and Moorish worlds, and (unlike Batallos) one that changes hands at least twice during the Middle Ages. [details?] In Milan, attempts to suppress the Ambrosian Rite led to repeated riots. Attempts to do the same in Toledo are going to lead to what are called, in hindsight, the guerillas: the little wars.

Introducing Saint Gonzalo of Lerida

After any big divergence, a region has a 100-year grace period to produce the same notable people, with the creative license increasing the further I get from that divergence.

Iberia's grace period runs out in 1181, which is problematic because that's before a bumper crop of its most significant figures are even born. Some can be handwaved a bit (the ibn Rushd family was well-entrenched and had produced brilliant minds for generations by that point, so Averroes might be salvageable), but some of them can't be - like Saint Dominic, for instance, without whom Western history to come gets very alien fast.

Fortunately for me, though, if you can't use the original, you can always use an Expy. All you need to do is adjust the superstructure to account for the changed base (yes, I know, but it works), and you can work around it interestingly. And if you choose the point you start at, you can even use the Expy to highlight the little changes in the world.

So now I'm going to introduce his replacement: St. Gonzalo of Lerida.