By "no Reformation" I was basically thinking no religious movement that permanently splits off a significant part of Latin Catholic Christendom. Internal Church reform movements can exist, provided they're still Catholic and don't result in schism; Lutheranism and Calvinism can also exist...
I disagree. The region had, after all, had far fewer Muslim c. 600 than it did Christians c. 1000, and there's precedent for the redeconversion of previously Christian lands in the form of Spain. If Tunisia remains under Christian rule for long enough -- say, four to five hundred years --...
Historically, Tunisia has only been conquered from Egypt on two occasions that I can think of, one of which is the Muslim conquest in the 7th century (the other being the Allied advance in WW2), so it should be pretty doable to stop Islam expanding any further west than Cyrenaica.
I don't think it would have much, if any, impact. European states engaged in cut-throat trading competition with each other all the time in spite of their common religion, and the benefits of going straight to the source of a good and cutting out the middlemen are obvious. Plus...
One thing I wonder is how Church-State relations could fit in with politics more generally. I could see people who are in favour of a strong, centralised state being in favour of a more Gallican approach, whilst those who prefer a more decentralised or limited government might want to give the...
I was thinking that the Church does a better job reforming itself in the decades leading up to 1517, meaning that any Reformation analogue doesn't attract enough support to form a viable alternative.
Alternatively, you could have princes unilaterally imposing a form of Gallicanism, as...
In Henry's case, there was a pre-existing religious movement which provided the justification for making himself head of the Church. Without the Reformation, there wouldn't have been, and Henry's unlikely to get nearly so much support for such a blatantly schismatic act.
As it says on the tin -- if the Reformation never happens, how would Church-State relations likely develop?
On the one hand, the trend was towards more centralised states, and as part of this process the kings of Europe are going to want to increase their control over the Church in their lands...
If we want an alternate split, maybe a tripartite division would be best. One third could have Gaul, Britain, and Spain; the second could have Italy, North Africa, and Illyria; and the third could have Greece, Egypt, and the East. This would create coherent states with defensible borders (which...
If adelphopoiesis is accepted in this society (TBH I think its OTL prevalence gets greatly exaggerated, but maybe this could change as part of the POD), I think the queen would be able to go through with it without more than perhaps a bit of gossip, assuming she'd not already unpopular. But that...
Living in the countryside and working on a farm is much closer to the life we evolved for than living in a megacity and working on a computer. We know from the experience of zoos and the like that many animals struggle to thrive if kept in artificial conditions, even if they have much better...
Adelphopoiesis ("brother-making") was, as the name suggests, conceived of as analogous to a familial relationship, not to a marriage. Nor was it ever at all widespread.
An even more striking analogy would be the Social War in ancient Rome. Basically, Rome's Italian allies (who were theoretically equal and independent states, but in practice subordinate vassals) wanted Roman citizenship, but Rome refused to grant it to them. Eventually, in 91 BC, the allies...
Britain didn't have the wherewithal to occupy the whole of the Thirteen Colonies by military force, so a British victory is almost certainly going to be accompanied or brought about by granting concessions to bring the rebels back onboard.