Quote:
Originally Posted by Michele
One wonders what happened to the Protestant countries in the 1600s? And to their armies and fleets? The Orthodox countries? Why, by the 1700s even Catholic countries wouldn't accept a non-national Catholic agency interfering, even by way or religious issues, in their internal political affairs (the Jesuits, I mean).
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Presumably they resisted, lost, and were killed in large numbers. But really you have to be willing to assume the utter failure of nationalism if you want a universal church. This has always been a problem - if you have multiple states, you either have multiple churches, or maybe one religion but with no organized churches. No government is happy about an actual religious authority from another state.
I think its particularly problematic if you actually want to use the Inquisition, since the repressive one was actually an arm of the Spanish government, not the Papacy. Though I suppose it could make sense if you use Spain as the universal conqueror. Assume that as some point early in the conquest of Europe they capture the Papal States, and that for the last couple centuries every Pope has been a Spanish prince. The Hapsburgs after all held a lot of bishoprics where they appointed collateral relatives, no reason one of them can't be the bishop of Rome.