Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to
explain something right now. If you support me through substack
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that
you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll
be able to listen to the episodes through there. If
you support me through a subscribe, star gum Road or
on my website directly, I will send you a link
where you can download the file and you can listen
to it any way you wish. I really appreciate the
support everyone gives me. It keeps a show going. It
allows me to basically put out an episode every day now,
and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate.
I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two
even three a day, and yeah, can't do it without you,
So thank you for the support. Head on over to
Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, forward slash Support and
do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to the Pekegana Show. Paul Fahrenheit is back and
we will continue with the Spain series kind of Hey, don't, Paul.
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well, mister Pete. Thank you for having
me back on. I'm very grateful that you have once
again given me the chance to talk about Spain and
all this. It's been a little while since we did
an episode of this, but it's been a very busy
election season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's trying to keep up with everything that's happening
is kind of hard. But yeah, you said that we're
going to talk about one of my favorite subjects today,
but not the brighter, not the better side of it
for some part. So go right ahead, tell everybody what
we're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if the listeners will remember the table of
contents episode that we did previously, what we discussed for
this episode, which is episode four, episode five, count counting
the disputation, it's episode five. But what we're going to
be discussing today, right is actually not Spain because in
order to understand the position that Spain and the Spanish
Empire and the HAPs Empire, this is where the empire
part of the Spanish Empire comes from, and much the
same way that the empire part of the British Empire
comes from. Being Emperor of India, and you cannot a
you know, understand the British Empire without understanding the British raj.
You cannot understand the Spanish Empire without understanding the Holy
Roman Empire. And you can't understand the Holy Roman Empire
without understanding its history, particularly in relation with its you know,
creator and patron sometimes in the papacy. And so when
we were talking about, you know, the analysis we are
going on with this series is world systems theory, specifically
from the Christendom world system as the world system immediately
preceding the sort of United Nations world system that we
live under. And the comparison is an apt one because
the papacy actually played a very ended up playing a
very similar role as to what the United Nations does today.
And this is actually part of the part of what
we're going to be talking about today. So we're going
to be talking about we're going to unfortunately be doing
something that I said we wouldn't do in this series,
which is we're going to have to in order to
really even begin talking about what led to this issue,
because you can't talk about the final centuries of the
Christendom world system and the contemporaneous rise of the Spanish
Empire without understanding the various cracks and the foundation that
led Europe to this point that resulted not only in
the Protestant Reformation, but in the circumstances which brought about
the Protestant Reformation, and as well as I guess you
could say, in fighting within the Catholic world. Even those
countries that did not become Protestant, there was various competing
interests within the Catholic world, most notably between the Kingdom
of France and the Holy Roman Empire. This goes back aways,
This very much goes back aways. So in order to
properly understand this, we need to go I don't want
to say go back to the beginning. We don't need
to go go super super far back, but we need
we do need to go back about i'd say five
hundred years or so. So the relationship between the emperor
and the Pope served a very interesting role within the
Christendom world system. Right, so, mister Pete, if I could
make a comparison that might infuriate some people within the
UN world system, the globalist world system we currently live in.
The United Nations is the in theory highest arm of sovereignty.
It is above all nations. It is the set of
international laws, which you know, which is higher than every
other nation on earth. But NATO is the military arm
that backs it up. Everyone knows that NATO and the
United Nations work hand in hand. They are one and
the same. They are inseparable right. NATO, of course is
backed by the United States, which is the first of
the various legal entities that make up this world system,
and it is the stick that keeps everyone else in
NATO in line, and NATO is the stick which in
turn keeps the rest of the world in line for
the UN Are you following me so far?
Speaker 1: I'm following, okay.
Speaker 2: So within the Christendom world system, the pope and the
papacy as the head of the church with apostolic authority
in an extremely Christian paradigm, was the highest spiritual authority
and in many ways the legal authority all law found
it sort of at least all moral law. Its origin
within the within the faith of Jesus Christ, which the
Catholic Church was the earthly representative of right. This was
the This was the paradigm. Within the christen the world system,
the Holy Roman Empire, which was a collection of various
you know, semi autonomous states underneath a single underneath a
single sort of revolving emperorship, and there was different ways
of selection. At first, it was at first it was
a dynastic thing. You know, one family would become emperor,
and then they would pass it and then another family.
If that that one family died out, it would pass
to another family through and and this of course resulted
in chaos that was not resolved until the Golden Bowl
of Charles the Fourth, if I remember correctly, which basically
created the sort of euro universalis for the Europa universalas
for electorate system of how Roman Empire was selected Holy
Roman Emperor that was the Holy Roman Emperor was you know,
that's kind of like the Byzantine Empire. It's kind of
an after the fact sort of, you know, read back
on to the history that occurred. Much like the Byzantine
Empire called themselves the Basilian Romana or the Roman Empire,
the Western emperors Charlemagne Auto the Great were considered the
exact same thing as that. They were considered as though,
you know, they were like Charlemagne was considered as though
a new caesar had been crowned in the West for
the first time in a long time, you know, despite
the fact that Justinian had attempted to reconquer the western
part of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 2: It you know, everyone also kind of understood that it
wasn't really the Roman Empire the way it used to be,
but it kind of fulfilled the same role because this.
