Chapter 3

An Age of Change

Two waves of events came close to destroying the Order: the Age of Discovery and the Reformation (and its subsequent religious wars). It was not necessarily the events themselves that were the important factor in the near-demise of the Order, but the close proximity of the two waves of events to each other and to an uptick in the conflict between Christianity and the new Islamic power that became the Ottoman Empire beginning in the end of the 13^th century. When the Seljuk Turks solidified into the Ottoman Empire under Osman I, they did so in the context of the middle of the Crusades, the decline of Byzantium, the Black Death, and the rise and expansion of Western Europe. This swirl of tectonic events in Europe and the Near East precipitated the advent of the Age of Discovery as European merchants sought ways around the once vibrant corridor of trade with Asia that was the Near East. As ship captains sought royal patronage from the crowns of Europe and word reached Rome of new, heathen lands to bring under the sway of the Church, the Exarch and his archskopi felt the need to send agents with these voyages of discovery to both scout these new lands for their own purposes and to protect them should they fall afoul of those creatures against which the Order had set itself. And there was always the possibility that these voyagers would encounter as yet unknown demons.

So even as the Crusades were winding down and the Order found itself flush with new wealth and new personnel to use in its vigilant watch and struggle against those demonic creatures found throughout the world, the Exarchs also found that their forces were being stretched ever thinner as first Portugal and then the rest of the western European powers set sail southward and westward, seeking new routes to the riches of the Asian trade. Beginning in 1490, with the establishment of the Archskopos of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, the Order expanded at a ferocious rate. Between 1490 and 1660, the Order established twelve new archskopi in Africa and the Americas and built many more bases and communications networks among the indigenous populations, expanding far beyond anything the crowns of Europe or even the Pope would ever learn. The Order's members and leadership in these new territories made friendly inroads amongst the natives that was sadly lacking amongst the clergy sent to conquer the rest of the world for Christianity. More than once, members of the Order died in attempts to protect their native allies in Africa and South America from the excesses of piety in the colonizing powers.

The Order, aside from its acquisition of riches from its exploration and trade with natives, also found new enemies of less-than-human natures to catalogue in these new lands. New kinds of demons and shapeshifters and vampires and witches joined the battle against the Order and the new archskopi found allies and enemies alike amongst the powers of the native societies in which they now fought. Under the noses of the materialistic colonial governors, a quiet war raged and the Order did all in its power to assure that it did not flare so hot as to attract the notice of civilian authorities. The Exarchs and their archskopi had come to terms with the idea that they would have to keep as much from the Popes as they could until a new equilibrium could be established and a new vigilance over the Church fathers could be attained.

Alas, this was not to be. Even as Exarch Michael XI the Just was beginning to feel that the Order was regaining its footing after the tumultuous later years of the fifteenth century and the wondrous first decade of the sixteenth century, the boil of discontent against the Church in Rome overflowed. In 1517, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to a church door in Wittenberg, Saxony. It was a reignition of the debate on the Roman Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences, or the selling of remission of some of the heavy penances that were commonly given for sins confessed to a priest. For centuries reformers had tried to get the Church to change this practice due to the appearance of corruption it carried and the very real corruption the moneys it brought to the coffers of the Church seemed to encourage. Martin Luther was simply one in a long line of men who had tried to push the Church away from this practice.

Luther, however, was aided by several other factors that made his protest of the Roman Catholic Church more successful. The previous two centuries had seen earth-shaking events in Europe and the Near East, events which led to a serious lack of the confidence the populace had in the Pope and the Church. The Black Death, the Fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Western Schism, and the beginning of the Renaissance all made people question the teachings and governance of the Church. With Martin Luther's writing of the Ninety-Five Theses, these foundation-shaking events were brought to the fore and his arguments against Church practice dispersed widely by the recently invented printing press. Earlier reformers were easily shut down by the populace's own illiteracy, the Church's control of writing and reprinting, and the expense and time-consuming manner of reproducing the written word prior to Johannes Gutenberg's invention. Martin Luther, however, was able to disseminate his work quickly and relatively inexpensively, enabling him to not only spread the ideas of his reforms but to gain powerful allies who would allow him to continue living even as those allies, mainly German princes, used his break with the Church to reduce the Roman Church's power to their own gain.