This thread discusses the Content article: Musings on…the priesthoods of Bretonnia, part 5: Gazetteer of the Unified Church of Bretonnia

This thread discusses the General Background article: Musings on...the priesthoods of Bretonnia, part 5: Gazetteer of the Unified Church of Bretonnia and also this five-part series as a whole which can be found in the General Background section

Well, ladies and gentlemen, here's the conclusion to my five-part series on the priesthoods of Bretonnia. For those just joining us, the fifth part is also a summary of what went before, so it isn't necessary to read the first four parts if you're not inclined.

More importantly, what do you think of my musings? An excellent piece on the worship of the Old World Gods in Bretonnia? Extremely useful for new ideas for your armies? Completely useless, or simply too long to read through it all? Whatever your opinion is, I eagerly await your comments.

Warning: criticism ensues. I'll do my best to be constructive, point out what I like, and offer reasons for my disagreement as I go. Still, I hope you find the feedback useful.





I'm not a big fan, to be honest. For a while I think WHF authors have been staying away from the word 'church' and from ecclesiastical language, and your heavy use of that language feels off. WFRP1e and 2e both consistently use the term 'cult' in place of 'church' (so 'Cult of Sigmar', 'Cult of Shallya', and so on), presumably to maintain a pagan feel. Using explicitly Christian language feels off. I am more comfortable with it in the case of Sigmar, since the Cult/Church of Sigmar is the most blatant Christianity-analogue in the setting, but here I feel like you're introducing Christian overtones somewhere they don't really belong.

I understand that you could debate it somewhat, particularly as Bretonnia is heavily influenced by Arthurian mythology, which is of course passionately and devoutly Christian; but I would contend that ecclesiastical authorities are conspicuously absent in most Arthurian mythology. It feels unusual for there to be any strong church in an Arthurian story; and so it also feels odd for there to be a church in Bretonnia. You include cardinals, a Palatine Guard, and so forth, and... just, no. There should not be a visible Catholic Church analogue here.

So in that way I feel that the very premise of a 'Unified Church' of Bretonnia is misguided. The religious life of Bretonnia is dominated by the Cult of the Lady, by a series of other centralised Cults, and by folk tradition. There's no place there for some ecumenical church. The different Cults have nothing to gain from cooperation, and too many ideological differences for an alliance to really stick. It might help to remember that there is definitely no concept of separation of church and state here, and similarly there is no concept of 'a religion'. That's not how things work in a pagan world. There are a bunch of different gods, everyone accepts that they all exist, and you float back and forth between them as necessary. Cults devoted to specific gods tend to be esoteric and exclusionary.

Your premise here, as far as I can tell, is that Lady-worshippers and other-god-worshippers would have come into some sort of political or social conflict after Unification; but that's not the way this sort of religion works. They aren't different religions. No one who started worshipping the Lady stopped worshipping the other gods. Over time you might expect worship of the Lady to supplant worship of other gods, but only if there's some overlap between their areas of influence. Hence e.g. the rivalries between the Cults of Sigmar, Ulric, and Myrmidia in the Empire: they're all on some level about being a warrior or soldier, and you don't worship gods redundantly. The Lady is also perceived as a warrior-goddess, so people devoted to the Lady tend not to worship Sigmar, Ulric, or Myrmidia. (And this is indeed what we find: Sigmar and Ulric are hardly worshipped at all in Bretonnia, while Myrmidia is mostly restricted to peasants and foreign mercenaries.)

So my point is that there isn't a reason for the high priestess of Shallya or the high priest of Morr to feel threatened by the worship of the Lady. No one is going to worship the Lady instead of Shallya or Morr, and Lady-worshippers have no reason to be offended by worship of Shallya or Morr. So there's no impetus for this 'Unified Church'.

A few other random thoughts...

'In turn all priests would accept the Lady of the Lake as the Queen of Heaven, the ruling Goddess of the Old World pantheon.' Aren't you laying the Marian imagery on a bit thick?