Speaker 4: This this sort of the this tie between the Christian
faith and this idea of a Roman Empire begins with Constantine,
begins with Constantine, and the conversion of the Roman Empire
and the Christianization of the Roman Empire as time went on,
because the early Church, at least in the West, now the.
Speaker 2: Church went to various other places, not just into the
Roman Empire, but the early Church in the West started
shaping itself, you know, utilizing We talk a lot about
parallelism a lot. The early Church was a really good
example of this. The early Church started shaping itself in
parallel to the political entity which it found itself within,
which was the Roman Empire. Rome had a provincial system
of governing, It had a whole similar provincial system with
its priests, with its governors, et cetera. And so the
early Christian Church mirrored this. It established similar it established
its own districts in the same places. You know, Bishops
were usually in the same cities that provincial governors were,
and this was a very effective system, especially as the
government hemorrhaged. The Roman government hemorrhaged authority, and Roman citizens
would more and more and more just start going to
the Christian bishop or a priest because they had a
sense of legitimacy or at least a sense of impartiality
and justice, and decisions would be made that were far
more satisfying than the joke that was the Roman legal
system at the time, which is very similar to the
joke that is our legal system at the time. But
fast forward this a little bit, right, Auto the Great
re establishes the Holy Roman Empire, because Charlemagne was only
only declared emperor, but after he died it kind of
goes away. But Auto the Great re establishes firmly the
institution that becomes the Holy Roman Empire, which the pope confirms.
All right, now, what in order to understand the relationship
of the papacy to what would then be called the Empire,
you need to compare it to, frankly, the power that
was right next door that also called itself the Roman Empire,
which was Byzantium. Byzantium also had a church structure within
its you know, legal polity. However, that church structure was
very firmly as it you know, as it kind of
became when Constantine converted the empire. It was very firmly
under the emperor and what would later become Orthodox Christianity.
Although this is prior to the schism, but not very
far prior to the schism, the church in the Byzantine
Empire was very much subordinate to the will of the empire. Now,
this resulted in far less conflicts between civil and religious authorities.
On the other hand, it also resulted in far less
evangelization because what started happening was is the emperor of
the Byzantine Empire only really use the evangelization of the
Christian faith as a means of state craft, right, you
know the Slavs were converted, Yes, but that's because the
Slavs were the primary neighbors of the Byzantine Empire and
were various military threats and also had access to various
commodities which the Byzantine economy ran off. Of The Byzantines
weren't exactly hostolitizing the near East. They weren't trying to
take the I mean, you know, they were requesting help
against Islam, but they weren't. They weren't like exporting missionaries
by the hundreds, by the thousands, the way that the
Western European powers would eventually end up doing. That's not
what they were doing. So if you compare this to
the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, the papacy is
a separate institution from the emperor from the empire. Now,
the papacy theoretically decides who is crowned emperor, but for
the most part it kind of became a rubber stamp
because prior to the first thing we're really going to
talk about, prior to the Gregorian Reforms, which occur from
about ten fifty to ten to eighty, which is done
by Gregory the seventh, Pope Gregory the seventh, if I
remember correctly, prior to this m HM, there was you know,
the the word Catholic meant the same thing that it
does in the Nicene Creed, which meant just there's one
Church of Jesus Christ. But there was very very very
little centralized exercised authority by the Bishop of Rome and
the papacy because of the the as you know, as
Western Rome fell and these Germanic tribes came in, and
you had all of the shifting in land and in
you know, kingdoms in what was once the Western Roman Empire.
You had this flurry of Christian missionaries going out into Frankia,
going out into Britannia and Hispania, going into like you
know what's now Germany, and they were just converting. It
was much it was very much the same thing as
what occurred within the New World. It was there was
no real you know, rhyme or reason to it, no
real organization to it. Beyond in the New World, there
were monastic orders, but within that those monastic orders weren't
very tightly controlled, which is why the Jesuits were able
to spread so far and so fast. So yeah, and
in the early in this period about the fall of
the Roman Empire, the establishment of Western Europe, there wasn't
really any central hierarchy. There were bishops, yes, and there
was a church council, and there was a series of
church councils, and certain bishops had much more authority than
other bishops in certain areas, and there were Apostolic seas
and there were you know, there was a kind of
a vague hierarchy, but there wasn't a lot of command
and control. And really it wasn't super effective for there
to be command and control because the empire was collapsed.
All infrastructure was more or less shot. You know, the
best people making decisions on the ground were people who
are on the ground making decisions. And you could also
argue that this is, this is why Christianity spread so
quickly throughout Western Europe was simply because it was almost
this emergent phenomenon that it had very little direction at all.
