Historically, the Ordensstaat actually used a dialect of Middle German in their chanceries. Why I'm not sure, because the lands of the Teutonic Order apparently didn't use it as a vernacular; IRL, after the secularization of the State into Ducal and Royal Prussia, the Teutonic Kanzelrei was completely abandoned in favor of the Low German spoken in daily life.
In Andalusada, of course, the Monastic State isn't secularized; it's overthrown. Monastic Middle German wasn't abandoned ITTL so much as consciously supplanted by the language of the rising urban population, and the Günther Bible (by establishing their Low German as a written language) was instrumental in doing this.
Showing posts with label Holy Roman Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Roman Empire. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Hanseatic Wars
Belligerents:
Outcome: The crowning of a French king as Holy Roman Empire; disintegration of any significant imperial authority.
One of the shortcuts that alternate-history writers take is using their plots to kill things that they're too lazy to research. While I'm endeavoring to not do this to ethnicities overly much, I'm not going to lie: I do it too. (And it's problematic for me because I have enough gaps in my knowledge of how things work that when I try to do this I still need to do all the research anyways.)
This is a related thing: using the plot to cleanly end a few crises ahead of schedule.
The wars commonly called "Hanseatic" (what they're called depends on which language and locale you're speaking in, because the politics of the matter are rather obscure) are the substitute for the Thirty Years' War: a crisis that plunges Germania into chaos. Unlike the Thirty Years' War, there are different demographic issues at work here.
And by the end of it, both the Hanse and the Reich have been crippled thoroughly enough to render them moribund.
Outcome: The crowning of a French king as Holy Roman Empire; disintegration of any significant imperial authority.
One of the shortcuts that alternate-history writers take is using their plots to kill things that they're too lazy to research. While I'm endeavoring to not do this to ethnicities overly much, I'm not going to lie: I do it too. (And it's problematic for me because I have enough gaps in my knowledge of how things work that when I try to do this I still need to do all the research anyways.)
This is a related thing: using the plot to cleanly end a few crises ahead of schedule.
The wars commonly called "Hanseatic" (what they're called depends on which language and locale you're speaking in, because the politics of the matter are rather obscure) are the substitute for the Thirty Years' War: a crisis that plunges Germania into chaos. Unlike the Thirty Years' War, there are different demographic issues at work here.
And by the end of it, both the Hanse and the Reich have been crippled thoroughly enough to render them moribund.
Monday, May 28, 2012
The catalyst of the Hanseatic Wars
When Günther published the first modern translation of the Bible, he was translating it because that was the language of the urban Pomeranian elite he needed to appeal to. He was translating it because it was his native language. He was also translating it into Low German because it was the language of his beloved hometown, Rostock.
And Rostock, it should be noted, was a Reichsfrei city. Low German was also the language of the Hansa, a medieval attempt at a megacorporation.
Ship by ship, shipping by shipping, printing by printing, the Günther Bible spread across the Hanseatic city-states. It didn't spread too far outside of them, because it didn't cross the language barrier very well, and the Saxon High German Bible existed to stop its spread.
And while the Holy Roman Empire was still recovering from the spanking it had been dealt during the Güntherite Wars, it had more pressing things to do than press the matter.
A generation or so later, however, there would be a new Holy Roman Empire, one who had never known the humiliation of defeat at Güntherite hands. Only the humiliation of his predecessor, and a need to avenge that humiliation.
The moment he was elected, the Hanseatic Wars became inevitable.
And Rostock, it should be noted, was a Reichsfrei city. Low German was also the language of the Hansa, a medieval attempt at a megacorporation.
Ship by ship, shipping by shipping, printing by printing, the Günther Bible spread across the Hanseatic city-states. It didn't spread too far outside of them, because it didn't cross the language barrier very well, and the Saxon High German Bible existed to stop its spread.
And while the Holy Roman Empire was still recovering from the spanking it had been dealt during the Güntherite Wars, it had more pressing things to do than press the matter.
A generation or so later, however, there would be a new Holy Roman Empire, one who had never known the humiliation of defeat at Güntherite hands. Only the humiliation of his predecessor, and a need to avenge that humiliation.
The moment he was elected, the Hanseatic Wars became inevitable.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The Güntherite Wars
Around 1519, the Monastic Knights of the Teutonic Order started to lose their grip on their sprawling Baltic empire. In the early 1520s, that grip was lost for good; by the late 1520s, it was lost forever, in the first revolution of modern European history. This is the blog entry for that revolution.
Before the Revolt
If this sounds vague, it's because the exact details of what went on are really contingent on how the Knights fared in the 1400s - about which I know relatively little.Monday, April 30, 2012
Luciferianism and the Black Death
Moorish Spain has a rather occult modernity.
IRL, there was a Hermetic Reformation in the early 1500s: Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and a few others that come to mind. It didn't go anywhere really big in Europe, for the perfectly valid reason that Europe at the time was having a much bigger shakeup in the form of the Protestant Reformation. Seville, however, isn't going to have that kind of shakeup. I don't see any new madhhab arising from its Malikism (although maybe a few tariqas from its late Sufism?) Everything about the flow of history points to the fact that the world-shaking events of the 1500s are simply going to reinforce their attitudes of (Maliki, Moorish) Islam as universal empire.
In that context, seizing on Bruno and della Mirandola would be a way to shake things up, emphasizing that Moorish Islam is a very different beast from the Turkish juggernaut that dominates the rest of Islamic Eurasia - and letting them enter modernity as the weird uncle of Europe rather than having modernity happen to them.
The problem is historiography.
Things don't just happen. In most universes, people assume that the way things happened for them are the only way it could have. They also perceive this as part of a continuity of progression from the past, especially with something (like Hermeticism) that draws its authority from its antiquity. Andalusada is going to write its own history, and given Moorish Hermeticism, they're going to wonder "Where was the occultism that Moorish Hermeticism came from in the past?"
I have an idea. It involves the Black Death.
IRL, there was a Hermetic Reformation in the early 1500s: Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and a few others that come to mind. It didn't go anywhere really big in Europe, for the perfectly valid reason that Europe at the time was having a much bigger shakeup in the form of the Protestant Reformation. Seville, however, isn't going to have that kind of shakeup. I don't see any new madhhab arising from its Malikism (although maybe a few tariqas from its late Sufism?) Everything about the flow of history points to the fact that the world-shaking events of the 1500s are simply going to reinforce their attitudes of (Maliki, Moorish) Islam as universal empire.
In that context, seizing on Bruno and della Mirandola would be a way to shake things up, emphasizing that Moorish Islam is a very different beast from the Turkish juggernaut that dominates the rest of Islamic Eurasia - and letting them enter modernity as the weird uncle of Europe rather than having modernity happen to them.
The problem is historiography.
Things don't just happen. In most universes, people assume that the way things happened for them are the only way it could have. They also perceive this as part of a continuity of progression from the past, especially with something (like Hermeticism) that draws its authority from its antiquity. Andalusada is going to write its own history, and given Moorish Hermeticism, they're going to wonder "Where was the occultism that Moorish Hermeticism came from in the past?"
I have an idea. It involves the Black Death.
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