'Each Grail Knight was more capable than an entire regiment of templar knights.' I think you're really overstating things there. If we're going to talk one-on-one... I don't know, the Inner Circle of the Knights of the White Wolf are pretty darn tough, you know? Grail Knights are extremely rare champions. I'm not convinced that Bretonnian knights as a whole are tougher than, say, Knights of the Blazing Sun, or that any given Grail Knight is bound to be hugely better than any champion the Blazing Sun could offer. Let's not even mention the Templars of Sigmar.

'There are lurid tales about what the women exactly do when no men are looking, but these stories are outnumbered by those who describe in horrific detail what the nuns do with men they find trespassing.' Seriously, man? You seriously thought that was a good idea?

'The Knights Hospitaller are warriors devoted to Shallya, which at first might seem like a oxymoron.' As with the Palatine Guard, I really think you're going too far with the Catholicism. Shallyans are not medieval Catholics.

'While I imagine that the nobles would want a few words dedicated to the Lady of the Lake in their last rites, the Cult of Morr is much like the Cult of Shallya in their views on politics.' This raises the question of just how relevant anyone would perceive the Lady as being to the question of the afterlife. It is pretty clear that people in the Old World think that all the gods goven their own afterlives

(e.g. the 'Legend of Sigmar' trilogy regularly talks about the Halls of Ulric; Morr guides the dead and ushers them to the afterlife, but he doesn't keep them all. If found worthy, the soul of the dead person goes to rest with some specific god. I believe there's also a passage in Liber Chaotica where Kless mentions expecting to find signs of afterlives dedicated to each of the gods of the Old World.)

Add in the Lady's association with the Otherworld and it seems beyond doubt that the Lady is imagined to have such a realm. From the AB, 'Gilles transcended from this earthly coil to an isle of bliss in the Otherworld, there to join the Lady herself for all eternity'. (Note that it says that Gilles actually died; unlike Arthur, he was not merely wounded and taken to the Otherworld for healing.)

The Bretonni/Bretonii (as it changes depending on source) appear to be descended from the same group of tribes as the Empire, so you might compare their ancient funeral rites to those of their brother tribes. In Heldenhammer, important rituals are carried out by the priests of multiple gods as necessary: Bjorn was buried in a ceremony where both priests of Morr and priests of Ulric played important roles. The problem is that the Lady has no priests, and neither Damsels nor Grail Knights do this sort of thing. The Lady does not have temples and she is not worshipped in a regular, cultic way. My feeling would be that the nobility as a whole are meant to be the representatives of the Lady, and so the highest ranking noble available would tend to officiate at a noble funeral (and he would traditionally defer to Grail Knights or Damsels if they are present and willing; I suspect Damsels would usually not be willing).

'With this in mind, it appeared to me that the Cult of Verena would either be outcast in Bretonnia, or would else be unorthodox in its teachings in the land of chivalry. I've chosen the latter, since I find the idea of a holy institution devoted to the ideal of justice having to betray its own tenets simply fascinating.' Are you familiar with the note in KotG that many Herrimaults consider Verena their patron? She's a deity of justice who is conspicuously impartial and doesn't care about social status or birth, so I think it's safe to say the nobility isn't very keen on her; but non-nobles interested in justice might find a lot to like.

'The Cult of Taal and Rhya in Bretonnia has changed dramatically since Unification. It used to reign supreme over the land as the Church of Nature and Nurture, which provided everything the Bretonni tribes needed.' I think what you do with Taal and Rhya depends heavily on what you think Bretonni beliefs were like pre-Unification. If you think they worshipped some sort of proto-Lady back then, but in a more general sense, as a deity of the land, then there wouldn't seem to be much need for these two. I'd be happy saying that Taal and Rhya are actually relative newcomers to Bretonnia, and are still to an extent thought of as foreign, Imperial gods. As the Lady gradually transitioned to a deity of nobility and chivalry, Rhya could easily swoop in and fill her old role.

