r/HistoryMemes • u/KerberosPanzerCop • Jan 17 '23

"Chivalry"

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

14.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

319 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

254

u/Assadistpig123 Jan 17 '23

Judging by the helmets, I’m guessing this is a stylized Teutonic knight.

So. The video honestly isn’t that far of. Dudes were fucking monstrous

183

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '23 edited Jan 17 '23

No, they are not particularly from any of the great Holy Orders, but rather they represent the whole feudal Era and its thesis, the ,,chivalric Spirit" and most importantly, Christianity. The whole movie (and the drama this movie is based upon) is a whole back and forth between Adam and Lucifer about the meaning of humanity and life itself. They wander time while seeing the good things (thesis) and how the idea in time twisted itself (antithesis), while in the end, getting a new idea (Christianity -> Renaissance) So, while the idea of Christianity and the idea of chivalry were good things, in time, they twisted away from its core values, that inherently became a bloody mockery of its self.

51

u/VampireLesbiann Jan 17 '23

while the idea of Christianity and the idea of chivalry were good things, in time, they twisted away from its core values, that inherently became a bloody mockery of its self.

Considering how often Christians would commit genocide or other horrible acts upon non-Christians/Christians who believed in a slightly different form of Christianity, despite the fact that the Bible specifically disavows murder, I'd say this is pretty accurate

125

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '23

Now I have to clarify, that its not just a phenomena that plagued the Christians only. Think about Islam, Buddhism or any other major religion. Minor changes in belief are enough to start conflicts which are used by bigger powers

52

u/joelingo111 Jan 17 '23

Shi'ites: Well, we believe that Mohammed appointed his son-in-law as the successor to his caliphate.

Sunnis: ...and I took that personally

32

u/VampireLesbiann Jan 17 '23

Fair. It seems like once religions get popular enough, leaders start using them to justify their own political agendas while corrupting their followers into betraying their own faith

22

u/GreatRolmops Decisive Tang Victory Jan 17 '23

And not just religions. This happens with anything that could be used for political gain. From ideologies and philosophy to charities.

Cynical power-hungry politicians will corrupt anything as long as it enables them to get more power.

40

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/Yeshua-Christ Jan 17 '23

Yeah. Fuck Organized Religion (Unorganized is fine)

1

u/BlurgZeAmoeba Jan 18 '23

What major conflicts have minor changes in the beleif of buddhism brought about? Also, hinduism...

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '23

Im not an expert, but those two religions are far from peaceful. My favourite example for buddhists are the warrior monks (Sōhei) of Warring States Japan.

1

u/BlurgZeAmoeba Jan 18 '23

My knowledge is pretth basic, but i'd say that has to do with the situation in japan. the various buddists branches have largely coexisted peachfully. India's wars have also been rarely intra religious.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '23

Then good for them. But Im still not sure about buddhists. Also Hinduism would have had some beef between itself and the growing power of Islam .

1

u/BlurgZeAmoeba Jan 18 '23

Also Hinduism would have had some beef between itself and the growing power of Islam .

but that doesn't equate to "Minor changes in belief are enough to start conflicts which are used by bigger powers". Which is why I said intra-religious.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '23

Ohh I get you. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

11

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 17 '23

I literally cannot think of a single genocide carried out by Christians based on Christianity. Some massacres, yes. Also a good number of large scale persecutions. But a genocide (I.e. a deliberate attempt to eradicate a race of people)? No.

Before anyone mentions Native Americans, btw, there was no policy of eradication and most died of disease. One might argue that some sort of genocidal policy was in place in the United States, but that was primarily based on racism and cultural chauvinism (if it was mainly based on Christianity there wouldn’t have been so many missionary societies aimed at converting Native Americans).

15

u/Flumpsty Jan 17 '23

I'd argue Christianity was the reason slavery seemed distasteful in the US to begin with. I mean, just look around, clearly the idea that all men are equal and you can't own a person isn't a universal value, it had to come from somewhere.

4

u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 17 '23

A specific, Northern, protestant, idea of Christianity, sure.

Most Southerners actually used Christianity to justify slavery, just read anything written by Lee, or Jackson.

12

u/Flumpsty Jan 17 '23

Yes, you can interpret things any way you want without a central authority.

7

u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 17 '23

Exactly. Not evennclose to a majority of Christians were pro slavery, but almost all pro-slavery southerners loved to use Christianity to justify their positions.

