George RR Martin on the Inspiration for the Faith Militant
Please note, this article contains no spoilers for last night’s episode. Read on in safety!
No One Expects the Sparrow Inquisition! is a running joke on Reddit currently, but it turns out that repurposing of the Monty Python sketch for Game of Thrones isn’t too far off. After all, as Martin himself admits in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he drew on the medieval Catholic Church as his inspiration for the Faith of the Seven’s extremist offshoot, the Faith Militant.
“If you look at the history of the church in the Middle Ages, you had periods where you had very worldly and corrupt popes and bishops…They were playing their own version of the game of thrones, and they were in bed with the kings and the lords. But you also had periods of religious revival or reform—the greatest of them being the Protestant Reformation, which led to the splitting of the church…That’s what you’re seeing here in Westeros. The two previous High Septons we’ve seen, the first was very corrupt in his own way, and he was torn apart by the mob during the food riots [in season 2]. The one Tyrion appoints in his stead is less corrupt but is ineffectual and doesn’t make any waves. Cersei distrusts him because Tyrion appointed him. So now she has to deal with a militant and aggressive Protestant Reformation, if you will, that’s determined to resurrect a faith that was destroyed centuries ago by the Targaryens.”
Martin also points out that the base religion, the Faith of the Seven, pulls from Christianity, but with an emphasis on sevens instead of threes. “Instead of the Trinity of the Catholic Church, you have the Seven, where there is one god with seven aspects. In Catholicism, you have three aspects—the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
So should we worry about the Sparrow inquisition? After all, though the Catholic inquisition resulted in people being tortured and killed for being different, they were never quite as extreme as to carve seven pointed stars (or crosses) in their foreheads. And although Cersei seems to think that it was a good idea to empower the High Sparrow, his continuing insistence that “no one is special” and the way the Sparrows ignored Margaery’s cries of “I am the Queen” during her arrest should send chills down the back of anyone who wields power by virtue of their birth, including Cersei.
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