My apologies for not posting the December
post this weekend. I’ve interviewed and been offered a new job, I’m moving, and
I’m wrestling with a publisher. Good
news all around, but it did lead to a slight delay on posting my contribution
to the blog.
It’s been another profitable year for
multimedia medievalism. The video game industry released a number of titles
that sold well in 2012, along with the profitable release of additional content
for existing titles. While we could have an interesting discussion about the
industry in general, I thought I’d talk about how “the other half” live in
neomedieval games. I’m talking about religious institutions, of course. When
most people think of medievalism (even without our fancy academic vocabulary),
they tend to focus on swords, sorcery, and aristocratic titles. The Church,
theology, and monastic life are usually far less prominent, often reduced to
window dressing. How many games have religious institutions reduced to “people
who heal with supernatural powers” or “institution that calls for clichéd
religious conflict while wearing funny clothes”? Yet, for all the clichés and
tropes that abound, there are some practical issues that are often overlooked
with religious institutions found in medievalism. How does the religious
institution fund its activities? How does it recruit members? How does it
practice politics? And how does it influence culture?
This is not merely a question of historical
accuracy; even a fictional religion with a fictional religious hierarchy needs
to be able to meet the basic needs of its members and adherents. After all,
even cloistered nuns need to eat, even before we talk about the power plays
involved in the election of various Popes or the obligations peasants owed
church property in medieval England. Along these lines, I was thinking about
how one could rate a religious institution in medievalism and see just how
medieval it really is, without discussing the actual theology involved. A kind
of structural approach, if you will, rather than comparing the theology of a
fictional religion to the real theology of various religious traditions in the
Middle Ages.
Some criteria I was brainstorming that might
be applicable to a Western European/Roman Catholic flavored medievalism:
1) Land or property ownership: Does the
institution own property that generates
revenue. Lots of religious institutions own land for their places of
worship, but the generation of revenue to support the institution seems to me
to be a fairly medieval way of operating. How many monks were supported in
their prayer by a bequest from an aristocratic lord who donated the revenue
from a piece of property?
2) Legal power: Does the religious institution
have the legal authority to judge and punish its own crimes? Does it enjoy any
kind of immunity from secular legal authorities? Does it operate with the
sanction of secular rulers?
3) The sale of goods/services: Does the
institution, as a matter of policy, sell or rent relics, sacraments,
indulgences, prayers, or honorary positions?
4) Religious Warfare: Does the institution
advocate warfare on theological grounds?
Does it couch warfare in terms of one religious tradition versus
another?
5) Heresy: Does the institution use violence or
military force against heretics? Does it refuse to tolerate divergent
theologies?
6) Visibility: Is the institution a ubiquitous
figure throughout a culture? Even if the common people do not understand the
theology or recognize sub sects, do they easily recognize and show respect to
members of the institution?
7) Obligations to the people: Does the
institution meet some kind of need of those outside the institution? Does it
provide religious services of some sort, including days and places of worship?
8) Secular interference: Is the religious
institution powerful enough/important enough that secular political figures
attempt to influence the selection of leadership within the institution?
9) Training and recruitment: How does the
institution perpetuate itself every generation?
Just to try out the criteria, I thought I’d
use Star Wars: The Old Republic as a
test case. Some of my colleagues have published on medievalism in the Old Republic setting before, but SW:TOR is the latest incarnation of such
well received games like Knights of the
Old Republic and The Sith Lords. Like
it or not, Star Wars and its canon
participates in medievalism with eagermess and aplomb. Given the money to be
made, we should not be surprised.
A bit of background before I begin. SW:TOR is in a setting that is around
4,000 years before the events depicted in the famous films. It features all the
common tropes you would expect from Star
Wars, including Jedi Knights, smugglers, evil Sith Lords, glowing swords,
and a religious tradition involving The Force. Relevant to our discussion are
the two main religious institutions of the game: the Sith Empire and the Jedi
Order. The Jedi are the putative “good guys” while the Sith are the putative
“bad guys.” Both religious institutions have their respective iconography. Jedi
tend to wear softer, earth-toned clothing with swords (called lightsabers) that
glow a friendly blue or green, while the Sith tend to wear black or dark purple
clothing with lightsabers that glow a bright red. The architecture of Sith
buildings tends towards dark, grey cathedrals with the red emblem of the Empire
adorning all faces, while Jedi buildings (the few they have) are bright and
cheery with round contours. And just in case you weren’t sure if the Sith are
supposed to be the “bad guys,” their use of the Dark Side of the Force tends to
disfigure their faces, turning their eyes red or yellow, turning their skin
gray (regardless of species or ethnicity), and giving their faces what appear
to be varicose veins. Jedi tend to have a healthy flesh color (when human),
have normal eye colors, and have no varicose veins in their faces (probably all
that exercise they get).
We could go into a lengthy discussion of
theological differences, but we’re here to talk about institutions and
structures. In SW:TOR, how do the
Sith and Jedi stack up as medievalisms?
1. Land/Property ownership: The Jedi Order seems
to own some land. They have a large temple on the capital of the Republic
(which was destroyed in the last war), along with some facilities on Tython. By
and large, though, the Jedi just have a few buildings where they meet and
train. As far as I can tell, they do not generate any revenue from their lands,
and the individual Jedi tend to live like itinerant friars. The Sith Empire, on
the other hand, gives individual Sith Lords substantial property. Whole planets
are owned or controlled by Sith Lords. Sith Lords also own slaves. In fact,
Sith Lords own so much revenue generating land that they fight one another for
scarce resources when the higher members of the institution do not move to
prevent such warfare. An individual Sith Lord might be able to command entire
economies.
