Peter Hitchens is one of my favorite conservative writers. I do not agree with him on very much, but he is an intelligent man, who usually analyzes political and social matters very well, even if he comes to very different conclusions than I do.
That said, sometimes he makes some pretty wacky assertions. For example, in his column today, Hitchens writes:
I am worried by the TV popularity of George R.R. Martin’s clever fantasy Game Of Thrones.
Mr Martin’s imaginary world is frighteningly cruel. The society it describes is far worse than the Middle Ages, because its characters are entirely unrestrained by Christian belief. [Emphasis mine] There’s a lifeless, despised religion but nobody takes it seriously.
I fear it will make those who watch it worse people than they were before.
I never watched this show, or read the books it is based on. Yet, I still find this statement very, very difficult to believe. There were a lot of bad things done in the Middle Ages, and its hard to see how George R.R. Martin could have invented something crueler than any one thought to do back then.
My core disagreement with Hitchens is that “Christian belief” made the Middle Ages more restrained. He would have been correct if he had said that people who practiced Christian teachings were more restrained–“All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword“, after all–but the fact is there have been many people throughout history who professed Christian belief without ever letting the tenets of such belief color their actions in any way.
I think it’s pretty clear there were people in the Middle Ages who were unrestrained by Christian teaching. And I am only talking about in the places that were generally “Christian” lands–that becomes even more obvious when you consider all the non-Christians in the Middle Ages.
Is April Fools’ Day on the 6th this year? Or am I missing something? I wish Hitchens would have gone into more detail about what cruel acts the Christian restraint of the Middle Ages prevented, because I frankly can’t come up with much evidence for the claim.
They guy that wrote about “restraint” in the middle ages has never studied the time period. Louis the Pius and Louis the IX (Saint Louis) tried to live godly lives and rule that way, they were road kill and left France in ruins.
My knowledge of that time period is not nearly thorough as yours, and even I could think of several instances of a distinct lack of “Christian restraint”, most of which were committed by people who professed to be Christians.