THE HIGH PRIESTS

[littyfam 790]

 

 

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THE HIGH PRIESTS

A REVISION OF PRE-INTERREGNUM PONTIFICAL SUCCESSION

 

Written by Daniel Pontius de Senna

 

Published on the 5th of Sun’s Smile, 653 A.A.

 

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FOREWORD

 

I had first written this essay as that final task of my acolyteship, under the late H.P. Bernard II. Whereas it was accepted by that present Pontiff, it has since lacked publication. I thus publish it in this rough and unedited form, for I lack both time and will to see it reviewed to any extent greater than I had done some two decades ago.

 

I ask, therefore, that the reader forgives any errors of grammar or phrasing; where argument or evidence is in question, I shall readily answer to any queries or counters. I maintain a rough reference of texts both primary and secondary which, due to its length, I have not hereunder attached. The greatest of my conjectures surround the Sack of Pontia, hence its relative lack of analysis, alongside my suppositions on the intentions of Anti-Pontiff Hogarth and Dawn of Perea. To these I eagerly invite the opinions of others, in support or otherwise. For the sake of convenience, I have used the traditional calendar of Man in my dating.

 

I do hope that this proves elucidating to some, and puts aptly to words the assumptions of others.

 

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PREFACE

 

Forasmuch as the Mother Church maintains an able archive of its materials and histories, a considerable portion of its contents have gone unreviewed after their initial promulgation. I thus write this cursory examination of the progress of the High Priesthood through its establishment under Ex. Owyn, until its effective dissolution upon the first division of the Kingdom of Oren.

 

I shall establish first the limitations of this work: it is principally concerned with correcting the chronology of the early Church, with only limited analysis reserved for the tenures of the High Priests. I shall leave this latter element to another paper. Indeed, this is a necessary conceit of the study: without first correcting the broader Pontifical narrative, any close analysis shall walk on unsteady ground. Herein I thus deal in an uncontextualized world largely enclosed to the High Priesthood. The reader must be aware that this early Church was very unlike ours. Its structures were far more fluid and intertwined with the incipient Orenian state, with a dogma fundamentally unlike any which emerged in the wake of the 1455 Council of the One Faith. 

 

I begin first with an outline of the historiography of the early Church, and continue thereafter with my amendments. I shall offer thereafter a suggestion as to the origins of the various inaccuracies present in past histories, insofar as I am able.

 

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HISTORIOGRAPHY

 

There is not a great deal to be said as regards those prior iterations of early Pontifical chronologies. As mentioned prior, there has hitherto been witheringly little historiographical revision of most any historical documentation of the Church. This earliest period has seen itself especially susceptible to such a deficiency, given both the scarce primary documentation and general insignificance in later narratives, both secular and religious, of this era.
 

The earliest extant history of the Church is dated to the tenure of High Ecclesiarch Radomir I, written sometime between 1444 and 1448.¹ The reign of the final pre-Interregnum High Priest can be decisively placed in 1315.² There thus stands some 129 years at minimum between Radomir’s chronology and the events it describes; that it is laden with inaccuracies should be surprising to none.

 

Its contents are thus:

 

I – HP EVARISTUS I & CLEMENT I

The first heads of the Holy Faith appointed by the successor of Horen, Owyn I.

II – HP SIXTUS I

III – HP ALEXANDER I

IV – HP PONTIAN I

V – HP STEPHEN I

VI – PAUL I

VII – PAUL II

VIII – SIXTUS II

IX – LIBERIUS I

X – MARK I

The last  leader  of  the Faith under the divine line of Horen, he was removed forcefully after 

the deposition of the king.

XI – BERNARD I

The  first  recorded  leader  of  the  Faith  under  the  usurper  Perea  and Sheffield dynasties, 

before which the Church was held in high regard by the line of Horen.

XII – EVERARD I

The progenitor of House Hightower, Everard I was the last High Priest of a unified Oren. He died a martyr, attempting to prevent the non-believer Sheffield king from abolishing the Church entirely.     After his reign the kingdom splintered, causing the Church to be absorbed 

into the Phoenix Kingdom of Renatus and lose a great deal of power and influence.

