The Hierocracy

[Jult]

We learned a lot about Roshar's history in WaT. But we didn't touch much on the (relatively) more recent Hierocracy. What do we actually know about it?

What I recall about the Hierocracy is that the Ardents took over a good chunk of the continent; claiming that they were instructed to do so by visions from the Almighty (which is extra weird because visions of the future is taboo in Vorinism). And that they cut the Heralds out of the majority of Vorinism; while essentially setting up a direct hierarchy of the darkeyes<lighteyes<ardents<curates<Almighty.

I believe it's been said that the Hierocracy was somewhere in the last 500 years or so. Whereas a lot of the events we covered in WaT were much farther back in time.

They also intentionally buried a lot of Roshar's knowledge relating to the Cognitive Realm and the Knights Radiant. In my opinion, they're largely responsible for why Roshar wasn't fully prepared for return of the Fused.

Were these 'visions' that the Ardents claimed to see made up? Were they Stormfather's first attempt at finding Honor's next Vessel? If they were, then could someone point me towards where that is stated?

If they weren't, well... My tin foil hat might be showing a bit here... But does this not sound exactly like Autonomy's MO? Take control of a religion, establish a hierarchy reporting directly to one of her Avatars, and start hoovering up every bit of Investiture-related knowledge you can? Is Vorinism just going to be the next Trellism or Derethi?

I don't particularly like this idea, so I'm hoping someone can disprove it for me. 

[Returned he/him]

33 minutes ago, Jult said:

Were these 'visions' that the Ardents claimed to see made up? Were they Stormfather's first attempt at finding Honor's next Vessel? If they were, then could someone point me towards where that is stated?

We don't know. We have a quote from an ardent in contemporary Roshar saying that there were no such visions and that Hierocracy made them up as a way to seize power. As far as I'm aware they never claimed visions of the future, but rather communications from the Almighty and so no Vorin prohibitions were violated. It seems unlikely to me that the purported visions were similar to Dalinar's experience-- that seems to have been a product of the impending Desolation, and the Hierocracy was a very long time before that.

I don't think that it was Autonomy doing anything, though we have so little information about it that I don't think we can rule it out. I don't see any specific evidence to suggest it. For example, we don't have any suggestion that there was an avatar present. Secular, cynical reasons are sufficient to explain everything we know about the Hierocracy.

As for Vorinism, I am on record as saying that I think it's dead. Every central tenet of it has been disproven or undermined and the social organization it imposed has been shattered. We'll probably see it grow into something else (the ardentia won't just go away) but I think it will be a major break from everything that came before as there is no longer any space for the old beliefs to persist.

[Jult]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

As far as I'm aware they never claimed visions of the future, but rather communications from the Almighty and so no Vorin prohibitions were violated. It seems unlikely to me that the purported visions were similar to Dalinar's experience-- that seems to have been a product of the impending Desolation, and the Hierocracy was a very long time before that.

I think I was thinking of this quote when I said visions of the future:

Quote

“The problem, bright one,” Kadash said, “was mysticism. The priests claimed that common men could not understand religion or the Almighty. Where there should have been openness, there was smoke and whispers. The priests began to claim visions and prophecies, though such things had been denounced by the Heralds themselves. Voidbinding is a dark and evil thing, and the soul of it was to try to divine the future.”

Which, funnily enough, is on the same page as the passage you're describing where the prophesies were discovered to have been made up. So, I guess I should have just read the page before asking the question. It's like 2 sentences later:

Quote

“When the priests of the Hierocracy were cast down, the Sunmaker made a point of interrogating them and going through their correspondences with one another. It was discovered that there had been no prophecies. No mystical promises from the Almighty. That had all been an excuse, fabricated by the priests to placate and control the people.”

 I do think Vorinism is going to have a tough time recovering. But I don't think it is fully dead yet. Religions are hard to kill. And the general population of Roshar probably has very little information about what actually happened. I imagine the church will deny and cover up as much as possible. They may even align themselves with Retribution (or at least against Urithiru).  I'm not sure how much the Kholin's have in the form of hard evidence to show that the church's tenets have been disproven. It will probably come down to the Kholins' word vs the church's word.

[Treamayne]

3 hours ago, Jult said:

We learned a lot about Roshar's history in WaT. But we didn't touch much on the (relatively) more recent Hierocracy. What do we actually know about it?

What I recall about the Hierocracy is that the Ardents took over a good chunk of the continent; claiming that they were instructed to do so by visions from the Almighty (which is extra weird because visions of the future is taboo in Vorinism). And that they cut the Heralds out of the majority of Vorinism; while essentially setting up a direct hierarchy of the darkeyes<lighteyes<ardents<curates<Almighty.

I believe it's been said that the Hierocracy was somewhere in the last 500 years or so. Whereas a lot of the events we covered in WaT were much farther back in time.

They also intentionally buried a lot of Roshar's knowledge relating to the Cognitive Realm and the Knights Radiant. In my opinion, they're largely responsible for why Roshar wasn't fully prepared for return of the Fused.

Were these 'visions' that the Ardents claimed to see made up? Were they Stormfather's first attempt at finding Honor's next Vessel? If they were, then could someone point me towards where that is stated?

If they weren't, well... My tin foil hat might be showing a bit here... But does this not sound exactly like Autonomy's MO? Take control of a religion, establish a hierarchy reporting directly to one of her Avatars, and start hoovering up every bit of Investiture-related knowledge you can? Is Vorinism just going to be the next Trellism or Derethi?

I don't particularly like this idea, so I'm hoping someone can disprove it for me. 

I would start with the Coppermind - as it has most of the information, with links to the references. 

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Hierocracy

Timeline WoP:

Spoiler

 

Peter Ahlstrom (paraphrased)

*offhandedly* The Sunmaker was about 500 years ago, pretty much right after the Hierocracy. The Recreance was about 2,000 years ago.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

Hope that helps

[Nitpicking]

10 hours ago, Returned said:

We don't know. We have a quote from an ardent in contemporary Roshar saying that there were no such visions and that Hierocracy made them up as a way to seize power ...

Of course, he also believed that the Knights Radiant were a fraud, didn't he?

[RedBlue]

The Hierocracy strikes me as a plot device. (This isn’t a criticism — it’s a good plot device.)

Its function in the story is to make sure scholar characters (Jasnah et al.) don’t know too much too early, because that would ruin the fun of discovery. It also facilitates some of the conflict in the earlier books by making characters more hesitant to reveal their Radiant powers than they otherwise would be.

So, in the absence of further evidence, I’m not expecting any big reveals related to the Hierocracy. It has served its purpose. 

[Returned he/him]

12 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Of course, he also believed that the Knights Radiant were a fraud, didn't he?

Yup, the party line of the Vorin church has a terrible track record for accuracy. Accuracy may not have been what they were going for, though we know so little about the organization (both the Hierocracy and the later iterations) that we can't get a good idea even of that.

I can kind of see ways that a post-Recreance figure might consider the Knights Radiant to be a fraud but I think that Kadash's position is outside of that-- he was just wrong about the world (though not necessarily the Hierocracy).

[Ripheus23]

There are things in nearer history that happened, that were important, and that we have indications of. For example, something happened roughly 1,000 years ago that affected Nale and Ishar, maybe it was Ishar's partaking of Odium's well, but it was still in nearer history, anyway. The scouring of Aimia and the Hierocracy are also more recent events, so maybe things that happened 1,000 years ago led to things that happened 500 years ago, etc. There might be patterns to discover.