2. Legal Power: Jedi are an extra-legal
institution. They have ties to the military of the Republic, but they have no
official power to arrest others or compel them to behave in certain ways. The
Jedi Order does have the power to police its own members, however. It may
punish or even kill members who are guilty of crimes. But outside the confines
of the institution, it only wields a small amount of legal power. The Sith
Empire, on the other hand, gives considerable power to Sith Lords. Many
civilians live in fear of the Sith; furthermore, the Sith equivalent to canon
law disputes between Sith Lords (such as the conflict between Lord Kallig and
Darth Thanaton) often spill over into the lives of those outside the Sith
hierarchy. Sith Lords are also normally immune to prosecution or legal censure
from non-Sith. The Sith police themselves with substantial violence (canon law
disputes tend to be resolved with battles to the death, making the Sith a bit
more exciting than Occam and Aquinas), but those outside the hierarchy of the
Sith have very little ability to legally deal with the Sith.
3. Sale of goods and services: The Jedi Order
seems to have no visible means of support. It sells nothing to anyone. In fact,
playing SW:TOR as a Jedi Knight, one
can’t help but wonder how the Order is able to finance the construction of lightsabers
or even feed its own trainees. The Sith do not sell anything, either. But since
the Sith have planets dedicated to their support, they have a visible means of
support that the Jedi do not.
4. Religious Warfare: Both the Jedi and the Sith
frame conflict across the galaxy in theological terms. Each group sees the other as an abomination
to be wiped out. While the Jedi normally preach non-violence and forgiveness,
they are more than willing to engage in warfare against the hated Sith. For
their part, the Sith see the extermination of the Jedi as a right and proper
goal of warfare. The wars discussed in SW:TOR
all have this religious dimension to them.
5. Heresy: Both the Sith and Jedi have little
tolerance for heresy. While the Jedi Order is more willing to try and bring a
heretic back to the light, neither religious organization hesitates to use
violence to resolve problems of heresy. Both Jedi and Sith use censorship to
suppress heresy as well, as each organization buries the secrets of heretics
far away from where its members might find them.
6. Visibility: Both organizations are highly
visible. While no one “worships” The Force in the same way that medieval
Christians worship, everyone in both cultures recognize and shows deference to
Jedi and Sith. Their iconography makes them easy to spot, and everyone knows
the kinds of powers and abilities these people have.
7. Obligations to the people: Neither the Jedi
nor the Sith have obligations to the people. Because people in the fiction of Star Wars do not worship The Force as
such, there are few needs for them to meet. The Jedi sometimes practice
healing, but their abilities with medicine are no better than doctors using the
high-tech gadgets of the galaxy.
8. Secular interference: There is little secular
interference in the affairs of the Jedi Order. Since they wield little power,
there is less need for the Republic military or intelligence services to keep
tabs on them. The Sith, on the other hand, are so embedded in the affairs of
the Empire (it is called the Sith Empire, after all), that secular interference
is normal. While the Imperial military and Imperial Intelligence would not
dream of actually interfering in the election of Sith Lords to the Dark Council
(kind of like the College of Cardinals with saber duels and supernatural powers),
they do spend considerable time keeping tabs on influential Sith Lords. And
when Sith Lords threaten the interests of the Empire, they are dealt with
accordingly. Darth Jadus and Darth Malgus are both the subject of espionage and
outright military action when they threaten the stability of the Empire (Jadus
through terrorism, Malgus through an attempted coup and treason). Furthermore,
the Minister of Intelligence will often complain to the player that Imperial
Intelligence can’t do more to check the power of the Sith. These secular
institutions see themselves in nationalist and patriotic terms, and they find
the Sith Lords to be troublesome meddlers that are tolerated because of how
powerful they are.
9. Recruitment and training: SW:TOR does not really discuss the
training or recruitment of either Jedi or Sith in any significant detail. There
are vague references to the Jedi Order training too many students too quickly
to replace losses from recent conflicts, causing a general decline in the
quality of members (not unlike the medieval Church replacing clergy lost in the
Black Death). For their part, the Sith seem to train many students, but the
process kills most of the apprentices.
However, unlike the Jedi Order, the Sith tend to pass on positions of
economic or political influence to their apprentices when they die (a fairly
common occurrence given the lethality of political infighting). Maybe one out
of a hundred students might survive training and apprenticeship, but that one
apprentice could inherit the position of a Sith who has power equivalent to a
Cardinal or head of a monastic order.
It seems like both organizations have some
similarities to the medieval church, but the Sith are far more medieval than
the Jedi. The Sith Empire, with its meshing of the Sith hierarchy to the
bureaucratic institutions of the Empire shares far more in common with the
medieval church of Western Europe, say 8th Century or later, than it
does with contemporary political institutions. It is structurally medieval,
even if the theology is in no way really connected to medieval Christian
thought.
What do you, my distinguished colleagues,
think about this kind of systematizing approach? I’m sure I’ve left out all
kinds of criteria that might be employed, but does an approach like this have
any kind of attraction to those who study medievalism in general, or digital
medievalisms in particular? And what does it say about medievalism when the “bad
guys” are the one with a more medieval religious hierarchy than the “good guys”?
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