'The Bretonnian cultists of the White Wolf are a sourly lot.' I actually don't think there'd be any serious Cult of Ulric in Bretonnia at all. Too Imperial; and as a god of the warrior ideal, he has been thoroughly supplanted by the Lady. You might get a handful of expatriates, or particularly adventurous or cosmopolitan knights who've gotten sick of the Lady making prayers to him, but for the most part I'd just say that Ulric is not worshipped in Bretonnia. To the extent that Ulric is worshipped, it'll be as a seasonal deity, not a warrior deity. I think you get that much right. I'd actually rename him a bit as well. 'Ulric' is too blatantly Germanic a name, and gods are worshipped under different names everywhere. (e.g. Handrich/Haendryk, that sort of thing.)

'Valle Gévaudan is one of the few communities where the inhabitants, including the ruling lord, almost exclusively worship Ulric.' Haha, cute. Silly, but cute.

'Aside from the merchant-priests of Ranald, there's also a radical sect which worships the Trickster in one of his more savage aspects, namely as Reynard the Red Fox.' This bit is a really good idea, though. I like it.

'The monastic orders of the Grail are not an organized institution, nor are they a part of the Unified Church of Bretonnia. They are completely separate from any authority, although they do see the will of Grail Knights and Damsels as sacrosanct. In fact, many orders are founded to serve one of these champions of the Lady while in life, and preserve their remains in death.' Replacing battle pilgrims with something a little less stupid? Good move, though I would stay away from such an explicit monastic tradition. Again, Bretonnians aren't Catholics.

Anyway, having said all that, concluding thoughts...

I think you have a bunch of good ideas, but I think that the basic framework you've used for thinking about Bretonnian religion is wrong-headed. Much too Christian, much too Catholic, and I strongly disagree with the idea of a 'Unified Church'.

There are a bunch of little copy-editing things as well, but for the most part it's reasonably good, so I won't harp on that too much.

So, yeah, I don't like your overall approach, but I like some of the details. I would nick bits and pieces for a WFRP game, but as an edifice, I'm not a fan.

Anyway, I suppose I might skim your first four parts later. We shall see!

I must admit I was taken aback by how much Christian overtones I used in the end, and it took your comments to make me see that. Rest assured that this wasn't my intention. I used the word 'church' because quite frankly there aren't that many words to describe religious institutions. Unlike with 'temple', where you can use words like 'shrine', 'sanctuary', 'chapel' and more without getting a particular real-life religion involved, but I wanted a word which would say 'this is a religious organization', and something like 'Unified Cult' sounded a bit silly to my ears. You're right, of course; the religions of Warhammer Fantasy should not be stand-ins for real-life religions, for that can lead into messy debates into a hobby that's essentially about playing with plastic soldiers.

While I admit your point about that the followers of the gods would pray to more than one deity, and switch between as the situation requires it, I don't see the priests and the truly devout acting the same way. These fanatics have devoted themselves to a single deity, and as this is the grim world of perilous adventure that is Warhammer I don't see all of them casually accepting that other gods could be better than their own. We have already seen many instances where the cults of different gods go against each other. Tome of Salvation alone has an entire chapter called 'Extremes of Faith', which goes into great detail about fanatics of various faiths who believe their own god (and his/her loyal followers of course) reigns or should reign supreme. There's 'The Dyke', who believe a enormous flood will wash away the corrupt and leave the chosen of Manann to repopulate the earth, the Remean and Magrittan factions of the cult of Myrmiddia who believe that their goddess came from Tilea or Estalia respectively and that the other nation should bow down to them, and there are Sigmarites who believe that Sigmar is in fact the only deity, and that all other cults worship Chaos gods in disguise. The WFRP2 adventure Ashes of Middenheim is about the tensions between the Ulrican and Sigmarite faiths, the novel Sacred Flesh by Robin D. Laws has a priest of Sigmar and his men who have taken over a temple of Shallya against the will of the nuns there, the WFRP2 sourcebook Realm of the Ice Queen has the cults of Taal and Ulric trying to convert Kislevites to their own gods.
Long story short (too late), for all of the polytheism of the Old World religions, for many people, especially those who make it their career, there will always be one god you prefer over all others.

