Actually this started with the Reformations and the destruction of the Monastic economy. It forced the organization of economy from the very, very heavily self-regulated Church that had seen the economy stable for a literal 1000 years, and instead let private Merchants, who were the prototype bankers, take hard ownership of the economy and squeeze everything for maximum profits.
See if the Palace economy of the church persisted the West still would have progressed though technology into the industrial age because prior to the coup of reformation, the church was developing and building all the infrastructure and technology that brought Europe from the depths of dark ages all the way to the Renaissance. It wasn't fucking painters and poets who made Europe boom in the Renaissance, it was the Chruch's massive public works projects it had built up for centuries, ones it could undertake even while the Kings were busy faffing around having skirmishes with each other.
See the thing about Knight's wars, is they were largely Knights and their Men at Arms on other Knights who fully volunteered, where an "army" was 1200 people. And this would be 1200 knights out of nation of 7 million peasants. Sure wars would be raged, land would change hands, but to the eyes of the peasants, the guy in the local castle changed and life just carried on. Burning the villages almost NEVER happened because the Kings WANTED those villages intact to make them money when they won. So to the people, some battles happens in over yonder field, and new guy takes the local castle, and maybe he lowers taxes slightly to encourage more peasants to move to his lands...
And if a Lord really started fucking with the peasants, the Chruch would come in and SHUT them down threatening all the way upto declaring the Lord an enemy of god, which would have everybody around him wipe him out. And why? Well remember How I said the church organized the economy? Well it provided land and loans for farmers to start their fortune. For example if one had nothing, they could become a tenant farmer, and in 5 years earn enough money to buy a flock of sheep that would make so much wool it would make the equivalent of $100,000 a year in wool sales. it collected farm goods and sold it off to the traders greatly making it easier for farmers to get much better prices on their produce, it would import goods and sell it off to local traders, and all it ever took was a tax. And if you were desperate the Chruch provided welfare and "public works" to get you out of the gutter. Sure this DID make the Chruch Fantastically rich, but it was money they poured into technological research, and into building massive "Church works" all over Europe.
Oh don't get me wrong, the Chruch was FAR from without Sin, for one it fucked with the King's constantly, but for the common people who lived in its domains life was quite good considering the incredible hardships of the time that were just parts of life. Hardships mind you, that did NOT vanish with the Reformations. Its just later liberals (a creation of the Renaissance) would blame on the chruch with their absolute hatred of religion instead of attributing to...the world being the hard world it is.
I can't tell you why the Church wasn't more corrupt. But there was the fact than the people of the church took the long view, and realized they would make more money with long term stability then short term profits. They were after all monks, not businessmen or traders. That and...well to be a member of the Church, you DID have to take vows of poverty and austerity and live for decades as a humble monk before you ranked up enough to be making major economic decisions. And for every 1 bishop in gold, there was 20,000 men in robes that passed for potato sacks. And I mean compare that to banks, where they want the most ambitious, greediest, most sociopathic son of a bitch they can find. I can't say for sure, but it might explain why the Church was SO different than rule by bankers.
Contract this to Cromwell's wars were it was drafted at pike-point Government troops on the the same, with tens of thousands forcibly drafted into the war, or the not too much later Napoleonic wars which grabbed up just about every young man in Europe in forced them to fight.
But like all fucking liberals, the poets and painters took from the Church, took credit for shit they didn't do, and then rewrote history how the Church was this backwards, evil institution that hid and destroyed knowledge.
Then followed was the collapse of the economy of the late Renaissance, and start of roughly 600 years of increasingly violent, increasly bigger, and increasingly bloody wars amide economic booms and HARD crashes that drove the common people into starvation, then would see them murdered by the millions in pan-continental wars.
Interestingly enough, in the Medieval era the Chruch forbade people from using lead except in specific circumstance because they knew it was poisonous. But after the Reformation they kicked the Chruch to the curb and used it in everything including seasoning their food with ground lead. This was in part because lead merchants conveniently "forgot" the part of it being poisonous and suddenly with the Church gone, they could sell it for all kind of new uses and make fortunes. It wasn't until the mid 20th century that it was rediscovered to neurotoxic.
Lead poisoning btw, causes reduced mental function and greatly increased violent aggression in humans, culminating in complete dementia-like madness with 3 helpings of hyper violence in later age as it finally overcomes them. So now imagine a demented, violent king commanding a nation of people who are all bit twitchy.
WIs it not funny then this interestingly coincided with the bloodiest and most violent 500 years in human history, where every 10 years there was an increasingly larger war until by the 20th century literally the entire globe was dragged into wars so large they depopulated harder than famines? I mean WW2 alone nearly killed 10% of all humans alive at the time.
Then these same merchant families started the Cold War and brought us to today. They have been in charge for 600 years, the worst 600 years where despite the greatest ABUNDENCE in history, where nations are rich like nobody could ever believe, the common man still lives in poverty and malnutrition.
And that is the final thing. See in the Medieval day, yes like was horrible and people often starved.... but when the famines hit even the King had to stretch his food. The common people had SO MUCH larger of a share of what there was to go around than common working stiffs have today. Today we have enough wealth that if it was distributed even modestly unfairly even the bums on the streets would has $thousdands to their name. You are actually poorer today relative to national productivity than anybody has ever been in history. Your net worth, if you are a home owner, is actually negative since you don't actually own your house, but you DO owe the loan, and that bank will only sell it for 1/10th what you paid.