THE FIRST INTERREGNUM

 

Gospel tells us that it was during the year 38 that Ex. Owyn anointed Evaristus and Clement as leaders over his priesthood.³ We must therefore understand, per Radomir’s chronology, that twelve generations of High Priests reigned in excess of twelve centuries altogether. This is a dubious implication, and one evidently identified by Radomir’s successors, for the first amendment to this narrative emerged during the pontificate of HP Daniel I, after 1471.⁴ There are three alterations which may be dealt with individually.

 

i. ADDITIONS TO LIBERIUS I

 

IX – LIBERIUS I

It was under Liberius I when the great Priestly See of Pontian I was ravaged, the archives of the Faith lost, and the Priesthood destroyed. Whilst the majority of mankind still heralded the faith of Horen I, there was no singular Head of Faith until the High Priest Marcus; instead, the Church’s dogma was governed by various clerical circles who acted as peers. What little is known about the Church prior to the Sack of Pontia was due to texts saved in

his escape.

 

While the existence of a St. Pontian is attested so early as 1444 in the writings of Radomir’s contemporary, John of Corazon, there is no mention of a ‘Priestly See of Pontian I’, prominent or otherwise, until this very edition of Daniel I.⁵. It seems likely, therefore, that this addition was a later interpolation of a comparatively minor event, possibly intended to rectify the temporal dissonance implicit in Radomir’s edition.

 

ii. AMENDMENTS TO MARK I

 

X – MARCUS I

The first and last leader of the Faith under the line of Horen, he was appointed in the reign of St. Daniel, who sought to restore the Priesthood after centuries of decentralized clergy. He  proved  able  and  competent  in  swaying  the  various  religious  circles  to submit to his 

authority.

 

It should first be noted that Mark’s has here been rendered in the Flexio style - particularly notable given that the same was not done for the proceeding Bernard and Everard; this shall be taken up once more in my conclusions. What is stranger, however, is the complete recontextualisation of the subcontents. What was once an oblique reference to St. Daniel of Al’Khazar has become very explicit (and even seems to reference the unique manner of St. Daniel’s founding of the Kingdom of Oren, with the addition of ‘first … leader of the Faith under the line of Horen’; we must presume this an oddly-phrased reference to the aforementioned).⁶ There is a curious turn to historicity thereafter, absent in Radomir’s version: where Radomir’s Horenic monarch had been erroneously deposed, this omits any reference to the end of St. Daniel’s reign. One might also note that further adaptations have been made (see ‘restore the Priesthood’) that the text might align with the above Liberian inventions. I shall elaborate further on both these elements in my conclusive comments.

 

iii. AMENDMENTS TO BERNARD I

 

XI – BERNARD I

The first non-human leader of faith and the first recorded leader of the Faith under the usurper Perea and Sheffield dynasties, before which the Church was held in high regard by 

the line of Horen. Bernard was of halfling origin and relatively mild-mannered.

 

There is only a minor addition here, being that of Bernard’s background. One might note that, at this time, halflings were not considered as within the lineage of Horen - a matter later amended by a 1662 decree of Jude I.⁷ Daniel’s discovery of some additional information regarding the life of Bernard must be presumed.

 

So for Daniel’s edition. This particular iteration was copied ad unguem in both the c. 1578 Historem Pontificum and the 1760 Pontificum Historia, the latter being the most recent comprehensive chronology of the Pontificate. Thus stand the prior histories of the early Pontificate.

 

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A REVISED CHRONOLOGY OF THE EARLY CHURCH

 

It is by necessity that my chronology begins in earnest at that same point as Tanith of the Westerland’s foundational A Brief Summary of Early Imperial History: with St. Daniel’s foundation of Al’Khazar.¹ Where we might certainly infer the existence of a continuous priesthood in the Thousand-Year Silence, it is wholly doubtful that any continuous High Priesthood was maintained through the period of the Seven Kingdoms.² I propose, therefore, that the High Priests Sixtus I through Mark I were priests raised to the office by individual ‘princes of piety’ [Gsp 5:26], but likely not in any sense of direct Pontifical inheritance - as was recordedly done by St. Daniel in the Kingdom of Oren, and later by Ex. Godfrey. To order them in any other manner than that presented by Radomir would be simple folly, for there remains only brief attestations of a scarce few among their number. Thus, to a new chronology of the Danielan High Priesthood.

