"The earth shook not because God willed it, but because God let it." — Attributed to the first Pontiff of the Choir, Sermo of the Ashes, 1788.
This document is the founding mythology of the universe of Tales of Cross. It explains the root cause of the Cataclysm of the Seals (see The Cataclysm of the Seals), the near-defeat of humanity, the intervention of the Archangels, and the rise of the Clerical Order as the dominant power.
I. The Age of Forgetting (before 1780)
In the century before the Cataclysm — roughly 1680-1780 — the humanity of the continent of Cross lived through a phase of progressive abandonment of faith.
Symptoms
- Empty cathedrals. Sunday masses with a thin attendance. Monasteries reduced. Religious vocations in decline.
- Secular philosophy ascendant. An analogue of the Enlightenment. Confidence in man, in method, in material progress — without the religious axis.
- Ostentatious wealth. The central cities of the continent prospered economically as never before. Growing trade, manufactures, banking, urbanisation.
- Technology on the rise. Refined firearms (precision flintlock, cannon, musket), civil engineering, a nascent chemistry. Humanity had advanced arms by the standard of the age, but it was a secular technology, with no liturgical dimension.
- Religious traditions seen as folklore. Bishops were not feared; saints were decorative characters; a capital sin was a matter for a moralist, not for a theologian.
- A silent schism. There was no organised heresy — there was only indifference.
Spiritual consequence
In terms of the official theology of the universe (recorded by the Clerical Order after the Cataclysm):
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