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I’ll have to read up on Philip the Fair, I’m a bit rusty on later issues with the Templars. I wasn’t saying that people in Latin America don’t disagree with the pope. But if you read my post about it I was referring to politicians not wanting to disagree with the pope. As you were mentioning that religion used to mean political affiliation, in Latin America the pope has a great deal of political pull still since a large percentage of the population is Catholic. If the pope requested the replacement of a Latin American leader and cited religious-oriented reasons, that leader would be hard pressed to keep his job as the population would turn against him to some degree or another. The power is indirect nowadays as the pope doesn’t have the direct political authority it did at its peak. It would be similar to (but far less serious) the cleric versus ruler issues in the Muslim world. The rulers control the people but the clerics control their opinions, they have the utmost control of the people as long as they’re in agreement. If they have conflicting opinions then the nation becomes stratified.
The rush to a two-front war over-extended the Third Reich. Germany lacked the sheer number of troops needed to address the European conflict plus attacking Stalin. Attacking at the onset of winter was a bad move as well.
Thanks, I’ll contribute what I can, I know a lot of history but its about a lot of obscure topics, every once in a while I’ll be able to add something to the story
I think the interconnection between church and politics grew to a point that it didn’t hold to it’s root doctrines. The popes sought to be political powers after the Crusades due to the subjection of the various Crusaders to the RCC and not to their countries. The popes extended their influence to a point that the peasantry began to question the legitimacy of the RCC as a church. People like Calvin and Luther saw the errors between Biblical roots of the church and what the RCC had turned into and brought this to the public thereby adding momentum to the Reformation. Some of the post-Crusade policies instituted by the RCC were completely political and financial in nature with no biblical basis. I think the Crusades and the use of orders such as the Knights to maintain its influence overextended the abilities of the religious Church and brought about the political Church thereby alienating a percentage of its constituents. Sadly, the same thing is still evident today here in the Americas due to the legacy of that era being isolated and refined here and being maintained by the Jesuits and missionaries all the way through the start of the 20th century. No political leader in Central/South America would dare disagree with the Pope as the RCC still wields a horrendous amount of political influence there. I think the Knights Templar order probably got the short end of the stick in the post-Crusade years as the RCC piggybacked on to extending its control in Europe rather than maintaining it’s stability in Jerusalem. I fear we are going to run into the same problem in Iraq as people and gov’t are anxious to be done with the matter and leave without dealing the Muslims a firm enough defeat to guarantee long lasting peace and mutual avoidance. Perhaps the RCC can establish a new Knights Templar order to fend off the Saracen hordes after US troops leave 😆
I’d say Band of Brothers, Schindler’s List, and although the movie wasn’t written as a historical account necessarily, I was impressed at the political aspect of Kingdom of Heaven. The tentative peace agreements with the Muslim Saracens is pretty accurate. That’s about as “tolerant” as Islam has ever been, one provocation away from killing everyone. The Last Samurai sucked because of Tom Cruise and the glammed up storyline, but it did paint an pretty accurate account of the last days of the Samurai era and the bushido code. The Westernization and centralization of Japan led to its conquests of Manchuria and its involvement in WWII. Most of their disputes prior to 1900 were internal, their dedicated warrior culture coupled with an imperialistic gov’t was disasterous.
