On the Founding of Hogwarts
Aug. 29th, 2004 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayhapThose of you who have been hanging around this journal for a while will know that while I have on numerous occasions alluded to an epic novel-length founderfic that I fully intend to write, I never actually post any of it.
This is because I am a tease. Also, the slowest writer on earth. Also, prone to endless research and anxiety over perfection. Also, a lazy ho.
Nevertheless, I have been opening up all my old Word documents pertaining to it, and falling in love with it all over again. Love love love. I am at this point firmly convinced that my story is canon, or in fact, better than canon, all evidence to the contrary nevertheless. (I figure that this is a harmless belief, since it all ends the same anyway.) I have been taking deep breaths, making up bits as I go along, and working towards actually finishing, say, the first chapter, which may be published some time this year. (You think I'm joking.) It even has a working title: The Wyrm in the Castle. (*ducks*)
What I do have for you right this very minute are the notes I scribbled down about my premise for the story, which was partially born of an attempt to reconcile Rowling's selection of a date for the founding of Hogwarts (c. 1000) with the total absence of any actual historical impetus for such. My notes, naturally enough, took the form of a sort pseudo-encyclopedia article, which you may wish to read, and possibly kick around. Nothing is really set in stone at this point, considering I've written ... like ... a thousand words so far.
Wizarding society in Britain became deeply syncretized with Christianity as the British peoples were converted to that religion. Virtually all wizards born pursued the Church as a vocation, learnt to practice magic as the working of divine miracles, and caused the Church to flourish because the faith of the people was easy to win and keep with the miracles that the Church provided, and for a time, all was well.
The schism between the Church and its magical contingent which would slowly but surely lead to a total divorce between magical and Muggle society began with a single cleric who became interested in developing some of the darker magics described in Grecco-Roman literature. Previous incidents such as this one had been handled with more finesse and aplomb, but in this instance, a panicked bishop had the cleric executed summarily. The magical religious community was outraged—it was believed that those with spiritual gifts paid for them by having to deal with demons as well as angels far more closely than ordinary folk. Temptation into dark magic was considered regrettable, but those who fell into it were to be pitied and exorcised, not killed. Non-magical folk responded with increasing panic about what a magical person could do before being stopped, which they felt justified summary action. Magical folk, accordingly, became increasingly paranoid about their safety; some left the Church openly, becoming hermits who shunned nearly all attempts at contact as they developed their magical abilities; others raised their magical children as squibs in order to keep them out of the Church hierarchy.
Increasingly, therefore, there existed throughout Britain a contingent of secular wizardry: witches and wizards who, in spite of their great magical abilities, were not part of the Church hierarchy and did not perform magic in the context of miracles. At first, their numbers were vanishingly few, and the Church hoped to minimize the damage to their spiritual authority. They assured everyone that anyone who still attended Church regularly was right with God, however they might choose to practice their spiritual gifts, an idea that was utterly alien to most non-magical folk at first, since they had little to no concept that the ability to produce miracles could exist outside the Church where they had always encountered them.
For a time, the Church’s tolerant position allowed these secular wizards to flourish. However, realizing that the problem had not been minimized at all, a new generation of Church leaders tried with increasing desperation to bring magical folk back to the fold, or, barring that, kill them off. Even at its worst, the violence was never that widespread, but it was more than sufficient to drive many magical folk into hiding. Mixed marriages (those between skilled users of magic and those who had absolutely no magical ability in their family) were quite common during this period, something that had vanishingly rare previously. Within a few generations the violence petered out again, but distrust lingered. Magical folk outside the Church laid low; magical folk within the Church were wary.
It was this atmosphere of distrust that drove the four legendary founders, to gather together their protégés in a remote and solitary location to strengthen their abilities, thus establishing Hogwarts as Britain’s first and only school of wizarding and witchcraft, the cornerstone of the wizarding world whose establishment would not be complete until the creation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy of 1692.
This is because I am a tease. Also, the slowest writer on earth. Also, prone to endless research and anxiety over perfection. Also, a lazy ho.
Nevertheless, I have been opening up all my old Word documents pertaining to it, and falling in love with it all over again. Love love love. I am at this point firmly convinced that my story is canon, or in fact, better than canon, all evidence to the contrary nevertheless. (I figure that this is a harmless belief, since it all ends the same anyway.) I have been taking deep breaths, making up bits as I go along, and working towards actually finishing, say, the first chapter, which may be published some time this year. (You think I'm joking.) It even has a working title: The Wyrm in the Castle. (*ducks*)
What I do have for you right this very minute are the notes I scribbled down about my premise for the story, which was partially born of an attempt to reconcile Rowling's selection of a date for the founding of Hogwarts (c. 1000) with the total absence of any actual historical impetus for such. My notes, naturally enough, took the form of a sort pseudo-encyclopedia article, which you may wish to read, and possibly kick around. Nothing is really set in stone at this point, considering I've written ... like ... a thousand words so far.
Wizarding society in Britain became deeply syncretized with Christianity as the British peoples were converted to that religion. Virtually all wizards born pursued the Church as a vocation, learnt to practice magic as the working of divine miracles, and caused the Church to flourish because the faith of the people was easy to win and keep with the miracles that the Church provided, and for a time, all was well.
The schism between the Church and its magical contingent which would slowly but surely lead to a total divorce between magical and Muggle society began with a single cleric who became interested in developing some of the darker magics described in Grecco-Roman literature. Previous incidents such as this one had been handled with more finesse and aplomb, but in this instance, a panicked bishop had the cleric executed summarily. The magical religious community was outraged—it was believed that those with spiritual gifts paid for them by having to deal with demons as well as angels far more closely than ordinary folk. Temptation into dark magic was considered regrettable, but those who fell into it were to be pitied and exorcised, not killed. Non-magical folk responded with increasing panic about what a magical person could do before being stopped, which they felt justified summary action. Magical folk, accordingly, became increasingly paranoid about their safety; some left the Church openly, becoming hermits who shunned nearly all attempts at contact as they developed their magical abilities; others raised their magical children as squibs in order to keep them out of the Church hierarchy.
Increasingly, therefore, there existed throughout Britain a contingent of secular wizardry: witches and wizards who, in spite of their great magical abilities, were not part of the Church hierarchy and did not perform magic in the context of miracles. At first, their numbers were vanishingly few, and the Church hoped to minimize the damage to their spiritual authority. They assured everyone that anyone who still attended Church regularly was right with God, however they might choose to practice their spiritual gifts, an idea that was utterly alien to most non-magical folk at first, since they had little to no concept that the ability to produce miracles could exist outside the Church where they had always encountered them.
For a time, the Church’s tolerant position allowed these secular wizards to flourish. However, realizing that the problem had not been minimized at all, a new generation of Church leaders tried with increasing desperation to bring magical folk back to the fold, or, barring that, kill them off. Even at its worst, the violence was never that widespread, but it was more than sufficient to drive many magical folk into hiding. Mixed marriages (those between skilled users of magic and those who had absolutely no magical ability in their family) were quite common during this period, something that had vanishingly rare previously. Within a few generations the violence petered out again, but distrust lingered. Magical folk outside the Church laid low; magical folk within the Church were wary.
It was this atmosphere of distrust that drove the four legendary founders, to gather together their protégés in a remote and solitary location to strengthen their abilities, thus establishing Hogwarts as Britain’s first and only school of wizarding and witchcraft, the cornerstone of the wizarding world whose establishment would not be complete until the creation of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy of 1692.
