Editing Heresy (section)

==But Seriously, What Is It?==
[[Image:Canossa-gate.jpg|thumb|right|Extra heretic Henry IV re-evaluates some of his life choices.]]
Well, outside of the [[Warhammer 40000|the Warhams]] world, heresy is derived from the word '''Heterodoxy''', a Greek word used to describe deviation from ''Orthodoxy'' or established religious doctrine. While most established religions have their share of offenses which are considered "heresy", the word has become most closely associated with the Roman Catholic [[Inquisition]], and by extension all of Christianity because they're the ones that made the biggest splash in Europe and most of the world. Consequently, this whole section will focus mostly on them in the brief history below.

Seeing that Catholic doctrine dictates that the Pope is the guy who has the keys to Heaven, and has a direct phone line to God, he could issue orders of excommunication and interdiction, meaning the affected people and/or countries were effectively permabanned from the Heaven server; The Pope can still do this (and has, notably on Nazis and Cartels) but no one really cares what some old fart in a funny hat thinks any more. Also, way back before books were mass-produced and education was widespread, Peasants (and even some nobles) couldn't read so everyone went to church because the Priest was the only guy who could actually read the Bible. Worse yet, the Bible was written in Latin because that was considered the proper language in much the same way Weeaboos insist that subtitled anime is better because you're listening to the original Japanese. The first attempt at translating it into English ended with the translator being burnt at the stake.

This had severe consequences, as Christianity had far more power and influence in Western society then than it does today. For starters, heresy was considered a one way ticket to [[Warp|Hell]] which, whether or not you're a Christian and believe Hell actually exists, everyone can agree it's a horrible place. Also, there was the little issue that all important oaths of the day were sworn before God, meaning excommunication rendered them null and void. Since the Catholic Church functioned as the court of last appeal for most major matters, this could make the excommunicated person an outlaw, which was especially bad for excommunicated nobles and monarchs. Your [[knight]]s and vassals didn't have to serve you, your [[peasant]]s didn't have to pay their taxes, and if one of them tortured and killed you they could get <strike>in good with the clergy which could lead to rewards</strike> high fives from Jesus. This gave the Church incredible power, which many of the clergy wielded like a club to bludgeon people into acting correctly. And by "correctly", we mean "however the Church wanted them to act at the time" (sometimes justified, sometimes not). The only way to get an excommunication lifted invariably involved large amounts of donations to the Church and/or general ass-kissing.

Now for all we like to joke about the [[Warhammer 40000|the Imperium]] being "Catholic Space Nazis" for their Gothic aesthetics, its has more in common (including its stance on heresy and badass double-headed eagle) with the Eastern Orthodox Church, most notably in Byzantium: The secular and ecclesiastical organizations existed separately, but they were meant to supplement and support eachother ("symphonia") and Ecclesiarchy was kind of part of the Imperial administration, with Emperor having serious influence. So while excommunication by the church may have meant the severing Eucharistic ties for an individual rather than actual corporeal punishment, due to above-mentioned concept, he would be considered to be a criminal by the state. So instead of being lynched by the mob of autists, you would get judged by the state itself. Though instead of getting {{BLAM|BLAMMED}} they would mostly get exiled in some remote monasteries in middle of nowhere.

[[Image:tic.jpg|thumb|left|A hairy tick on the prowl.]]
That isn't to say there wasn't real heresy going on for a while. In the early history of Christianity people developed some funny ideas that lasted for a surprisingly long time, despite the Church telling them to stop in a very pointed manner (and if that failed, out came the pointed objects). These heresies could be grouped into two rough categories- the Trinitarian/Christological heresies and the Gnostic belief systems. To put it in terms someone who isn't a theologian could understand, the former is basically a bunch of people coming up with their own ideas about Jesus' nature and relation to God based on their interpretations of the Bible and trying to make it the official belief system of the Church. The most important of these was Arianism, which basically said that Jesus Christ the Son wasn't the same entity as God the Father, and that he was subordinate to the Father; by contrast, the orthodox view was that the Son and the Father were the same being in different persons. This may sound really weird even before you get into the details of the Trinity, but that's why Arianism is important: '''it made the Christian canon as we know it...well, canon.''' Other heresies managed to hang on long enough to become established sects of their own, such as the Nestorian heresy giving rise to the Assyrian Church of the East.

Gnosticism was a very different beast, since it was less of a divergence from established theology and more of a completely unrelated set of religious beliefs that occasionally borrowed elements from Christianity. While what the many different sects of Gnosticism practiced and believed wasn't entirely standard or agreed upon, they all shared a contempt for the material world in general [[Iron Hands|and the human body in particular]] and claimed that the material world was created by an inferior god or Demiurge (no relation to the Tau) opposed to the true God of the spiritual world. By the use of the esoteric knowledge held by the various Gnostic sects, collectively referred to as [[Mage: The Awakening|Gnosis]], its practitioners could free their spirits from the confines of the material world and escape the influence of the False God. Obviously, their appropriation of various elements of Christianity did not go over very well with the nascent Church, and as of now they exist solely as a few minor groups of mystics with no real influence outside their own communities. As you can probably tell, some of their beliefs were also repurposed for use in several works of fiction, like in Mage: the Awakening.

Eventually, the charges of heresy were leveled against the Catholic Church itself (or rather it was done and not immediately stomped out as had usually the case, see the Hussite Wars) when a monk by the name of Martin Luther denounced the corruption that had been growing within the Church and its clergy. In particular, he was outraged by the selling of indulgences which would supposedly assure the salvation of whoever bought them despite the Bible stating that salvation comes only from faith in Jesus. The Pope wasn't willing to listen to him, Luther refused to recant his views, and to make a long and bloody story short the dominance of Catholicism fell apart in western Europe soon afterwards in what became the start of the Protestant Reformation as various kings and princes throughout the continent realized they could escape from the Pope's influence while still staying in God's good graces. Heretical sects popped up among the Protestants on occasion, but the Protestant were usually too busy defending themselves from Catholic persecution or persecuting them back to do much persecuting of heretics themselves (although they still tried to do it when they could). As a result, said sects were typically left alone to develop into independent groups such as the Anabaptists (whose descendants include the present-day Amish and Mennonites).

While heresy was still taken seriously by both Catholics and Protestants for a time, later events such as a series of brutal and ultimately inconclusive religious wars between Protestants and Catholics, nationalism becoming more important to the general public than religious affiliation, religious tolerance and secularization becoming increasingly popular with the spread of Enlightenment ideals, and other similar concerns have slowly weakened the effectiveness of cries of 'Heresy!' as time went on. At least, that's the case as of this article's writing.