What each bloc believes

Cross is an intellectually fractured continent. Each political bloc cultivates a dominant philosophical current of its own that defines how its elites think, what they value, with whom they ally intellectually.

"In Aurum Roma, thought begins in God. In Velinia, it begins in oneself. In Königsburg, it begins in the grandfather. In Brithon, it begins in the price." — an Aureline proverb.

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I. The Clerical Order — Medievalist Crusadism

The founding principle

The Church is the centre of all intelligibility. Legitimate knowledge = revealed knowledge + patristic tradition. An autonomous lay philosophy = a road to heresy.

Characteristics

• The analogous historical model: real medieval scholasticism + the period of the Crusades + traces of the Counter-Reformation.
• Reason subordinated to faith. Philosophy is "ancilla theologiae" (the handmaid of theology). Logic and grammar are studied as an instrument for understanding Scripture.
• The Aristotle-analogue (the canonical Greek philosopher) read through ecclesiastical commentators, never directly outside the Schola Coronata.
• The Enlightenment dead since 1786. Lay Enlightenment philosophy is seen as a partial cause of the Cataclysm (the apostasy of the eighteenth century produced the weakening of the Seals). Therefore a return to the Enlightenment = a return to the fall.
• Science tolerated when submissive to theology. Liturgical chemistry, consecrated ballistics, anti-possession medicine — all fine. Autonomous science, without a blessing, = suspicion of heresy.

Universities and intellectuals

• The Schola Coronata (the city-State) is the philosophical heart. The University of the Choir forms theologians + philosophers + canonists. The curriculum: 7 years (the classical Trivium and Quadrivium + 4 years of theology).
• Canonical thinkers of the bloc: Cardinal Vincenzo della Stella (the philosopher of the crusading revival), Canon Mateus Aurelino (the systematiser of the Codex Coronatus), the Mitred Lucia da Cruz (the theologian of the White Mediums).
• Canonical publications:
  • Tractatus de Hierarchia Cosmica (1842) — the philosophical synthesis of the world of Cross under an ecclesiastical lens.
  • Summa Anti-Pacti (1859) — the philosophical answer to the demonic pact.
  • Codex Coronatus (5 volumes, 1875) — codified canon law.

The attitude towards modern knowledge

• Technical engineering (steam, railway, electricity) = fine when blessed.
• Modern social philosophy (socialism, liberalism, anarchism) = heresy, forbidden.
• Natural science without theology (the evolutionary-biology-analogue, deep geology) = tolerated at the Schola Coronata under the supervision of the Cardinal-State. The conclusions must be harmonised with Scripture.
• Hermeticism + occultism (the Dawn of the Hashmal) = a heresy actively persecuted.

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II. The Republics — the Enlightenment

The founding principle

Autonomous human reason is capable of generating legitimate knowledge. Religious tradition = a useful but non-decisive guide. Progress, science, individual liberty, free trade, tolerance = supreme values.