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66a8873
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39 It was the same in the other great houses. And all of this was possible because the great monasteries began to utilize a hired labour force, who not only were more productive than the monks had been,40 but also more productive than tenants required to provide periods of compulsory labour. Indeed, these tenants had long since been satisfying their labour obligations by money payments.
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Rodney Stark |
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9c734b3
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Once the Lutheran churches were secure, Luther, like most other leaders of the Reformations, believed in freedom of conscience only for those who agreed with him.
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Rodney Stark |
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d7840ce
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does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely.
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Rodney Stark |
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d0de3b8
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In his magisterial The Reformation, Diarmaid MacCulloch was quite correct that 'Luther's writing of 1543 is a blueprint for the Nazi's Kristallnacht of 1938',
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Rodney Stark |
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7efa49b
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the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to religious freedom and tolerance; to the contrary. Finally, Martin Luther's vicious anti-Semitism played a significant role in legitimating the Holocaust, just as William Shirer claimed.
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Rodney Stark |
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2545909
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Recalling his days as a student in Paris from about 1205 to 1210, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry wrote: "Simple fornication was held to be no sin. Everywhere, publicly, close to their brothels, prostitutes attracted the students who were walking by on the streets and squares of the city with immodest and aggressive invitations."31 It was, of course, against regulations for students to accept such invitations. But many students flouted those and ..
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Rodney Stark |
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c6c71a3
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Humans will tend to adopt and retain those elements of culture that appear to produce "better" results, while those that appear to be less rewarding will tend to be discarded."
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Rodney Stark |
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5ccfd11
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Sad to say, it is no surprise that the massacre of Antioch is barely reported in many recent Western histories of the Crusades. Steven Runciman gave it eight lines, 30 Hans Eberhard Mayer gave it one, 31 and Christopher Tyerman, who devoted several pages to lurid details of the massacre of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, dismissed the massacre of Antioch in four words.32
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Rodney Stark |
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c258807
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The Church never endorsed the notion of the divine right of kings. That was first proclaimed by James I of England (1566-1625), a Protestant after whom the King James Version of the Bible is named. Instead, the Catholic Church always asserted that its authority was greater than that of monarchs.
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Rodney Stark |
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9bc06cb
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This is not to say that the Muslims were more brutal or less tolerant than were Christians or Jews, for it was a brutal and intolerant age. It is to say that efforts to portray Muslims as enlightened supporters of multiculturalism are at best ignorant.
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Rodney Stark |
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10c9113
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To sum up: the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to religious freedom
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Rodney Stark |
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1b6a0bf
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This 'shocking realism'52 has often surprised and upset Augustine's readers. But, given the immense authority of the writer, this view shaped Christian political sensibilities ever after: Christian writers could not condemn suggestions for liberalizing the state, or even for dispensing with monarchies. Moreover, by affirming the secularity of kingship the Church made it possible to examine the basis for worldly power and the interplay of ri..
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Rodney Stark |
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e082eb6
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It all began with the French Revolution. Prior to that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries European warfare had involved very small professional armies, fighting very circumscribed campaigns having almost no impact on civilian life. In 1643, the entire Prussian army consisted of 5,500 professional soldiers. A century later the fierce Prussian army commanded by Frederick the Great numbered only 90,000 and still triumphed in the Seve..
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Rodney Stark |
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c5822ec
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Weber's thesis is now more than a century old and nearly all of the introductory sociology textbooks (but not mine) take it to be a settled fact that the rise of industrial capitalism took place initially in predominantly Protestant countries and that within nations having both Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants dominated the capitalist economy. Moreover, a number of sociologists have attempted to account for the modernization of va..
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Rodney Stark |
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a172d4f
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Rachfahl noted that the Protestant Ethic thesis was contradicted by the geography of the rise of industrial capitalism. For example, Amsterdam and Antwerp developed industrial capitalism very early when both were Catholic cities, while the Protestant Scandinavian cities were very late to develop industrial capitalism.
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Rodney Stark |
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947b3d2
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Lujo Brentano (1844-1931), who correctly noted that industrial capitalism originated in southern Europe long before the German Reformation and was taken north mainly by Catholic banking firms.
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Rodney Stark |
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dc787a8
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Tawney added an additional twist by suggesting that 'nascent capitalism . . . [shaped] Calvinism's attitude to enterprise and the accumulation of wealth, not vice versa'.
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Rodney Stark |
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38e1929
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Then they calculated the relationship between Protestantism and these measures of industrial capitalism. The results were zero: Catholic and Protestant nations did not differ!
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Rodney Stark |
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46f3701
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Nationalism' has become a much overused term, subject to far too many and often muddled definitions.