And you know, so anyway, I'm kind of been I've
kind of been going for a little while on that.
But in about ten to fifty, right in about ten
to fifty, the Gregorian reforms start to get implemented. Now, yes,
it starts with Pope Gregory the second, all right, and
this is because right this, this has a reason. There's
a reason that Pope Gregory kind of calls a people
sort of you know, calls together all his advisors within
the papacy, right because there were some significant issues with
clergy and clerics throughout pretty much the entirety of Europe.
Speaker 3: Right there, there were This was like there were issues
of issues of what was called simony, which were priests
charging money to do certain tasks to do like to
perform marriages or to you know, this is very very
much like illegal today, I believe within the Catholic Church,
but you can't this was rampant at the time.
Speaker 2: There was all sorts of sexual licentiousness going on with
many priests. There was. Basically this was enough of a
problem that Pope Gregory the seventh decided that something needed
to be done about it. And so what he does
what he does in an attempt. And also additionally, various
priests are kind of utilizing their authority as as justification,
as ammunition, as assistants for various civil authorities around where
they are. And this is because the papacy actually in
many places in Western Europe prior to the Gregorian reforms
did not have any control over who, you know, in
some cases over priests being appointed, especially not bishops. In Germany,
for example the Holy Rown Empire, bishops were appointed by
the civil rulers in whichever area that they were in.
I think something similar was happening in France and even
in Ireland, you know which wasn't even like which was
half civilized. It was like almost a semi tribal place.
Bishops were appointed by clan authorities. So this was and
there was no you, and in some places the papacy
did control whether bishops were appointed, but it was a
very uneven system and and it was very difficult for
the papacy to retain any sort of continuity of authority,
any sort of you know, centrality of moral instruction, of
biblical instruction, et cetera. So Pope Gregory decides to start
implementing these reforms. And one of those things, one of
those things that they claimed that is kind of kicks
off this this whole episode, is that the pope and
the papal ce in Rome had the authority through apostolic succession,
to regulate the selection of all clergy within the entirety
of Christendom. All right now, today that seems like, oh, yeah,
well within the Catholic Church. Yeah, the the church controls
every every priest that is that is in the church.
Because you know that it's a hierarchy. It's it's it's
church hierarchy. It's ecclesiastical, it's it's it's separate from the
civil authority, right, we you know, unless we live in
a theocracy, right, And and that wasn't as much of a
thing in the eleventh century, and it was not a
piece of political power that the various civil authorities, but
especially the Holy Roman Empire. Now there was a battle
about this in England as well, but that's kind of
less important. But within the Holy Roman Empire, this wasn't
outrage the civil authorities and the emperor had decided, had
declared who the priests were going to be, who the
bishops were going to be, who was going to fulfill
every single you know, what we today consider a church office.
That was that was a very significant piece of power
within the Christendom paradigm because within the sort of mental
geography of your average individual, you know, every regime, right
has its sort of myth of legitimacy. Is that what
it's called from elite theory, myth of legitimacy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if that's the exact the exact phrasing,
but it could definitely get I guess the idea out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's yeah, whatever the exact phrase is, I'm
sure someone's gonna say it in the comments. But but
But basically what I'm saying is that every regime has
a claim that it is the legitimate regime. And this
claim is usually a moral one, or an ideological one,
or a religious one, right, And the most the most
powerful regimes and the longest lasting ones have religious claims,
as we have found out. And you could even you
can honestly even argue that there's no such thing as
a non religious claim to legitimacy. You know, because because
because our current, our current wold paradigmister Pete, right, they've
got their own state religion with you know, tranees and
and and and you know, other groups of people and
black women as the as the as the source of
moral authority.
Speaker 1: It's interesting I was talking with someone today and we
were talking about how you get demonized for being a
great man, like, you know, no one can. I'm not
calling Trump a great man, but he's definitely somebody who
talks like, you know, like he's trying to build a legacy,
like he's trying to do something great for people and
everything like that, and how that's verboten nowadays, and but
it's it's not verboten if you're doing it for like
marginalized groups like trans people or gay people, or some
kind of black trends, you know, pediatrist or something like that.
We discussed that today. It's really odd how we've reached
that point, and that's a derail ust and everything. It
just that reminded of it is how you're not allowed
to be forevery you're not allowed to appeal to the masses,
You're not allowed to be a populist, but you can
be You're not allowed to be a hero, but you
can definitely be a hero for this, you know, for
the the pets of the regime kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's the what is it like, that's their
their their founding. I don't want to say they're founding myth,
but yeah, they're founding myth. They're founding myth.
Speaker 1: Is the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty work completing
the work that was begun in you know, nineteen thirty
nine with going to Europe to save Europe from you know,
the evil Meani past. And obviously, like like all religious stories, right,
it gets read back into the entirety of history, you know, obviously,
like I'm not obviously it's a false religion. We're all
seeing it's it's it's a false creed. It's not true,
but it doesn't it doesn't have to be true to
be a religion, right. A religion is just something that's
done repetitively in a reverent way. The Christian religion is
a religion, but it is not the only one, regardless.
