"The Divine Is With Us" II

In The Game Of Empire (IN Flandry's Legacy, New York, 2012), Poul Anderson does not disclose a great deal about religion in the Patrician System but a little more information can be extracted from the text. First, the discoverers of the system named its sun Patricius, "...perhaps as a religious gesture." (p. 192) For an entirely facetious reason, stated in Anderson's Introduction, the nine planets were named not after other national saints but after great legendary or historical engineers.

Only Patricius III (Daedalus) and IV (Imhotep) have been colonized, each in two stages. First, Daedalus was settled by small enclaves forever fighting the native jungle. Then the small town of Aurea became a city to accommodate sector defense command. Imhotep had merely a scientific base but then the Starkadian refugees were settled there.

Of the Starkadians, Tigeries are pagan if anything. The Seafolk, described not here but in Ensign Flandry, had, on their native planet, a white stone tower "...with a thick glass top just below the surface...," which reminded Flandry of the Parthenon (Ensign Flandry, London, 1976, p. 81). The tower was referred to as "...the Temple of Sky..." (p. 82) and the Seafolk were "...ceremony-minded..." (p. 86) but we are not told of any religious beliefs. On Imhotep, Diana Crowfeather sleeps rough in a ruined temple, reinforcing the British Raj Kipling feel of the narrative. "...temple..." certainly means a building that had been used for non-Christian, and possibly in this context also for non-human, worship.

In Aurea on Daedalus, the Wodenite Axor, who is ordained in the Jerusalem Catholic Church, confers with the local priest of that Church. This tells us that there is at least one Jerusalem Catholic congregation in Aurea. Also on Daedalus, the Zacharians name themselves after Terrestrial gods and goddesses and display a mural showing a man and woman emerging from clouds of stars. This is described as "'An ancestral creation myth...'" (Flandry's Legacy, p. 371) but the man who is about to explain what it symbolizes is interrupted.

Cynthians and Donarrians have also settled on Daedalus but I do not think that we have been told anything about their religions?