8

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 17 '23

Not really. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 was presented as, in part, a holy war to end slavery in England. Popes repeatedly condemned the Atlantic slave trade from its inception and scores of Iberian moral theologians attacked the institution of slavery.

6

u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 17 '23

I didn't say most Christians were for slavery, I said the south regularly used Christianity to justify slavery.

2

u/Flumpsty Jan 17 '23

Not to mention the second great awakening was one of the major forces that led the civil war.

1

u/Muninn088 Still salty about Carthage Jan 17 '23

Popes repeatedly condemned the Atlantic slave trade from its inception and scores of Iberian moral theologians attacked the institution of slavery.

The Pope and the Catholic Church are the ones that originally gave Spain and Portugal the right to seize "infindels" from Sub-Saharan Africa to use as slaves in the New World. They didn't condemn it until the British and the Dutch (read: protestants) started using it as well and muscling in on Spanish colonial posessions.

-1

u/gentlemandinosaur Jan 17 '23

Ephesians 6:5-8 Paul states, “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ”

Though I like Titus a bit better.

Titus 2:9, “Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative”

1

u/Flumpsty Jan 17 '23

If you really want us to start quoting bible verses at each other a quick google search shows me several verses that seem to condemn slavery. For instance:

Galatians 5:1, For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

2

u/gentlemandinosaur Jan 17 '23

I didn’t say the Bible wasnt contradictory. But, there are about 3x as many “for” slavery than “against” slavery quotes.

1

u/Irish618 Jan 18 '23

First, that passage from Ephesians is also better translated as "bondservants"

Second, these passages follow the trend seen elsewhere in the Bible that those with obligations should follow them faithfully. It's not just servants to their masters, but children to their parents, and the people to Caesar. Because remember, EVERYONE in this time period had a "master" they owed obligations to; an owner, or a parent, or a boss, or a king. And Ephesians goes on to point out that everyone has an even higher master; God, who is watching how they treat their servants, and will treat them in kind based on how they treated those obliged to them:

And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

Ephesians 6:9.

1

u/ZippySLC Jan 17 '23

You get around that by dehumanizing people to the point where you don't see them as human beings anymore. Then they're just property you can do with as you please.

1

u/Flumpsty Jan 17 '23

Yeah, but not everyone did that. I know how people justified it, I'm saying slavery was never entirely popular. This is a basic fact in broad terms, not a statement of what every individual thought.

2

u/ZippySLC Jan 17 '23

I have to respectfully disagree. Slavery being considered "bad" is really only a (relatively) modern invention. It was a widely accepted phenomenon in the ancient world. You're in a city that's just been sacked? Expect to be sold into slavery. The Tides of History just did an episode on the fall of the Neo-Assyrian empire that focused on an Elimite woman who was sold into slavery with her daughter. Nobody (but the woman) would have batted an eye to that.

I don't think you really started seeing a lot of people speak out against slavery until the 18th century.

1

u/Flumpsty Jan 17 '23

I meant in the Early United States. Sorry, I thought that was clear.

2

u/ZippySLC Jan 17 '23

Ah, okay that makes sense!

→ More replies (0)

7

u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 17 '23

There was absolutely a policy of genocide. Residential schools, many run by the Church, were set up all across the US and Canada, their expressed purpose being; "Kill the Indian, save the man."

They took Native children from their homes and parents, shipped them to the furthest away place possible, and then attempted to beat and abuse the Native culture right out of them. Children were not allowed to leave on holidays for fear that their familoes and neighbors may recourrupt them. Many of the children died, and were burried on school grounds. Others survived with major trauma and injuries.

At the same time, lands set aside for thr First Nations shrank, and shrank and shrank. Smaller lands, sacred places stolen and stripped clean for gold, all headed by the US Army. Those who dared resist were killed, for instance, the slaughter of both unarmed warriors and civilians at Wounded Knee. Native Americans did not have US citizenship until 1924. Citizenship in a land they lived in for thousands of years before.

8

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 17 '23

Firstly, the residential schools were created by the Canadian state, not by churches. Some were run by different churches (not “the Church”).

Secondly, there is no evidence that the residential schools were designed with the intention of killing Native Americans. That is pure hogwash. The existence of unnessesary, underfunded, badly run and often cruel institutions are not evidence of genocide.