FVC wrote:
'There are lurid tales about what the women exactly do when no men are looking, but these stories are outnumbered by those who describe in horrific detail what the nuns do with men they find trespassing.' Seriously, man? You seriously thought that was a good idea?
It might be strange to point this one out, but I am genuinely confused what exactly your issue is with this. Is it about the notion that there's sex in Warhammer Fantasy? We have half-naked elves, seductive vampires and a veritable Chaos god of pleasure with armies of pleasure-loving daemons and cultists.
Is it about the idea of men being punished or tortured by women? Because we have seen that before in Tome of Salvation concerning the rites of initiates of Rhya:
"The initiation is shrouded in mystery, particularly among men, whose fathers whisper lurid rumours of blood sacrifices, moon worship, and stranger events. Men are strictly forbidden from witnessing these rites and most go out of their way to avoid doing out of abject fear - it is believed that a man who stumbles into this initiation loses his potency. Others believe the man loses much more than that..." - page 63
And last but not least, I never say that this actually happens. This is what the men like to think what happens. There's a world of difference between rumour and fact.

FVC wrote:
'With this in mind, it appeared to me that the Cult of Verena would either be outcast in Bretonnia, or would else be unorthodox in its teachings in the land of chivalry. I've chosen the latter, since I find the idea of a holy institution devoted to the ideal of justice having to betray its own tenets simply fascinating.' Are you familiar with the note in KotG that many Herrimaults consider Verena their patron? She's a deity of justice who is conspicuously impartial and doesn't care about social status or birth, so I think it's safe to say the nobility isn't very keen on her; but non-nobles interested in justice might find a lot to like.
I'm indeed familiar with that note, but the fact that Verena is a goddess of justice doesn't mean that all of her followers worship her in that aspect. I hate to keep repeating myself here, but Tome of Salvation points out that in all cults there are sects who worship their deity in different ways, such as the different aspects of Ranald or how Morr is both god of the dead and the god of dreams. Besides, Herrimaults are outlaws, and wouldn't have much impact on national politics in my mind.

FVC wrote:
There are a bunch of little copy-editing things as well, but for the most part it's reasonably good, so I won't harp on that too much.
Would you mind telling me where you found these copy-editing mistakes? I'm not calling you a liar, it's just that after so much time writing this series I want to know all that I did wrong so I can do better in the future.

I thoroughly encourage you to read the first four parts, since their you can find my arguments for why I made the decisions that I did.

I must admit I was taken aback by how much Christian overtones I used in the end, and it took your comments to make me see that.

Mrm. It occurs in a lot of fantasy, I suspect partly because the religion most Western fantasy authors are aware of is Christianity, so it's their go-to model for what a religion looks like, and partly because a lot of fantasy is designed to resemble medieval Europe. It's impossible to understand medieval Europe without understanding medieval Christianity, and you can't take Christianity out without radically changing the society.

So my experience is that there's a lot of fantasy set in a vague quasi-Europe, dominated by a vague quasi-Christianity. Often it's very weak. One of the reasons I like the Banestorm setting so much is because they used actual Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., in the appropriate regions. (The premise of that game is people abducted from Earth back in the 1200s or so, who settled a magical world. They took their religions with them.) It treated each religion thoughtfully and fairly, and it gave the setting a lot of depth. No invented religion can ever be quite as complex and intriguing as a real one!