 

Sometime in the late 13th century, the last remaining heir of an otherwise obscure King of Aaun relocated his seat from the historic center of Horenic authority, Jrent, to a small northwestern fishing village, ostensibly nearer to Gospel’s Paradisus. This town was known as Al’Khazar, and for a time boasted no High Priest, nor any great temple, save a small squareside shrine dedicated to Ex. Horen.

 

At a court gathering in the early period of St. Daniel’s reign at Al’Khazar, Everard Hightower was appointed as High Priest of Oren - the reasons thereof are, however, unknown. He established the first cathedral in the burgeoning capital, and would come to centralise his authority both within and without the kingdom. He was, in quick succession, appointed to the stations of High Chancellor and Archmage, thereby ensuring the prominence of his household for some few succeeding generations.

 

Everard would hold tenure through the entirety of Pampo Perea’s reign, even conducting his funerary rites. It was during the early stage of the rule of Pampo’s seneschal and successor, Edmund, that Everard would retire from the High Priesthood, investing his authority with the Bishop of Dunwood: Oliver Sturdyfoot II.

 

Oliver would reign as High Priest for only a few months, in the year of 1314: a period entirely contained within the rule of Edmund Sheffield. Upon his death later that year, he would invest the High Priesthood with his son, Bernard Sturdyfoot.

 

As with his father, little can be definitively discerned of Bernard’s High Priesthood. It is certain that he reigned during the final part of Edmund’s kingship, though there stands no evidence of any partisanship on his part during the succession crisis that followed Edmund’s death. 

 

Contemporaneously, the eminent Archbishop of Kal’Urguan, Hogarth Irongut, had his position within the dwarven capital revoked. Hogarth, who had to that point supported Perea’s Queen-Consort, Dawn, to succeed to the throne, was swayed to Enor’s camp with the promise of the Orenian High Priesthood. Shortly into Enor’s kingship, Bernard came to blows with the royal: Al’Khazar’s cathedral was requisitioned by the crown, and Hogarth was spuriously invested with the High Priesthood - an Anti-Pontificate that would retain the support of the state until the ultimate collapse of the Kingdom of Oren, at which point both claimants to the High Priesthood fell into obscurity, alongside the title itself. Thus did the First Interregnum begin.

 

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ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY

 

I. THE POLYECCLESIASTIC CHURCH

 

While the Church has often deferred to a simplistic model of singular and direct succession through the line of Sts. Evaristus and Clement, composed of a unitary clergy in subservience to a singular High Priest, it is abundantly apparent that the consolidated post-Danielan church was very much an invention of its times. I therefore propose an alternative organisational model for the pre-Danielan clergy: a polyecclesiastic church, that being a church comprising a number of divided hierarchies, largely contained to individual temporal states, with each governed by its own High Priest.

 

Gospel speaks at length on the progressive degradation of the ecclesiastic institute through the Silence, taking particular care to emphasise that ‘virtue was preserved only by keepers of ashen urns, paupers, and princes of piety’ [5:26], a statement that implies much for the dissolute hierarchy of the post-Owynic clergy.

 

The nomenclature of the Danielan Church seems additionally informative. It is not for mere excess that its High Priests were known as High Priests of Oren; their role was implicitly bound to and confined by the state within which they served. This was not the universal church that was confirmed in the afterglow of Ex. Godfrey’s empire, but a limited one. The term appears to have come to such ubiquity by the time of the Danielan Church that it found use in both fictionalised tales, as in the High Priest of Nox of The Great Adventures of Tegchen, described to be the parish priest of ‘a small human town’ of the same name, and in the terminology of adjacent assemblies, as that High Priest Omni of the quasi-heretical Ascended.

 

It is this same model which serves with ease to explain the late placement of the First Interregnum. The temporal failings of the pre-Danielan succession in both Radomir and Daniel’s editions of the Church’s chronology have already been outlined - if, rather, this succession was not linear nor singular, then there would be no individual High Priesthood able to experience an interregnum (and hence no ‘First Interregnum’), and no direct succession of priests need be necessary to fill the 12-century gap. A polyecclesiastic clergy, therefore, adequately fills the gaps present in the historiographical record.