I don't want to go too far down that one,
but but yeah, it's it's it's pretty much the same thing, right.
And a regime lives and dies off of its ability
to maintain legitimacy. And you know, there's there's I'm not
going to go into that, but suffice it to say,
within the Europe of the eleventh century, the legitimacy of
all civil authorities was based upon their adherence to the
religion of Jesus Christ and to their you know, to
a lesser or greater extent, their good graces to the
Church of Jesus Christ. Now, the Church of Jesus Christ
was not as of yet synonymous with the papacy as
an institution. However, it was trending that way, right And
and you know, because you know, with the conquest of
the seas of Alexandria, and Antioch by which were the
two because the I think Rome was one of three
initially that were the three highest one it was Rome,
Alexandria and Antioch, those were the three highest. But when
Antioch and Alexandria were conquered by the Muslims and subjugated,
that left only Rome. Now, later on the Byzantines would
claim Contentinople was just as high, but you know that's
a later innovation, and a lot of people in the
West didn't really care to live under what the Greeks
had to say about it. But by the papacy claiming
that it had the right to select the priests throughout
the priests, the bishop's, heads of monasteries, anything, this created
a significant political tension with the Holy Roman Empire, and
this caused something that would then later be called the
investiture controversy. All right, So the Gregorian reforms done with
good intentions, done initially to and there was another reason
behind the Gregorian reforms. The papacy. You know, from the
initial foundation, you know, it wasn't always what it sees
itself as now. But the papacy had started becoming a
sort of autonomous thing with a little bit of temporal
authority within the center of Italy, but it also had
this open door to this sovereignty, this this ultimate sovereignty
overall nations. Being the head of the Church, right, you know,
the Vicar of Christ, the arbiter of you know, the
meant meant to the you know, in a good read,
to keep the peace amongst Christian nations and to resolve
disputes between them. But that wasn't as affirmed of a
legal concept yet. The pope did not want to be
subordinate to the emperor the same way that the patriarch
of Constantinople was subordinate to the Byzantine Emperor, because there
was this different like like, this different ideal of the
legal authority in that the papacy could be the final authority,
the sovereign above sovereigns, the way Jesus Christ is the
king of kings. The papacy can be the sovereignty above sovereignties.
And the Gregorian reforms is what really starts formalizing this
legal conception of what role the papacy can play within
the geopolitics of Christian nations within the West. It was
not something that the emperor was too happy about. For
a variety of reasons. But first and foremost, because this
created this question of sovereignty. Right, the pope and the
emperor were the two pillars that held up the Christian
world system. The pope was the spiritual authority, the religious authority,
the moral authority, and the legal authority because law, all law,
comes from what that society sees as God, right, which
I guess, unfortunately means that law in the United States
sees we the people as God because that is where
it derives its authority. Although some may argue the so
help us God is where they derive their authority. So
you know, maybe there's more than one way to read it,
and maybe that can be decided by a future American
sovereign later on, hopefully for the better. But the empire
was the political authority, the military authority, the you know,
the civil authority, right like the implementation you know, the
way that NATO is the stick that keeps people in line,
is the alliance that you know protects the protects the consensus,
the legal order is the same way the emperor protects
the pope in theory. But when the pope in the
papacy decided to start, you know, exercising more influence over
how the church functioned outside of Italy. The Emperor did
not like that at all. So this caused you know,
the invested your contra, which was as you know, if
you if you look it up, it was a it
was a conflict between the Empire and the Pope over
who could appoint bishops. Very specifically, there was more than
one investiture controversy. There was you know, one in England,
but you know, in essence it it there was there
was like was like like the the Emperor would march
armies into Italy to intimidate the Pope, and the and
the Pope would release condemnations of the Emperor. And you know,
Henry the fourth had his very you know famous crawling
through the snow on his knees for seven days to
get forgiveness after the Pope excommunicated him. And there was
some more that there's some more, but that it ends
in eleven twenty two with what's called the Concordat of Verms, right.
The Concordat of Verms was a sort of agreement right
that basically stated that while every bishop appointed must swear
an oath of loyalty to the civil authority in the
area where that bishop was appointed. The Church has complete
authority over who gets appointed as bishop, right, So bishops, yeah,
if you get appointed, you have to swear an oath
of loyalty. But the Church gets to decide. The Church
gets to decide who is appointed. And you know, this
was a net gain in authority for the papacy and
a net loss and authority of the Holy Roman Empire,
and it would only continue as time went on. Now,
prior to this, the emperor was doing things like like
Henry the third was doing things like marching into Rome
finding three post hopes after Now that was admittedly that
was because of Benedict the Ninths. You know, if you
look up Benedict the ninth you'll you'll see what I'm
talking about. He was kind of a reprehensible person, but
he sold the pay PC various times. There were three points,
and so Henry the second marched in put an end
to that. But he installed a papal candidate that he wanted.
