#but also given that jrrt initially intended to make a proto mythology for England-

[quixoticanarchy]

Okay I think it’s very interesting how Tolkien built himself a “fundamentally catholic” world while strictly removing The Church as a political/social/economic actor in Middle-earth - interesting for a lot of reasons but today I’m thinking about the implications of the absence of that sort of organized religion as a dominant societal establishment. Elements of the cosmology and morality and social mores etc might remain familiar, but Catholicism without the church would, I think, have a vastly different relationship to property and landholding, social hierarchy, wealth distribution, labor... and therefore all these elements beg reimagining in the Middle-earth context, rather than being carelessly mapped onto a vaguely medieval-ish Europe by default

[skyeventide]

#sometimes I think I overthink more than the man himself #but like. the church as *landholder* specifically is such a central societal function that the elves et al just... don’t have #so what does that look like instead for them? #sort of related to my general arda political economy headaches #but also given that jrrt initially intended to make a proto mythology for England- #did he think about how profoundly the lack of organized religion would impact historical development etc? I mean I forget the timelines #maybe this was all meant to have ‘happened’ so long ago that more recent european history could still come after etc #obviously I am not in favor of historical determinism etc #but the absence of The Church does open so many questions for me about middle earth societies and economy and culture

so the tags sent me on a trip and I’m thinking now — how the elves that seem to be the most religious and/or the closest to religion, the Vanyar, are also the most decentralised as far as living habits go. yes they live the closest to the actual deities that actually exist, but most of them live in valleys and on the mountains. and there is a centralised space for the deities to live, presumably alongside some elves? and that is Valmar. and then there’s... the houses of the Valar. the dwelling of Orome, of Aule, of Vaire and Nienna are all explicitly mentioned, even without taking Taniquetil or Mandos into account.

but none of these seem to tranfer to external places of worship that, so to speak, outsource the rituals of religion the same way churches do. which is like, interesting? that outside of these locations that “belong” to specific Valar, everything is more animistic and personally spiritual in a way that reads very pre-medieval Christian to me. and that the lifestyle of the elves closest to the religious in this world actually matches this. 

that said, though, elves demonstrate a sense of feudalism, I think especially in Beleriand and onwards. Celeborn’s “fiefdom” comes to mind. and that’s interesting to me because the lack of religious organisation in the particularly Catholic sense (including churches not paying taxes for the land the occupy... down to this current day...) reads here like a separation of Church and State from early on. the same way as Tolkien, presumably, would not have considered the British Empire’s sovereign as the head of the Church — he’s not Anglican after all.

I’m not really going anywhere with this, I just have some swirling thoughts.

Okay I think it’s very interesting how Tolkien built himself a “fundamentally catholic” world while strictly removing The Church as a political/social/economic actor in Middle-earth - interesting for a lot of reasons but today I’m thinking about the implications of the absence of that sort of organized religion as a dominant societal establishment. Elements of the cosmology and morality and social mores etc might remain familiar, but Catholicism without the church would, I think, have a vastly different relationship to property and landholding, social hierarchy, wealth distribution, labor... and therefore all these elements beg reimagining in the Middle-earth context, rather than being carelessly mapped onto a vaguely medieval-ish Europe by default