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Rodney Stark |
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95591b1
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capitalism was a very Catholic invention: it first appeared in the great monastic estates, way back in the ninth century.
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Rodney Stark |
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b04fee9
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As suggested by this definition, not all nations are states and not all states are nations.
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Rodney Stark |
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4c7228a
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Coins and precious metals, food, slaves, and luxury goods flowed to Rome; little came back except tax collectors and soldiers.
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Rodney Stark |
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8450ef4
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As for the fall of the Spanish Empire, ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they carefully built the Spanish Empire and ruled it for more than eighty years. Nearly every day they rose early and worked diligently at administering this sprawling entity. Had they been wastrels or playboys, they might have done much less damage to the econom..
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Rodney Stark |
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93f05c1
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As for doctrine, Luther asserted the absolute authority of Holy Scripture and that each human must discover the meaning of scripture and establish his or her own, personal relationship with God.
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Rodney Stark |
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12956d9
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When William the Conqueror had the Domesday Book compiled in 1086, this forerunner of the modern census reported at least 6,500 water-powered mills operating in England, or one for about every fifty families.
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Rodney Stark |
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45b0b37
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By the late twelfth century Europe was so crowded with windmills that owners began to file lawsuits against one another for blocking their wind.
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Rodney Stark |
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3954c19
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Given these attitudes and lack of attendance, it is hardly surprising that the German masses (and most Europeans) were ignorant of even basic Christian facts.
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Rodney Stark |
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06f1ebf
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When the Bishop of Gloucester systematically tested Church of England diocesan clergy in 1551, of 311 pastors, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, and 27 did not know the author of the Lord's Prayer.
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Rodney Stark |
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8acd734
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Unfortunately, there is no contemporary history of Rome prior to about 200 BC, when centuries of oral traditions were first committed to writing.
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Rodney Stark |
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07c5d3b
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No wonder that progress was so slow within the ancient empires. Anything of value--land, crops, livestock, buildings, even children--could be arbitrarily seized, and as the Chinese iron magnates learned, it often was. Worse yet, the tyrannical empires invested little of the wealth they extracted to increase production. They consumed it instead--often in various forms of display. The Egyptian pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the..
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Rodney Stark |
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376a199
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Masoretic
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Rodney Stark |
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976d828
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But Christendom was not merely a community of warriors or even a community of the nobility. It was a civilization! Unfortunately, for generations everyone was taught that the era beginning with the fall of Rome and ending not long before the Reformations was correctly known as the 'Dark Ages'.
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Rodney Stark |
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8c1f50b
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the Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese.
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Rodney Stark |
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505fc01
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Plutarch (AD 46-120) estimated that Julius Caesar's campaign in Gaul yielded at least a million slaves.
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Rodney Stark |
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0d46ef6
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By the seventh century, Christianity probably was far stronger and more sophisticated in North Africa and Asia than in Europe.
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Rodney Stark |
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d9a6829
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When the Greeks were free they created a civilization advanced beyond anything else in the world. When Rome imposed its imperial rule all across the West, progress ceased for a millennium. The fall of Rome once again unleashed creativity and, for good and for ill, the fragmented and competing Europeans soon outdistanced the rest of the world, possessed not only of invincible military and naval might but also of superior economies and standa..
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Rodney Stark |
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8eef70e
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The frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect a steep decline in piety are wrong--it was always thus.
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Rodney Stark |
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And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith.9
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Rodney Stark |
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For there is another truth: to the extent that other cultures have failed to adopt at least major aspects of Western ways, they remain backward and impoverished.
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Rodney Stark |
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In addition, since they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as not only eternal and immutable but also as conscious, concerned, and rational. The early Christians fully accepted this image of God. They also added and emphasized the proposition that our knowledge of God and of his creation is progressive. Faith in both reason and progres..
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Rodney Stark |
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1d6d26a
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Most assumed this was due to the fact that church services (with the exception of occasional brief homilies) were in Latin, a language that almost no one in the pews could understand. Thus, it was believed that as the Reformations ushered in preaching in the local vernaculars, widespread public ignorance would end. But it didn't. In part, because so few people came to church. In part, because so many who came paid no attention. And, in part..
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Rodney Stark |
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0ae0554
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As the historian Edward Grant explained, 'It is indisputable that modern science emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else'. ... The crucial question is: Why? My answer to this question is as brief as it is unoriginal: Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as his personal creation, thus having a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting human co..
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science
world-history
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Rodney Stark |
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abbf2b8
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While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth.
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Rodney Stark |
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d1292a4
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Encouraged by the Scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice.
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Rodney Stark |