 

The dominance of the Kingdom of Oren in the late 13th and early 14th centuries over the Aegisian polities marks the beginning of the transition to a singular clerical hierarchy - a monecclesiastic church. Whereas the concept of heterogenous state-bound priesthoods had remained in the social conscience at least so late as the reign of St. Daniel, the High Priest of Oren was the de jure leader of the entirety of the True Faith congregation across the continent. De facto, however, prominent diocesan authorities preserved a significant part of their autonomy. By the First Interregnum, the ecclesiate was in flux.

 

Ex. Godfrey’s installation of Gideon Silverblade as the High Pontiff Pius I would formalise this transition, placing at last the entirety of his empire’s religious institute beneath both the de jure and de facto authority of the High Pontiff. No longer would a High Priest be beholden to the woes and wiles of the state, but a High Pontiff would exist beyond them.

 

II. THE SACK OF PONTIA

 

In following from the above, it becomes necessary to question the veracity of the Sack of Pontia under Liberius’ reign as a singularly cataclysmic event. I do not doubt the existence of the sack itself, but rather pose that it has been abstracted and massively exaggerated in the historical record. Rather, the sack might well be indicative of a greater historical pattern of institutional dissolution of both temporal and ecclesiastical institutions as was prevalent during the latter stages of the Thousand-Year Silence. In other words, the proverbial icon of an era of collapse. 

 

III. ON EVERARD I

 

While beyond strictly beyond the intended purview of this paper’s chronological examinations, a correction of early Pontifical histories would be incomplete without examining the historical status of High Priest Everard I. He has found much enshrinement since his lifetime: he has been held for centuries as a saint of the Lord, and is among the prominent few of them, bearing the Society of St. Everard in his name. For all the piety that tradition affords him, the historical record speaks otherwise.

 

Certainly, during his reign as High Priest little fault can be held against him. He was among the most prominent figures of the Kingdom of Oren, and served both parish and church dutifully. It is after his 1314 retirement, during the reign of Enor, that his legacy becomes wholly more suspect. 

 

It is widely known that the plague of the Undead came readily to the fore through Enor’s kingship (and this was in no small part a cause of the ultimate trifurcation of Oren with the Phoenix Revolution), though where Enor’s corruption has been presumed (and his notes seem to attribute his failings rather to simple ineptitude than a grander scheme), an extant letter more accurately locates the sullying of the Orenian state’s chief apparatus within his Chancellor, the by-then abdicated Everard I.

 

The contents of the letter stand as thus,

 

Mr. Hawk Whitestorm, 

On behalf of the Forsaken Nation of Drauchreich, I would like to express our gratitude for your aid in the conquest of Al’Khazar. The details you provided us regarding guard postings and defensive strategy were a great help to our decisive victory. We look forward to your continued services towards our great cause. We have dispatched the agreed upon compensation of 3 diamond stacks to the indicated location. 

Regards,

Apostle Everard, Member of The Forsaken Nation of Drauchreich.

 

While this remains the sole evidence of his malfeasance, the contents are quite explicit. At the earliest point of Al’Khazar’s fall, and likely spanning into even his tenure as High Priest, Everard held affiliations to and a position (‘Apostle’) within that reviled Undead hotbed of Drauchreich. This was a tie maintained even after death; while a transcription of his funerary announcement places him dead at 61, a letter of application has him yet living nigh two decades later, at the age of 79. The status of his soul itself, therefore, is readily debatable. 

 

I shall not theorise as to why Everard’s life came to be rendered so completely otherwise from the historical fact - but I shall reiterate the vitality of acknowledging his life as it was, and not as we would wish it to be. Aught otherwise would be wilful ignorance.

 

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POSTWORD

 

I hope that I have demonstrated here the need for critical review of our Church’s inherited histories. It is very well and good to tend to matters more explicitly spiritual - the Scrolls, analyses of the plethora of virtues and sins, and all that common fare - but our Church is one burdened with acknowledgement of both a continuous tradition and the Holy Word. We cannot act as dutiful clerics if either field is let to fallow, else we become mere actors at play.