Origin of the Enchiridion?

[UAnchovy]

My apologies if this question has been asked or clarified before, but I've had a bit of a think about it and I'm confused. I would be grateful if anyone knows any additional information, or is able to clarify.

So, the Enchiridion is the holy text of the Ishgardian Orthodox Church. As far as I know, the church was founded some time after the founding of Ishgard itself, which was some time in the 550s of the Sixth Astral Era (Encyclopaedia Eorzea p. 47), though the elezen in Coerthas prior to that certainly worshipped Halone.

A merchant in Ul'dah claims to have a copy of the Enchiridion from the Fifth Astral Era. (Screenshot.) Okay, fair enough. We know that the Twelve were worshipped as early as the Third Astral Era (EE p. 17), and that cults or churches dedicated to individual members of the Twelve first arose in the beginning of the Fifth Astral Era (EE p. 30). It is entirely plausible that the ancestors of the Ishgardians, prior to migrating into Coerthas in the Sixth Astral Era, worshipped Halone and wrote the Enchiridion then.

However, the description of the Shiva Triple Triad card (screenshot) says that the Enchiridion describes Shiva as the Original Heretic, who lay down with dragons. Shiva lived in the mid-4th century of the Sixth Astral Era (EE p. 47). If the Enchiridion refers to Shiva by name, it must postdate Shiva's life. If so, what on Earth is the merchant in Ul'dah selling?

Several possibilities spring to mind as solutions to this problem.

Possibility one: the Enchiridion does postdate Shiva, and the Ul'dahn merchant is just lying. The customer is trying to sound intelligent but stupidly doesn't know when the Enchiridion was written or has misidentified an earlier Halonic holy text, and the merchant is accommodating this ignorance in the hope of making a sale.

Possibility two: the Enchiridion was in fact written in the Fifth Astral Era or earlier, but at some point in its early history the Ishgardian Orthodox Church falsified the text. They may have added new references to villains, or added entirely new chapters, or in some other way added Shiva, and then passed it off as what the text said all along. That would make a Fifth Astral Era copy of the Enchiridion incredibly rare and valuable, since it proves that the text has been modified.

Possibility three: the Enchiridion is not, in fact, a single text. Like the Bible or the Tanakh, it is a collection of multiple books, written at different times, which are usually bound together into a single tome for convenience. Thus the Enchiridion may contain Halonic texts dating back to the Fifth Astral Era or even earlier, and also contain later texts that were written after the founding of Ishgard. (This makes some sense in light of what the word means: Enchiridion literally means 'handbook', so maybe it just means a handbook-sized collection of Halonic texts.)

Is anyone aware of any sources I might have missed? What's going on with this text?

[Anonymoose]

I will do a deep dive to see if I come up with anything you didn't, but yours looks pretty thorough. I wouldn't expect much.

In the meantime....

My interpretation thus far has been that the church has overseen the book's contents and that over a thousand years they've changed. Even Biblical canon has been adjusted over its ~two millennia. I think of it this way: the holy texts say that Halone appeared before Thordan and led him to the promised land. That means they already worshiped Halone (or at least today want us to think they did then), which means they probably had (or today want us to think they had then) some scripture (if not the alleged Fifth Astral Enchiridion), and yet it also means that a new story was included in later texts. I never went much beyond that assumption, however; haven't needed to explain anything that required challenging it or digging sideways.

[UAnchovy]

Fair enough. I would like to pre-emptively suggest that we stay away from real religious texts: all I meant was to note that it wouldn't be unusual for a religious text to contain many books. Any discussion of real religious texts should be avoided.

In any case, I would agree that pre-Ishgardian elezen surely had some religious texts about Halone. Those texts' relationship to the modern Enchiridion is an interesting question, though, especially if any of them contained prophecies that might be retroactively interpreted to mean Thordan, Shiva, Nidhogg, and so on.

My initial preference is to go with my possibility three. The Ishgardian canon will surely have changed over time, as new texts have been added, old texts discovered, new translations made, and so on. I'm sure the church has always regulated its own canon: add a hymn here, revise a history there, clarify a translation there, and so on. That's not automatically a bad thing either. There is no reason why a religious textual corpus shouldn't grow over time, as new works are created, and as new information comes to light concerning old works.