Actually this started with the Reformations and the destruction of the Monastic economy. It forced the organization of economy from the very, very heavily self-regulated Church that had seen the economy stable for a literal 1000 years, and instead let private Merchants, who were the prototype bankers, take hard ownership of the economy and squeeze everything for maximum profits.
See if the Palace economy of the church persisted the West still would have progressed though technology into the industrial age because prior to the coup of reformation, the church was developing and building all the infrastructure and technology that brought Europe from the depths of dark ages all the way to the Renaissance. It wasn't fucking painters and poets who made Europe boom in the Renaissance, it was the Chruch's massive public works projects it had built up for centuries, ones it could undertake even while the Kings were busy faffing around having skirmishes with each other.
See the thing about Knight's wars, is they were largely Knights and their Men at Arms on other Knights who fully volunteered, where an "army" was 1200 people. And this would be 1200 knights out of nation of 7 million peasants. Sure wars would be raged, land would change hands, but to the eyes of the peasants, the guy in the local castle changed and life just carried on. Burning the villages almost NEVER happened because the Kings WANTED those villages intact to make them money when they won. So to the people, some battles happens in over yonder field, and new guy takes the local castle, and maybe he lowers taxes slightly to encourage more peasants to move to his lands...
And if a Lord really started fucking with the peasants, the Chruch would come in and SHUT them down threatening all the way upto declaring the Lord an enemy of god, which would have everybody around him wipe him out. And why? Well remember How I said the church organized the economy? Well it provided land and loans for farmers to start their fortune. For example if one had nothing, they could become a tenant farmer, and in 5 years earn enough money to buy a flock of sheep that would make so much wool it would make the equivalent of $100,000 a year in wool sales. it collected farm goods and sold it off to the traders greatly making it easier for farmers to get much better prices on their produce, it would import goods and sell it off to local traders, and all it ever took was a tax. And if you were desperate the Chruch provided welfare and "public works" to get you out of the gutter. Sure this DID make the Chruch Fantastically rich, but it was money they poured into technological research, and into building massive "Church works" all over Europe.
Oh don't get me wrong, the Chruch was FAR from without Sin, for one it fucked with the King's constantly, but for the common people who lived in its domains life was quite good considering the incredible hardships of the time that were just parts of life. Hardships mind you, that did NOT vanish with the Reformations. Its just later liberals (a creation of the Renaissance) would blame on the chruch with their absolute hatred of religion instead of attributing to...the world being the hard world it is.
I can't tell you why the Church wasn't more corrupt. But there was the fact than the people of the church took the long view, and realized they would make more money with long term stability then short term profits. They were after all monks, not businessmen or traders. That and...well to be a member of the Church, you DID have to take vows of poverty and austerity and live for decades as a humble monk before you ranked up enough to be making major economic decisions. And for every 1 bishop in gold, there was 20,000 men in robes that passed for potato sacks. And I mean compare that to banks, where they want the most ambitious, greediest, most sociopathic son of a bitch they can find. I can't say for sure, but it might explain why the Church was SO different than rule by bankers.
Contract this to Cromwell's wars were it was drafted at pike-point Government troops on the the same, with tens of thousands forcibly drafted into the war, or the not too much later Napoleonic wars which grabbed up just about every young man in Europe in forced them to fight.
But like all fucking liberals, the poets and painters took from the Church, took credit for shit they didn't do, and then rewrote history how the Church was this backwards, evil institution that hid and destroyed knowledge.
Then followed was the collapse of the economy of the late Renaissance, and start of roughly 600 years of increasingly violent, increasly bigger, and increasingly bloody wars amide economic booms and HARD crashes that drove the common people into starvation, then would see them murdered by the millions in pan-continental wars.
Interestingly enough, in the Medieval era the Chruch forbade people from using lead except in specific circumstance because they knew it was poisonous. But after the Reformation they kicked the Chruch to the curb and used it in everything including seasioning their food with ground lead.
Lead poisoning btw, causes reduced mental function and greatly increased violent aggression in humans, culminating in complete dementia-like madness with 3 helpings of hyper violence in later age as it finally overcomes them.
Would this perhaps interestingly having cooincided with the bloodiest and most violent 500 years in human history, where every 10 years there was an increasingly larger war?
Then these same merchant families started the Cold War and brought us to today. They have been in charge for 600 years, the worst 600 years where despite ABUNDENCE like nobody could ever believe, the common man still lives in poverty and malnutrition.
And that is the final thing. See in the Medieval day, yes like was horrible and people often starved.... but when the famines hit even the King had to stretch his food. The common people had SO MUCH larger of a share of what there was to go around than common working stiffs have today. Today we have enough wealth that if it was distributed even modestly unfairly even the bums on the streets would has $thousdands to their name. You are actually poorer today relative to national productivity than anybody has ever been in history. Your net worth, if you are a home owner, is actually negative since you don't actually own your house, but you DO owe the loan, and that bank will only sell it for 1/10th what you paid.