And so obviously there was some reason for the papacy
to fear what the Holy Roman Empire was going to do,
what the emperors were going to do in relation to
the papacy, in relation to you know, politics, interfering with
what you know, the papacy beliefs should be a separate
moral arm from civil affairs, as opposed to what happens
in the Byzantine Empire. But the concord out of Verms
decided enough of a piece for this controversy to be
resolved for a time. It would flare up later on,
and but you know, the empire didn't really regain ground.
But there was this this really bad habit as I
mentioned previously, of you know, Emperor Henry the third marches
into Rome and basically kicks out three three people all
claiming their pope and just installs his own candidate, you know,
with with totally political authority. Right, this sets a very
dangerous precedent because this was this was this was something
that any emperor you know, was like like the the
idea of anti pope's right, you know, of of you know,
claiming the illegitimacy of a papal election and having a
whole bunch of like plucked cardinals that magically appear somewhere
declare that you are in fact the real pope and
then going to an emperor who has a vested interests
or or another civil authority who has a vested interest
in installing you as pope and saying that the current
pope is legitimate, and it really it leaves hanging open
the center of all of this. The center of all
of this is to understand that this crisis, this conflict
between the pope and the emperor, was who is the sovereign?
Who is the sovereign? Who is the Emperor the highest
sovereign because he's the highest civil authority and is like
the businessing empire where the Pope is under him, like
the patriarch is under the you know, under the businesting emperor,
or is the papacy with this legal theory that they
have claiming just as Christ is above all of the
nations of Europe, is the papacy this sovereignty of sovereignties?
Is it this international authority? And if it is this
international authority, must it preserve a sense of not only independence,
but in some cases supremacy in even possibly a political circacumstance,
or at least independence in a political circumstance over the
various kings and sovereigns and civil principalities of Europe, including
the Holy Roman Empire and so the popes. The popes
did believe that they possessed this power. They had what
was called what was it papal depict It was like
papal depositionary power, like the pope reserved the right, you know,
to to declare any ruler of Europe unfit for ruling
due to their lack of adherence with the Christian faith,
with the faith of Christ. This was done, you know,
very famously to Henry the fourth, I mentioned by by
Gregory the seventh. Gregory the seventh, you know, demonstrated it,
and Henry the fourth you know, believed it like you know,
they because almost like medieval society was based on bonds
of loyalty, and that's how government was conducted, of oaths,
things like that, contracts, and so if a higher authority,
which every ruler knew that he was loyal to first,
which was the Church and the faith of Christ through it,
if the Church declared that, or the head of the
Church on behalf of the Church declared that a man
who's above you but below the Church is unfit, well
then you have every justifiable legal right to not pay
him taxes or not give him levies or everything like that.
So this was a real thing within the paradigm. You know,
there was some belief within you know, some were a
lot of belief within the Christendom world system that the
Pope did in fact have this authority that you know
a lot of Now the Holy Roman Empire, of course,
disputed this authority to a certain extent. But Henry the
Fourth supplicated himself. And I think Henry the fourth was
from the von Veld dynasty. I'm gonna fact check check
myself real quick, just to just to make sure, no problem, Yeah,
because I want to I want to make sure I
get this right. Or was he a Salien? I think
he was. I think he was of the Saliens, But
that that'll be important later. The reason I'm checking out
is is it'll it'll be important a little bit after that.
But you know, it was it. But then when when
when Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick Barbarossa more brazenly opposed the authority
of the pope, and that's why he was declared he
was He was excommunicated by Pope Alexander the Third, and
his I think was his successor, Frederick the Second, who
was even more just blatantly anti Pope papal authority. A
matter of fact, a lot of people, you know, accused
Frederick the second of being secretly Muslim because his whole
bodyguard was made of Muslims from Sicily. Two different popes,
you know, declared him unfit to rule, Gregory the ninth
and Innocent the fourth, and you know, of course that
didn't that didn't really do much immediately. But like, and
you can see the thing, right, like the first time
it's declared by Gregory the second, the seventh, Henry the
fourth crawls on his hands and knees with sackcloth and
ashes through the snow and Tuscany for the pope to
forgive him, right, this sort of humiliation that he goes
through himself. But the next couple of times, it's kind
of it loses its moral power because you know, the emperor,
for whatever reason, starts asking the question, all right, well,
you know, it's like it's like stalin the pope, how
many divisions does he have? You know? And this is
a this is a significant reality because the Holy Roman Empire,
especially if it's an empire an emperor like Frederick the second,
you know, who doesn't much care for spiritual matters. You
could just, you know, you could just go in and
just you know, fabricate some opponent, some counter claimant, and
marches armies into Rome and depose the pope and put
a new pope you know, which actually was it was.
