Oldest altar

Andrew Mason · 16 Sep 2010, 22:09 · from 2010-September.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2010 23:09:46 +0100
Subject: (urth) Oldest altar
Message-ID: <AANLkTinJ_zZyDNggMad_nS5UDdKn8XEvG32YgBAF6vMy at mail.gmail.com>

James Wynn wrote (quoting Roy Lackey):
>>
>> BTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that
>> Typhon and his family had been worshipped ?back on Urth, neither is there
>> any evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been
>> practiced in Typhon's time.
>
> Aren't the many close analogs between the Chapter and Roman Catholicism
> evidence of this? If Lemur is entirely correct that the Chapter was a
> parody of the state religion of Urth, then that religion is likely to
> have been something like Roman Catholicism. It is clear that the Gospels
> have survived to Typhon's time and been incorporated into the Writings
> because Silk refers to the event of Jesus casting out the money changers.
>

Consider the religion of Urth a thousand years later. It seems to
contain reminiscences of Catholicism (or at least of some form of
Christianity which makes much of ritual); names of saints like
Katharine and Barbara, crosses (Dorcas refers to roods, and there's
the landmark Ctesiphon's Cross), a paschal candle. True, it also seems
to contain elements derived from Hinduism, and in any case it's been
overlaid by the cult of the Conciliator and the New Sun, but it's
likely that some elements in it go back further than that. (As I
mentioned in another thread, this need not be seen as a direct
survival from our time; it can bepart of the cultural memory returned
to humans by machines, as recounted by Cyriaca.)

Also. Severian dreams of a ritual taking place in the Citadel chapel
at a time before the old sun was darkened, which invoves bread, wine
and a knife - not exactly the Christian eucharist, but something like
it.

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