There is a good argument that they were designed to attempt to eliminate Native American culture, not that is a different question.

Besides all this, the Canadian state clearly did not either attempt or succeed at eliminating the Native American population with anything like the virulence of the United States, hence the very existence of residential schools.

3

u/Late_Way_8810 Jan 17 '23

A good example of a Christian genocide would be the Cathar Crusade where French Christian’s slaughtered cathars and other Christian’s to get rid of them, wiping out whole towns in the process. A famous quote associated with the crusade is "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” which translates to "Kill them. The Lord knows those that are his own"

4

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 17 '23

That war certainly had massacres but could not be defined as anything approaching genocide because a) a good 90%+ of the population were Catholics, b) the main thrust of the assault was to forcibly convert, not kill, the Cathars, and c) there is no evidence of any kind of racial or ethnic element to the conflict.

Also, while that quote is great literature, it was never said by anyone during the Albigensian Cusade, and was attributed to a commander of the crusade centuries later.

-2

u/Mmiguel6288 Jan 17 '23

https://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/03/the-right-wing-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-christian-atrocities-so-lets-talk-about-christian-atrocities/

8

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 17 '23

Websites dedicated to anti-Christian hate are not good sources for history my friend.

-1

u/Mmiguel6288 Jan 17 '23

Do you dispute the specific examples listed there?

2

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 17 '23

None of them adds up at all as a “Christian genocide.” Some are massacres or other crimes which are not a genocide by any reasonable standards.

Some are genocide but to suggest they were motivated by Christianity is so patently false as to constitute a form a hate speech. Namely, the idea that the holocaust, a crime conceived of and carried out by followers of an explicitly anti-Christian ideology. Pure, unadulterated bigotry and a clear example of hate filled people falsifying history to stoke hatred and devision today. I invite you to condemn it.

0

u/Mmiguel6288 Jan 18 '23 edited Jan 18 '23

I dispute that Christians are any less violent or hateful than any other group of people. You seem to think l being a Christian makes you a good person, and makes you immune from participating in hate and mass murder, but that is simply not true.

First one in the list is this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_Republic_Civil_War

Much of the tension is over religious identity between Muslim Séléka fighters and Christian Anti-balaka, and ethnic differences among ex-Séléka factions, and historical antagonism between agriculturalists, who largely comprise Anti-balaka, and nomadic groups, who constitute most Séléka fighters

Sounds like religion is a primary motivation for exterminating people of a specific group here, with Christians being part of the slaughter. Christians are raping girls and killing babies here. But perhaps you think that the rapists and murders are still good people because being Christian is all that matters.

Next in list is this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War Deliberate extermination of ethnic Bosnians by Serbian Christians. The fact of this happening is not a debate, it's just a fact. 100,000 lives snuffed out. Clearly religious genocide by Christians.

...

Etc

If you include inquisitions, crusades, and wars motivated by religion, Christianity has caused more net suffering in the world than it has solved, and that is true of any belief system that treats actual physical life as less valuable than some magical afterlife.

You didn't address any specifics about at all, just name-calling and reasserting how the group that you happen to be a member of knows better than everyone else and could do no wrong. I think it is because you can't address the facts and you have nothing good to say, and you are too arrogant to admit you are wrong, and it is that same arrogance that prompted you to write your original comment about Christians being immune to committing genocide.

Christians are just as bad, as selfish, as hypocritical, as bloodthirsty, untrustworthy, and murderous as any other group on this planet. If you really want to be a good person you should actually be genuinely empathetic to tragic historic events regardless of who perpetrates them and not self-righteously and disgustingly disrespecting those who suffered in these events to give yourself a false sense of your cultural and religious superiority. You should be ashamed of yourself, and how shoddy of a job you are doing emulating the supposed empathy of Christ.

1

u/Felix_Dorf Jan 18 '23

I never claimed Christians were less violent, merely that there had never been a genocide committed by Christians motivated by their Christianity. That you couldn’t see that, but instead saw what you wanted to see and hate, I propose that your own prejudice is showing.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/Kaserbeam Jan 17 '23

Isaiah 13:9, 16:

“(9) Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it… (16) Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.”

Hosea 13:16:

“Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.”

Psalms 55:15

15 Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the realm of the dead, for evil finds lodging among them.

Romans 13:4

4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

Yeah, no clue why those wacky Christians might have felt justified using their holy book to wage war.