It brings me to it. It brings me to an interesting
transition because this was exactly done, but not by the emperor.
All right. Someone got this idea in their head that
they could just at some point just seize the pope
and just declare a new papacy. And someone absolutely did,
except it wasn't the Emperor. So I haven't talked a
lot about the king I don't think I've mentioned the
Kingdom of France at all since this started. But the
Kingdom of France was a competing power within Europe to
the Holy Roon Empire. It was theoretically under the eldest
daughter of the Church. It was under the authority of
the papacy, but it was a separate geopolitical power, with
separate interests, with separate you know, claims to Charlemagne and
and things like that. So what happened was right, uh,
Suffice it to say, a pope was locked up and
all of a sudden, all of these, you know, it
is all these, all these cardinals appear that claimed that
this that the that the I think it was. It
was Urban the seventh, That's what it was. Urban the
seventh was locked up, claimed illegitimate, and I think they
kept him locked up till he uh he died. And
then all of the sudden that the papacy now exists
in Avignon, which is in France, and these French cardinals
keep getting selected to be pope. Who are you know,
in alliance with French interests. Now, of course there's still
a papacy in Rome because they didn't get rid of
the cardinals that were in Rome. And so this creates
what was called the Western Schism, which lasted from about
thirteen seventy eight through fourteen seventeen, which you know, confused
the heck out of everyone because now all this was
a significant crisis because now temporal powers were meddling in
the papacy to such nicknaw, the papacy did have this authority,
and by this growing papal authority, outside powers were more
tempted to start meddling with its functions. But it wasn't
The Holy run Empire ended up doing it. It was the
Kingdom of France. And so you know, when you have
one civil authority claiming that the papacy, you know, having
the papacy moved to within the borders of that territory,
having all of these you know, French cardinals elected pope,
and basically having the papacy exist as as much the
same way that the Patriarch of Constantinople does, this whole
world system goes into into a crisis of legitimacy, because
the question is it's like, okay, well, if the pope
is not sovereign of sovereigns to the point where a
civil authority can just kind of come in and claim
that the pope is theirs. Now with some level of
legal legitimacy, what's to stop every Western European country from
declaring their own pope, from having their own head of
the church, from having their own you know, and then
seeking to conquer the other ones because you know, they
of course have the righteous apostolic successor to the faith,
and for there to be a Western empire much the
same way. Now, Buzanteum was kind of in kind of
in decline at this point. So and this this did
cause a lot of you know matter, a lot of
you know, what we're called heretics, but a lot of
the there was a lot of discontentment in the in
the spiritual realm with the state of how the Catholic
Church was was operating at this time because of you know,
now right righteously, you know, at least from their perspective,
the papacy was attempting to secure itself outside of the
authority of these civil powers. But by trying to maintain
their independence and by trying to to continue to be
this sort of arbiter, this mediator, this authority over authorities,
this sovereign over sovereigns, the Church became very politicized, and
a lot of the more was a lot of them,
I'm speaking very generally here, but broadly speaking, a lot
of now outside of outside of you know, the Gregorian
Reformation and the and the you know, and the Benedictine
Reformation and the Franciscan Reformation and the Dominican Reformation, with
all these you know, where these monastic orders were kind
of established to pursue these things that sort of existed
as like a parallel hierarchy to the actual church hierarchy.
Besides that, much of the same moral issues. By the way,
I forgot to mention that the Gregorian Reforms is also
what established a clerical celibacy as a doctrine. Prior to that,
it wasn't really a thing, and it was actually very
controversial when it was first passed, but it won out.
But you know, precisely because that was a doctrine, it
was even the more glaringly obvious when various priests in
Italy and elsewhere were keeping you know, you know, had
had women that were very clearly you know, their mistresses,
their relations. Right now. Of course this wasn't all popes,
but you know, whenever you dip your toes too much
within the political side. Not to say engaging in politics
is bad, but when you start pursuing politics more and
more and more, especially if you're a religious institution, you
start neglecting your you know, you start neglecting some other things.
Right now, there was legitimate issue with this within the
within the Catholic Church, which is you know where the
Concilier movement comes in, right this is this is the
Conciliar movement. It kind of began around the thirteen hundreds,
goes into the fifteen hundreds, but it's sort of in
reaction with the Western schism, in which you have one
pope and Avignon, you have one pope in Roman, and
then later on you have a pope in like Pisa
or something like that. You know, there's like another pope
in Italy. Right, so there's there first there was two.
There's one pope and there's two popes, and there's three popes, right,
and everyone's confused, and one pope's excommunicating the other and
the other one's excommunicating the other one. And like peasants
throughout your people throughout Europe, nobles throughout Europe are like
the moral order is in chaos. It's like, well, wait
a minute, which pope is the real pope? Which one
is the and and they were these were real questions.