Post-Heavensward, the church will be in a position to continue this process, placing old works into a new context, re-evaluating their significance, and perhaps recognising additions to the the corpus. It's all quite fascinating for anyone interested in religious history or theology. Which I am!

Anyway, the more details anyone can dig up, the better!

[RobinMalvin]

While we're waiting for Moose to dig into it, allow me to post my thoughts on this topic.

After exploring the ruins of Dravania Forelands and Churning Mist for awhile, I don't find any depictions of Halone, or any god of the Twelve. Instead, images and statues of dragons are found almost at every part of the ruins. The exceptions in this are the giant statue of Mother of The Sheave, presumably meant to depict Shiva, and the giant fan in Sohr Kai which has a depiction of woman on it though we don't know who the woman is supposed to be. Also, names of most of the places in those areas are mostly written in Draconic instead of Eorzean tongue, even though it's shown in Moogle quest that the tongue and alphabet has been used at that time.

So my take in this is that the fixation to worship Halone didn't exist in pre-Ishgard society but actually something that's relatively new, founded alongside the church and the Four High Houses to bury the truth of the Dragonsong War. The choice of Halone as the object of worship is more likely deliberate. After all, what god is better to pick to make your followers believe that you're fighting a holy crusade than the war goddess herself?

I'm more inclined to pick a combination of possibility two and three. Enchiridion is likely an ancient text, dating back as far as Fifth Astral Era if not even longer. But with the neglect of worship at the end of Fifth Astral Era and the Calamities, it's entirely possible for the contents of the text to be scattered, forgotten and lost, resulting in many versions of the text.

It's possible Ishgard has somehow come into possession of some of the original text and added some new things inside to further their propaganda against the dragons, though they apparently also added some new teachings written by their saints. It's also possible they simply wrote the entire text from scratch and claimed it as Enchiridion, the must have handbook for worshippers of Halone, to again, further their goal.

[Enur]

The lalafell could just be shouting lies in order to sell the enchiridion to unaware collecters. It is Ul'dah (and a lalafell) we're dealing with.

I wouldn't count on his text bubble as truth.

[Anonymoose]

Nothing new or exciting in Enchiridion mentions I'd saved, though I confess that I may have missed something in general mentions of scripture on the cursory pass. I did find one thing the new Hildibrand arc (of all places), though:

An Ishgardian student goes digging through the Inquisition's chamber of secrets and comes up with apocryphal texts that detail the Allagan Empire. German specifies that they are chapters of the Enchiridion, but not the alleged timing of their authorship. Their accuracy, however, bespeaks extremely ancient or extremely recent writings.

Allag was thought to be a myth until Saint Coinach made his find after the Dragonsong War began. Up through the Calamity, the findings conclusively revealed little more than simply proof that the ancient texts spoke of a place that actually existed. If the Enchiridion claims authority on the subject at all, its sources should theoretically be understood as ancient (unless they were allegedly delivered by Halone herself, a whole other can of worms).

Yet the Enchiridion also covers Halone skewering the heavens into the earth with The Nail (a Coerthan mountain) all the way up though relatively contemporary saints, including the (false) origins of the Dragonsong War. It seems suggestive of the book being continually "polished" by the Holy See regardless of origin.

Was it the Enchiridion before later texts were added? Or is it at least meant to be understood as such? I can't say (Apologies for how little help this digression has probably been thus far). As Robin said, it's possible that they didn't even worship Halone back then and have built a new canon from older scriptures. In such a scenario the Enchiridion is less than a thousand years old, but alleges authority on all that came before.

Like you, I still like the third possibility. The Archbishop is flat out called the Pope in JP (教皇); drawing parallels to the Bible isn't without precedent. And the use of the word "texts" implies that the Enchiridion is meant to be understood as a collection of such. But that still doesn't mean it's not meant to be a recent telling of ancient truths and the Lalafell is a fraud.

In my bones, something feels right about an all-of-the-above interpretation: Halonic scripture included in the Enchiridion predates the Sixth Astral, the Enchiridion itself postdates the Sixth Astral but claims to be an authentic collection of Halonic scripture and Ishgardian Orthodox scripture, and the Lalafell is a fraud. (I mean, it's being sold off of a rug; proffered to someone in a shepherd's tunic.)

