this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Two takes on gap year (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by HootinNHollerin to c/[email protected]
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[–] Viking_Hippie 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

other cultures influenced this evolution

Specifically, the Catholic church influenced most of Scandinavia by persecuting and murdering people who kept to the old ways.

[–] zloubida 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your main source for that is Snorri Sturluson, a Christian who wrote 200 years after Scandinavia's conversion. He invented those murders in order to paint the pagans as stupid and stubborn people, needing violence to accept what he believed to be the truth. Historically, the conversions weren't, with a few exceptions, violent in Scandinavia.

Scandinavia's conversion is more the result of an internal power struggle.

[–] Viking_Hippie -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your main source for that is Snorri Sturluson, a Christian who wrote 200 years after Scandinavia's conversion

Nope, my main source is the fact that that was the way that the Catholic church "converted" countries as well as "apostates" and "heretics" in places they already controlled.

Christianity didn't become a major religion and political force through the quality of its message. It did so through the quantity of its violence.

Scandinavia's conversion is more the result of an internal power struggle.

If by "internal" you mean some Scandinavian rulers being forced to convert at the point of a sword and then trying to do the same to the rest, sure. That's a really weird definition of the word, though.

[–] zloubida 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, you have no other source than your biases, then.

[–] Viking_Hippie -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you ignore the source known as "most of the history of Europe" then sure, I have only my biases 🙄

[–] zloubida 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's not a source.

[–] Viking_Hippie -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No, it's the vast majority of all sources available.

Claiming that the Catholic church used violence to convert pagans is like claiming that the Pacific Ocean is larger than a standard burrito.

It's such an obvious truth based on all available knowledge that not even the most ignorant and brainwashed zealot would ever claim otherwise in good faith.

[–] zloubida 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A zealot is “a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too”. You sound more like a zealot than me.

Of course Christianity did horrible things in its history. Nobody denies that. But to think that they only were violent and criminal is a bias. What they did in Africa for example doesn't presume of what they did a millennium earlier in an other part of the world. Now all modern historians (Nora Berend, Alexandra Sanmark, Régis Boyer to name a few) agree with the fact that Germanic Scandinavia's conversion was mostly peaceful. Do you know more than academics that studied the subject?

[–] Viking_Hippie -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too

I'm casually stating the obvious. That you stubbornly cling to your "alternative facts" version of history doesn't make me a zealot.

But to think that they only were violent and criminal is a bias

One that I don't hold.

Now all modern historians (Nora Berend, Alexandra Sanmark, Régis Boyer to name a few) agree with the fact that Germanic Scandinavia's conversion was mostly peaceful.

How exactly do they define "peaceful", though?

Personally I wouldn't consider the government enforcing a state religion using violence and deprival of freedom and dignity peaceful, for example.

[–] zloubida 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I cited my sources, actual and recognized historians from actual and recognized universities. I still wait for yours.

[–] CptEnder 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't see any links

[–] zloubida 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm old fashioned, I like actual books. But I can give you some references and citations (if you know how to use Library Genesis or equivalent, you'll download easily, although illegally, those books).

Although it was possible to justify the use of force in Christianization, we must distinguish between the use of violence in the consolidation of power and its employment against the population at large in order to make them convert. The first, war against rivals, some of whom were pagan, in order to establish or strengthen a ruler’s power, was prevalent. The latter did not often occur in these areas.

Nora Berend, Christianization and the rise of Christian monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus' c. 900-1200, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 20-21.

Scholars have argued that if there had been serious, and violent, religious conflicts between non-Christians and Christians, this would have left traces in the rune stone material. They have, however, not found any such signs.

Alexandra Sanmark, Power and conversion: a comparative study of Christianization in Scandinavia; Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, 2002, p. 113-114.

Because – it must be strongly emphasized again – the conversion of Scandinavia will have taken place without drawing the sword, without religious wars, without bloodshed, without martyrdom. When chroniclers depict it to us, much later, under a tragic and violent exterior, they will only do so by imitation of the lives of saints which were de rigeur in the West at the time.

Régis Boyer, Les Vikings, Perrin, 2015, p. 402 (I translated).

Edit: But if you want something online to read, I believe that this page is quite accurate.