These were serious questions because you know, if if one
pope excommunicated this ruler of this realm because whatever reason,
but the other pope didn't. Well, if if the ruler
was excommunicated, every subject underneath them was excommunicated. And so
this is you can see this sort of and this
it's this terrified people because you know then as now,
no one wants to go to hell, No one wants
to no one wants to burn eternally, right, and if
it's something your ruler did, you don't want to pay
for that consequence. And that's why it was such a
powerful thing within that paradigm. So regardless, regardless, like, there
were significant efforts within the Catholic Church to reform this,
specifically with the Conciliar movement from about the thirteen hundreds
to the fifteen hundred, there was this alternative legal theory
that was put in contrast to the popes, floated by
by I think it was it William of Auckham was
one of the people who came up with something like it.
But a lot of these monastic, these more monastic Catholics
floated this idea, right was they wanted to go back
to the early church, right, the early Church? How the
early church function? How did the early church function? Well,
the early Church function primarily through church councils, through meetings
of bishops. This you know, the Council of Nicea, the
Council of Chalcedon, the Council of of you know, Constantinople,
the Council there's very all of these councils, right, all
of these church councils that you know, decided things that
were as significant as the Nicene Creed, which is the
summary of the christ in faith, the composition of the Bible,
which was all the various books that are included. You know.
For the Protestants it's like I think sixty six, for
the Catholics it's I think seventy two something like that,
you know. But like all of that was decided at
a church council, you know. And so seeing the some
of the downsides of this legal theory that had been
put forth that the pope can be the sovereign over sovereigns,
many within the Catholic Church wanted to create either in
much the same way that the papacy created these various
parallel monastic hierarchies. They wanted to create a parallel church
council of some way that's either completely outside the pope
or in some radicals even put it forth as as
against the pope. And I mean this, this, this, this,
this went far enough too, I think it was. It
was the Council of Basil was the high point of
this where they were significantly considering something like this. But
it it fell apart, and you know, in the in
the after court, it kind of bringing, and this kind
of brings us very nicely comfortably up to the to
the quote unquote present within our little series. But in
about fifteen seventeen, at the fifth Latteran Council, papal supremacy
was firmly and completely legally entrenched and held as a
dogma of the Catholic Church. So that kind of brings
me to the end of what I had to talk about.
I mean, it's a it's it's brief. I could have
spent whole episodes on any single one of those, and
I didn't get to talk about the Gelves and the
I'll throw the Gelves and the Giblings in real quick,
I mean the Galps and the Giblings, which some of
you all may be familiar, was mostly limited to the
Italian peninsula, and it had more to do with the
authority of the Emperor versus the Pope. Although the Galps
and the Ghiblings is the most famous example of it,
there were two. There was one during the first Investiture controversy,
which ended as as soon as Henry the Fourth or
as soon as the conquered out of Verms was signed,
but the second phase, which lasted from twelve sixteen to
thirteen ninety two was much much longer, and it had
a lot more to do with this idea of Italian autonomy,
because even within Italy, a lot of the Italian states
didn't like the path the Papacy was taking, most notably Venice.
Venice very much disliked this legal this legal doctrine that
the papacy was attempting to attempting to implement the papacy
as sovereign of sovereigns because you know, in Italy, all
of these you know, the Italians, their city states, they've
always been very autonomous. They don't like it when outsiders
of any kind kind of interfere with the formation, with
the functioning of their own city. But it also kind
of became a microcosm of these, you know, specifically with
the supporters of two dynasties, the von velf dynasty, which
were you know, a holy Roman imperial family which based
its legitimacy off of complete and total submission to the Pope,
and the affirmation of this legal of this legal theory
that the pap that the Papacy was putting forward of
papal supremacy versus the von Honstaufens, which was Frederick the
first Frederick the second, which was more of the Byzantine
style imperial superiority over the papacy. And you know that,
you know, various Italian families and city states kind of
cast their you know, Dante talks about it. It they
cast their side on one or the other. But you know,
the conflict ends when the Hoenschaufins die off completely. And yeah,
I mean it's it's it's it's just it's the most
and and and really with the with the death of
the hoen Chaufen dynasty, the Holy Roman Empire's grip not
only on you know, the like the story of this
is the Empire kind of bleeding authority, hemorrhaging authority to
the pope in Italy. When when the hollen Schaufen dynasty died,
the Holy Roman Empire their grip on Italy weakened permanently.
Italy was now under the Empire pretty much in Enamel.
And you know, this sets the stage for the for
the Renaissance and the Condottieri and and the topic for
the next episode we'll be talking about, which is the
Italian Wars, because France conquers Naples around this time, or
at least a French noble. I think it was Charles
of Anjou conquers Naples and which establishes this Angevin claim
on or and I don't think I'm using that correctly.
This this French claim, this, this, this, this Capecian claim,
that's much better. This Capecian claim on Naples, and through
Naples the rest of Italy, which will actually, you know,
be conflicted by the Holy Reman Empire, which Spain will
later get involved in as it comes into its own.
