@Lollardfish has a bunch of rants about this as a medievalist, basically saying the idea of the Renaissance as we know it actually being a Golden Age of some kind was a lie
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
Like all the apologetics you can do to dance around what the Borgias were like can't erase the plain fact that the papacy of Alexander VI was *cartoonishly* corrupt Like there's just *no way* everyone was gonna sit back and let the concept of indulgences slide after that point
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
Indulgences are still a thing. You can get them for walking through special Holy Doors. There was one at the National Basilica in DC in 2017. Trent was one of many Church councils during the late medieval period that put enforcement of restrictions front and centre.
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Replying to @ai_valentin @arthur_affect and
Hell, incandescent ridiculous out of touch hot take: indulgences, bluntly, *make sense* doctrinally and ideologically; it's a public donation to support a community center (the church) and its charitable works, and in exchange for Doing That Good Thing, it outweighs a sinful act
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Replying to @loudpenitent @ai_valentin and
like there's all sorts of totally valid criticisms of indulgences as a structure, but framing them as the ultimate monstrous abuse of religious faith by the wicked Catholic Church is more about Protestant mythmaking imo than it is about a genuinely unsound philosophical argument
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Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
Bingo. Indulgences weren't the issue. It was the way they were spun that touched off lay anger, but mostly amongst the middling sort and the lower rungs of the aristocracy that wanted power, and they got it by using Luther as a functional anti-pope as happened in the 14th c.
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Replying to @ai_valentin @arthur_affect and
(Notably, Lutherans themselves have criticized Luther for his antisemitism and archconservativism, but the broader Luther-descended Protestant strain is often extremely reluctant to talk about what he did AFTER his initial stand.)
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Replying to @loudpenitent @ai_valentin and
I think overall, the issue is that when an institution gets a reputation as being corrupt and oppressive, all its opponents get a surge of support and credibility, whether or not they deserve it.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @ai_valentin and
And I mean, that the leadership of the Church was corrupt at that era is basically unquestioned. It's more the framing of Luther as the lone small voice against it, a Righteous Man defying All the World, that's specifically Protestant mythmaking.
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Replying to @loudpenitent @ai_valentin and
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole problem, though: for all his flaws, he did the thing. It's the danger of letting the Bad Man be right about something.
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Yeah it's like wait till you hear about George Washington
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Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent and
Yeah, and he's even one of the better ones. It often explains the popularity of a lot of terrorist or insurgent groups, or aspiring dictators, or gangs, etc.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect and
Sure, but the problem is that Luther was not the only Man Doing the Necessary Thing. it's the specific way his star has risen at the expense of other historical actors in the popular conception.
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