It is Ul'dah (and a lalafell) we're dealing with

Exac—HEY

[UAnchovy]

So my take in this is that the fixation to worship Halone didn't exist in pre-Ishgard society but actually something that's relatively new, founded alongside the church and the Four High Houses to bury the truth of the Dragonsong War.

That seems less plausible to me. If I were going to use religious propaganda to try to justify a new state, I don't think I would create the new religion from nothing. The claim that Thordan was blessed by Halone has no real pull with the people unless the people already follow Halone, surely?

It's true that there isn't very much Halonic imagery in the Churning Mists, but that gets us into the nature of ancient Ishgardian civilisation, and I don't know if there's enough information on that to really say anything. It seems unlikely to me that, prior to Thordan slaying Ratatoskr, everyone revered Shiva and dragons, because if so, how did Thordan acquire popular support? The Echo vision of Haldrath after 'Into the Aery' makes it look as if, in the immediate aftermath of Haldrath's battle with Nidhogg, there was no question that the vast bulk of elezen felt loyal to Thordan and the Knights Twelve.

So I feel as though there has to have been a substantial degree of separation between elezen and dragon at the time of Ratatoskr's death and afterwards. If the two societies were truly closely integrated, you wouldn't expect them to have been able to separate so quickly, to become militant against each other so quickly, and for the Ishgardian narrative to be so convincing. I would hazard that most of the statues in the Mists and the Forelands were built by dragons, or were in dragon territory, whereas the bulk of elezen lived in what is now the city of Ishgard or Coerthas. Archaeological evidence of Halone worship may well exist, but it would exist in the territories that are still currently inhabited by Halone-worshippers.

Nothing new or exciting in Enchiridion mentions I'd saved, though I confess that I may have missed something in general mentions of scripture on the cursory pass. I did find one thing the new Hildibrand arc (of all places), though:

Ah, thank you! I haven't played through the Hildibrand arcs, so I missed that. (I'm still at the initial battle with Gilgamesh. I'm afraid I don't find Hildibrand very funny or likeable.)

A reference to Allagans in the Enchiridion is fascinating, though. As you say, reliable information on Allag must be either extremely old, dating back to before the Fourth Astral Era purge, or extremely new. It sounds unlikely that these apocryphal texts were new, so that would suggest that the oldest layer of the Enchiridion goes back as far as... well, maybe the Third Astral Era.

Was it the Enchiridion before later texts were added? Or is it at least meant to be understood as such? I can't say

My gut instinct there says "no". If we suppose, for a moment, that the Enchiridion is a constantly growing collection of texts - Third Era material on Allag, Fifth Era texts on Halone, a Sixth Era account of migration to Coerthas under Thordan, Thordan and Haldrath's battle with Nidhogg, the lives of the saints, etc. - then there must have been a process of redaction and compilation. Someone has to have come along and grouped all these texts together and said, "These are important. They share common themes, and united they form a canon."

That requires some institution or at least culture to back it up, I think. It requires a body capable of collecting the texts, studying them, and then promoting the idea that they should be read together. That says the church, to me.

[LineageRazor]

So I feel as though there has to have been a substantial degree of separation between elezen and dragon at the time of Ratatoskr's death and afterwards. If the two societies were truly closely integrated, you wouldn't expect them to have been able to separate so quickly, to become militant against each other so quickly, and for the Ishgardian narrative to be so convincing. I would hazard that most of the statues in the Mists and the Forelands were built by dragons, or were in dragon territory, whereas the bulk of elezen lived in what is now the city of Ishgard or Coerthas. Archaeological evidence of Halone worship may well exist, but it would exist in the territories that are still currently inhabited by Halone-worshippers.

I think that the two societies could have, indeed, been closely integrated. As instigators of the impending disaster, the remaining four of the Knights Twelve likely spread the word that their people would no longer be welcome among the dragons. While many Elezen and dragons alike might have been resistant to the notion, their tune would quickly have changed once Nidhogg's campaign of terror began. Nidhogg very likely started by rooting humans out of the Churning Mists, and he would likely have been just as ruthless at dealing with any human-friendly dragons who tried to defend them.