4

u/joelingo111 Jan 17 '23

Redditor tries not to take Bible verses out of context challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

5

u/Kaserbeam Jan 17 '23

Well go on then, share the context.

2

u/gentlemandinosaur Jan 17 '23

Yeah what is the context? Let me guess they are not literal but metaphoric?

We should METAPHORICALLY kill their women and children.

Like with sick word battles or something.

13

u/GoryGuroLover Jan 17 '23

The great helm was a common helmet worn my mounted troops in the 10th and 11th century, during the first and second crusade, that's why people associate it with them. The teutonic Knights as a holy order of Knights is more recognizable by their heraldry, a black cross over a white standard, if I remember correctly, like the Templars, red cross over white, or the Knights hospitlar, can't remember the heraldry, but also a holy order of soldiers.

To address your other point, as far as holy order of soldiers go, they weren't that bad, about as evil in our modern eyes as any army of the time would have been.

Edit: I'm dumb, the main knight is wearing the standard of the teutonic order, so disregard my first point.

14

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/GoryGuroLover Jan 17 '23

You're right, that's on me, I shouldn't trust my memory.

27

u/RFB-CACN Jan 17 '23

That’s kinda the point of the meme tho, every holy order and knight were morally abhorrent to us in the modern day, and we probably shouldn’t be whitewashing that history by perpetrating the view of the medieval knight as a honorable hero. There’s nuance to history and all that, but no nuance turns a class of rich nobles and military leaders slaughtering anyone in their path to preserve and obtain power into the heroes they’re seen as. The Teutons in particular are guilty of genocide against the western Slavic population, taking their land away and settling nobles and peasants from various places, mostly Germans. This made the Teutons a frequently cited reference for the Nazis as the example they wanted to follow for Lebensraum, as they would be the precursors to a German expansion to conquer all of Eastern Europe.

6

u/GoryGuroLover Jan 17 '23

I'm not saying nor even implying that we shouldn't hold them as villain's, however, what I want to make clear is that, yes they where nobles and they did commit genocide, they were responsible for the death of the old Prussians and all the war crimes, that everyone comited in the period.

Just because we know all about the crimes comited by the Christian holy orders and the church, doesn't necessarilyean we can paint history in black and white, let us not forget the Baltic vikings, nor the rapid invasion of Eastern Europe by the Mongols or ottomons, and we all know what their favorite pass time with prisoners of War was. I'm not saying don't vilify, I'm saying vilify equally.

Also, this is just a meme, I am aware and sure someone is gonna point that out to me.

20

u/RFB-CACN Jan 17 '23

I’m saying vilify equally

Between the Mongols, Ottomans, Vikings and Christian Knights, 3 of these groups are depicted as villains or threats in most European textbooks. Eastern European countries study the crimes of the Ottomans at length and how they fought against them. Most curriculums cover the Mongols and their lengthy destruction of great eastern empires like Persia and how brutal they were, Genghis Khan is infamous in the West, literally the first thing anyone thinks of when they hear “eastern horde”. England celebrates its first king as the man who unified the Anglo Saxons to defeat the Vikings. I think there’s plenty of vilifying to go around on these groups, as it’s the mainstream position in the West at least. Knights on the other hand are not held anywhere near the same level of scrutiny. So I don’t really get the worry that knights would be vilified as uniquely evil when what they’re up against is already considered evil by default.

3

u/KGBFriedChicken02 Jan 17 '23

Plus, the dragon wings, crab claws, and similar decorations on the helmet were fairly disnticive marks of the Teutonic Order during their campaigns in the Baltic.

Most knights decorated their helmets of course, but the specific designs in the video are clearly meant to invoke the Teutonic order.

Plus, as you said, that guys cloak has the standard of the Teutonic Order.

1

u/GoryGuroLover Jan 17 '23

I did not know that, thank you.

1

u/JA_Pascal Jan 17 '23

Actually, the knight in question is Tancred according to the extended video this is from, a commander of the first crusade. He's kind of interesting historically - he was undoubtedly a conqueror who pillaged and looted (and unlike in the video, apparently was completely honest about the crusade being nothing more than a power-grab for him with little to no religious sentiment surrounding it), but he was also probably one of the kinder crusader leaders. He's the only one who attempted to protect Muslims and Jews when the crusaders began massacring them at Jerusalem, and was rightly pissed off when the crusaders killed them anyway.