Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 07:52:32 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

If you manage to convert the ruler of an empire to your religion, then
he can make his subjects follow suit. Or sometimes the religious
ideology itself serves as a unifying force to mobilize the people to
dominate their less organized neighbours.

That works. Aethelbehrt married a little French hottie to cement the
relationship with the Franks. She was a Christian and Aethelbehrt
converting may have something to do with getting her in bed. All downhill
from there.

The conversion of the Saxons by Karl der Grosse wasn't as pleasant.

I had more limited offshoots in mind. The Second Great Awakening in the US
spawned a number of Christian variants. Some survived as minor branches
like the Seventh Say Adventists while the Latter Day Saints movement was
much more successful. More recently you have Scientology.

 
Astute politics can work in many ways. When the Catholic missionaries
went into Ireland and encountered the panoply of local deities, they
renamed various of them into “saints”. And suddenly the local believers
in those deities were no longer “pagans”, it turned out they were
Christians all along.

Russell's 'The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity' covers that
well. The 'Heliand' was a rewrite od the synoptics to make it more
palatable to the Saxons. Jesus was the leader of a war band who went to
the hill fort of Jerusalem.  Others weren't so gentle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donar's_Oak

Boniface's last attempt to convert the Frisians didn't work too well and
he joined the rank of martyrs.