But yeah, I believe that's the I believe that's everything. Yeah,
so this is you know, a lot. I know we're
not talking about we weren't talking about Spain. But it's
important to kind of understand all of this because this
crisis that occurred within the sixteenth and seventeenth century. You
don't have a crisis like this without centuries of disputes
of differing sort of legal theories, of differing ideas as
to how nations and world systems should be set up.
And so I think it's very important that the listeners
at least have an idea as to what was because
with the Italian Wars episode, I'm gonna need to find
a way to explain why Charles the Fifth sax Rome
in fifteen twenty seven, you know, so, and this doesn't
go away, you know, even though, you know, as time
goes on, especially as the Protestant Reformation occurs, and the
papacy and the Empire are kind of pushed into the
same camp for the final for the remaining century or
so of the Christendom world system and it's terminal crisis point.
Excuse me, it's important, I think for the listeners to
understand what led to this in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that was a good overview and really
goes to show how how much people were eager to
centralize power into themselves, especially when it came to the
authority of the church. Yes, which is why, which is
why it ended up having to centralize itself in one
location exactly.
Speaker 2: And I mean, and the thing with it is too, right,
is it wasn't It wasn't done. This is this thing
that needs to be understood, right, you know, the centralization
of power is never done entirely through if the majority,
through dark ambition, right, It's done as in a lot
of instances, it's done as a reaction. It's done as
an attempt to shore up you know protection. You know,
the papacy was very right to fear that they might
become little more than a lap dog of the empire.
They created much that I keep I keep making the comparison,
but much the same way that the Orthodox Church in
Constantinople was, you know, and there were you know there
it's it's it really is, you know, centralizing authority. You know, yes,
you can. There's always a little bit of dark ambition there, always,
but it's never entirely, if in very rarely, the majority
the reason why something like that happens, you know, And
that's something I want people to keep conscious of. It's
just it's kind of like before you even realize that
the machine has gotten away from you, and the worst
kinds of people from the outside have recognized what it is,
or who were hiding behind you in the inside the
whole time, have recognized what it is and what it
can do for them, and because they thrive in those
types of environments, they've they've out maneuvered you. And now
this thing that you love, that you were trying to protect,
has become something you don't even recognize. And that was
the feeling that many, many, many within within and outside
the Catholic Church had about it, you know, and many
of them stayed within it to try to reform it
and try to you know, as the Protestant Reformation happened,
many many dissidents, you know, Erasmus is a great example,
stayed within the church because they wanted to reform it.
And of course many made the schism, made the break
and went outside of it to try to reform it
from the outsider, the foundation of a new church. And
you know, it's it's it's you know, I don't know,
it's it's the only thing that can be said about
it is it's a tragedy because a great many people
died because of because of dark ambition and you know,
political hunger, hunger for too much power, in all of these.
Speaker 1: Other things, many such cases, many such case. All right, well,
we got to break because we got to go to
do we got a meeting to get ready to do.
Speaker 2: We do it more.
Speaker 1: Why don't you do that plug and we'll get out
of here.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course, yes. If if there's some conceivable
world where you've been listening to the Pete Kenyone show
for this long and you have not attempted to get
involved with the Old Glory Club. I don't know what
to say to you at this point, Like, I mean,
maybe you've got to burn your hand on the stove
twenty six times before you figure it out, all right,
I guess so, But please get involved with the Old
Glory Club. It's very much a project that Pete and
I really do. I don't want to speak on your behalf,
but you know we do really believe in and think
it can do great work for our guys. Ever since
this Hurricane Helene relief, we've had people from all across
the country getting involved, going into the zone, getting involved
with chapters, sending money, donating all of these other things,
and it's just it's amazing to see and we want
all of you to be a part of it, because,
as I've said before, the window is closing for the
rider dies for the first founders, because you know, once
we have some things going on behind the scenes get
figured out, right, there's going to be a firm break
between the people who were here on the ground floor
and the people who were the ones who came after
we had already built it, right, So you don't want
to be an Ellis islander or a fringing' You know,
you want to be an old stock American. You want
to be someone who shows up to the frontier to
help do some work. And hey, shoot, it's better to
show up in eighteen twenty than in eighteen eighty, you
know what I'm saying. Right, So, if you if you've
been on the fence and you hear this, now this
is your this is your call involved, you know, because
pretty soon it will be much harder for you to
get involved than it is now. That's all I gotta say.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And as as we're saying this, I just got a
notification from the group that Melon who's on the ground
is looking for help, especially people who are handy with
the chainsaw. So just to let you know, we got
people on the ground there and they're gonna be We're
gonna have people on the ground there until this gets
until this gets settled, then that could be a while.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be so, but we have contacts on the ground.
If you want to go up there, get in touch
with us, we'll make sure you get set up. Otherwise,
get involved, support us and all that. And listen to
mister Peach Show. Listen all of those other episodes. He
does great work.
Speaker 1: Thanks Paul, take care.
Speaker 2: Likewise,