In any case, since the Old World of WHF is even more closely patterned on Europe than other fantasy settings, the Christianity issue is particularly strong. For the most part I just shrug and accept that Sigmar's faith is the Christianity-analogue. It's not, really, and I can't help but think that the Cult of Sigmar is essentially Positive Christianity: more militant, emphasis on racial unity and beating up lesser races, messiah is conveniently a blonde blue-eyed white man, all that awkward stuff about forgiveness and repentance and loving your enemy is removed, and so on. (Okay, Heldenhammer says that Sigmar actually had heterochromia, but one blue and one green is still technically blue-eyed.)

Bretonnia is difficult because it's so Arthurian, and Arthurian mythology is so utterly Christian. You can remove the Christian parts and speculate about pagan proto-Arthuriana, but it doesn't particularly resemble the mythology we all know. How can we resolve the clash between what Bretonnia wants to be (Arthurian, Christian, etc.) and what the setting says it is? I mean, the core convictions of knighthood are patterned on European chivalry, and the ideals of chivalry are deeply affected by Christianity. (The moral obligation to defend and protect the weak comes from Christian ethics, knightly courtesy is associated with religious ideals of humility, courtly love is connected with the religious exaltation of monogamous marriage, and so on. These ideas didn't come out of nowhere.) It's awfully convenient that the Bretonni came up with all the same ideas despite a radically different cultural background, isn't it?

If I was going to go into the setting, rip up its metaphorical floorboards, and rebuild it from the ground up, I might be tempted to tackle that question, either by making Bretonnian knighthood less Arthurian and less chivalric, or by giving Bretonnia a stronger quasi-Christianity. You could de-emphasise it in the Empire (making Sigmar more like the deified Caesar, or even likes Mithras), make Bretonnia actually monotheistic, and change a lot of its early religious history. That's probably further than you want to go, though.

I guess for now we might just stick with the 'canon', and have a Bretonnia that is supposedly and institutionally pagan, but ideologically Christian.

While I admit your point about that the followers of the gods would pray to more than one deity, and switch between as the situation requires it, I don't see the priests and the truly devout acting the same way. These fanatics have devoted themselves to a single deity, and as this is the grim world of perilous adventure that is Warhammer I don't see all of them casually accepting that other gods could be better than their own.

I don't think it's a question of 'better', but of relevance. I imagine even the high priestess of Shallya makes an offering to Manann before a naval voyage. That's not an insult to Shallya. Shallya just doesn't do that.

Tome of Salvation does indeed talk a lot about fanatics, but I would note that they are fanatics, and not representative of the average believer. There are certainly religious tensions and followers of the gods get embroiled in politics (re: Ulric or Sigmar?); I'm just wary of thinking as if each god has a different religion. They don't.

It might be strange to point this one out, but I am genuinely confused what exactly your issue is with this. Is it about the notion that there's sex in Warhammer Fantasy? We have half-naked elves, seductive vampires and a veritable Chaos god of pleasure with armies of pleasure-loving daemons and cultists.

How many medieval writers speculated about nunneries in those terms? Either in terms of fetishised lesbianism or in terms of tearing apart men like in the Bacchae?

The thing is, it's actually rather problematic to fetishise an all-female group in this way. That's not a medieval stereotype of nuns at all, and the fetishisation of lesbianism is very much a quirk of modern culture. Importing it into a medieval setting is anachronistic and forced, and is sort of offensive to nuns, lesbians, and women in general. Western culture at the moment sometimes portrays women as the 'sex class', if that makes sense. When the discussion of a group consisting entirely of women starts with sex... ugh, it's just unfortunately.

Sorry, I don't want to go on a big feminist rant here, but it's just tasteless and juvenile.

Would you mind telling me where you found these copy-editing mistakes? I'm not calling you a liar, it's just that after so much time writing this series I want to know all that I did wrong so I can do better in the future.

I didn't keep a list. Nothing major. For instance, in one of the bits I quoted above, you wrote that Bretonnian followers of Ulric 'are a sourly lot'. Shouldn't that be 'sour lot'? That sort of thing.