Essentially, no matter how closely integrated the two societies were, eliminating that integration (which was, in Nidhogg's view, the whole reason this awful tragedy happened in the first place) was at the top of Nidhogg's to-do list. The end of human/dragon friendship literally happened as quickly as Nidhogg wanted it to, and his ruthlessness did much to support the lies the Knights were spreading about their own responsibility for the chaos. As far as the humans knew, Nidhogg (who'd never been secretive about his distain for humans, even before Ratatoskr's murder) had finally decided to clean house, and that was all there was to it. The fact that Hraesvalgr seemed content to just step aside and let the slaughter happen likely did little to sway anyone from thinking that their former friends had all turned against them.

[UAnchovy]

Doesn't that struggle with the sheer speed at which Ishgard forgot that any cooperation was possible? If almost all of society was integrated, this was common knowledge, most ordinary elezen knew friendly dragons, etc., then that makes the later propaganda line very odd. The official position ended up being that there was never any cooperation, and that's a very odd lie to promulgate if cooperation was well-known and spread through the whole of society. If I was a propagandist in that situation, I might prefer the more plausible position that while we did cooperate, the perfidy and inherent treachery of dragonkind led them to attempt to slaughter us all. Our only mistake was believing in their promises of friendship: it was all really just a ruse to gain our trust before they tried to consume us all.

I just don't see why, in that situation, you would try to cover up the fact that society was once integrated. You don't need to do it in order to sell the line that Thordan was a noble and self-sacrificing ruler and that dragons are inherently evil and treacherous beasts. What do you get out of lying to everyone about something that everyone knows, and has clear physical evidence of?

Whereas it feels intuitively more plausible, to me, if even at the time, cooperation was limited. There could very easily be large factions of both dragons and elezen who were skeptical about cooperation (cf. Nidhogg), or who simply had very little contact with the other race. Positing a degree of distrust and ignorance helps to explain how the claim that it was Thordan who first encountered dragons could take hold. If at the time most of Ishgard did not have contact with dragons, save for an adventurous community around Avalonia, I can make more sense of it.

Ah, but I apologise for going off topic. I am, well, deeply skeptical of every version we get of ancient Ishgardian history in Heavensward. The nature and purpose of the constructed history baffles me.

(e.g. EE p. 149: "These founding fathers then chose to join hands with the clergy to establish a new government to rule Ishgard - and to craft a compelling narrative with which they would convince the people to fight in a war against the Dravanians." Um, but firstly, they don't need such a narrative. The Dravanians, led by Nidhogg, have gone berserk and are trying ato exterminate them. Thordan's crime is not widely known, so you don't need a false narrative. The bare facts of the matter - the dragons have gone mad and are trying to kill us all - are sufficient, and in fact, the new constructed narrative doesn't add anything useful to those facts. The constructed narrative is still essentially that the dragons are mad and want to kill us all. Secondly, the founders of Ishgard have no reason apart from self-defense to want to motivate the people to fight the Dravanians. No one in Ishgard benefits from the war. No one gets anything out of it. So we have a situation where the leaders of Ishgard deliberately craft a lie which provides no additional motivation for people to fight a war that they were motivated to fight anyway and from which Ishgard extracts zero actual benefit. Why? Why do anything like that? Sorry for the rant, but I just can't seem to work out any way in which Ishgardian prehistory makes sense. It gets worse if we go back to Shiva or even further. The best I can assume is that every account we have of that history is full of holes.)

[Berethos]

The bare facts would certainly be sufficient for the short term, and might have even been sufficient in the long run...

But why deal with a might when some propaganda can further cloud the truth, extending the length of the ruse?

Also, changing how the government worked - from King to Church guiding four houses - would be a transition made easier by such propaganda.

So it wasn't a necessary act, but creating that compelling narrative made their long term goals easier to achieve.

Even with the ruse of a "just cause" fueling their society the people grew weary of the long years of war and needed a strict system of punishments to keep the populace toeing the line. A thousand years of just fighting a mad dragon for no other reason than they keep attacking could have led to questions long ago...questions that may have never stopped the war but possibly destabilized the government and weakened its power...

And this was a system put in place by those who broke a two century peace for power. That they'd do whatever they could to keep themselves in power makes sense.

On a different note specific to the Enchiridon - the Scholisticate quest line does seem to imply that the text is not at all immutable, and some parts of it are clearly treated as secondary to other parts even in present day Ishgard. While it may have changed little in a thousand years, that parts of it are held in lower regard and the duplicity of the founders of the system of government they used strongly suggests to me a clear timeframe for it to have been altered, possibly significantly.