Chief Shepherd

The Chief Shepherd is the senior cleric and principal teacher of the Northshire Communion, the symbolic head of the faithful of the Light, and the head of religious affairs in regards to priests and paladins in communion with the Holy See.

The current Chief Shepherd is Alonsus II. Born Johannes Moorwhelp, Alonsus is 136th in a line of archbishops which goes back over 2,000 years, tracing its origins through Sacred Lineage to Mereldar, the first priest of the Holy Light. Alonsus II succeeded Caspius, who succeeded Columban V, who succeeded Benedictus, who succeeded Alonsus I, who was Archbishop during the First War.

Tribal Prophets
Sacred Lineage links every priest, church doctrine claims, to the first priestess, Mereldar, who first among those of Azeroth was given revelations by angelic beings of the Light, and her many fellow-prophets in the primitive church. In orthodox ecclesiology, therefore, every local church throughout time forms a branch of the tree of this lineage, linking every cleric (and thus every follower) to the spirit and prophetic authority of the first men.

As the church grew from its tribal bearings and was influenced by the Kingdom of Lordaeron, the lineage became much more formal, with different sorts of bishops and priests having different roles. The archbishop, who was sometimes called Chief Shepherd, took the place of Mereldar, the prophetic voice.

The Middle Church
The archbishop's role in society and means of election often changed throughout history according to the climate of the Church, but the role in the ecclesiastic hierarchy has always been the prophetic greenskeeper of the sacred lineage, who has the sole ability to create bishops and the expectation to prophesy to the people.

The Chief Shepherd's means of election was often irregular in previous centuries. Often the bishops would gather in council and elect an archbishop to be the Chief Shepherd, but other times, especially in times of crisis, indecision, or difficulty, a Chief Shepherd would be acclaimed by a group of bishops, clerics, commoners, or even monarchs.

Alonsus Faol
Alonsus Faol was perhaps one of the last (before recent years) to bear both the title Archbishop and Chief Shepherd. After Alonsus moved the Holy See to Stormwind City, the title Chief Shepherd began to become associated with the leader of the cathedral proper, a usage that became extinct after his death, though was revived during the Elemental Invasion.

Schismatic Lines
This solution to the difficulty of having no archbishops sometimes caused the difficulty of having two or more who simultaneously claimed the office, an ecclesiastical conundrum; just as it is seemly and necessary for the church to always have a Chief Shepherd, it degrades the moral authority of the church and causes conflict within the faithful for two to claim the office.

This problem was especially prevalent in the years after the Third War when the Church in the north was decimated, its remnants converting to the Scarlet heresy. Scarlet heretics acclaimed an Archbishop, as well as the Gilneans, who shut themselves off from the carnage.

Benedictine Years
The Church of the Holy Light leader in Stormwind, Jarl, was elected by a council of bishops as the clear leader of the Church despite this. A student of Alonsus I, he chose for himself the name Benedictus gathered a divided church, which had split very clearly into three ideological factions, one in favor of an isolated church, one in favor of a militant church, and the other in favor of a church that would return to its roots. The Church would soon begin to crack along even more lines, namely new and old, and the council was all but in shambles towards the end of Benedictus's archiepiscopate.

Johannes Moorwhelp, Mellar Servus, and others began to reform the council and to grow it with the passive consent of the archbishop. Together, they began to bring the church together, forming from a divided church a tenuous unity built on a desire to work openly to improve first the church's ritual systems and centralize it. Eventually, the council set about compelling diverse orders from all lands to send their brightest to learn to be priests.

The Columbian Years
When Benedictus disappeared, the council was silent for nearly a year on the matter. When schism became eminent pending the action of the Council, it fell to this organization, not originally built for a decision such as this, to declare the Archbishop dead and elect another. Johannes Moorwhelp oversaw this process with the help of his clerk, Erich Gottfried Manstein, and from it came Mellar Servus, one of the original founders of the reformed council, who chose for himself the name Columban V. The election was amicable, unanimous, and positively received by the public.

Columban's rule was marked by reforms to canon law and the continuation of the revisions of sacred scripture. He tried and succeeded to bring the council together under a clear teacher-leader. His chastisement was often harsh, but his grace was saintly in a way that was unique to him. He was slain by the Forsaken willingly following his capture, and he was proclaimed a saint immediately after.

The Caspian Years
Columban's death brought vengeance to the minds of many in the church and caution still to others. As the whole church struggled to discern the message and prophecy that their beloved holy father left behind, the Council was again tasked with the election. Two clear front-runners emerged from the factions: Eustasius Greenleaf and Johannes Moorwhelp. Much less prepared for this conclave, the council debated bitterly on the direction of the Church, the war with the Horde, the company that each kept, their preparedness for the office, among many other factors.

The election took a sudden surge for Eustasius Greenleaf after an intermission; unbeknownst to Johannes Moorwhelp, Eustasius set about the work of securing votes by offering varied positions of power to bloc leaders. Nonetheless, vote after vote, Johannes and his ever-smaller bloc held out, preventing unanimity until the matter was discussed by the voters. The conclave was ended by an obscure law that states, in the case of difficulty in choosing a Chief Shepherd, the Council can move to lower the bar from unanimity to a supermajority. Possessing a supermajority, Eustasius was elected and chose for himself the name Caspius, his saintly father's name.

Caspius and Johannes preceded to feud bitterly, often publicly. Caspius at first set to placate Johannes with a newly formed office, the office of Lord Chamberlain of the Church; unswayed by this bribery, Johannes accused Caspius of simony to win the election, though he tried to avoid rumor of this in public for fear that it would damage the church that they both, though through different methods, sought to build.

Caspius and Johannes's conflict reached a head when Caspius issued a formal rebuke in the form of the Censure: Johannes Moorwhelp. Through a combination of withdrawal of signatures, lobbied by Johannes and those that supported him, and what historians regard as miscommunication, the integrity of the document fell apart in the eyes of the public.

Following this, Johannes was summoned forthright to the territory of the Holy See, which was then in Tyr's Hand. In the cathedral, many gathered to witness the spectacle between the two rivals. There, Caspius requested formally that Johannes resigned; when Johannes refused, he expected to be removed, but instead, Caspius abdicated the office himself. Caspius himself later regarded the decision to promise position to powerful clerics as fatal to the longevity of his archiepiscopacy, setting subsequent pontiffs up for a difficult time with a council that had gained a reputation for internal strife.

Caspius's reign, despite the turmoil of it, was marked by progress in canon law and an elevation of the courtly traditions of the shepherdic office. He continued the work of the original council through the sacred scripture. He reformed the knight-protectors of the Church into something of a standing army for the protection of the faithful. Caspius was accessible in ways that previous Archbishops never were. He was regarded as a populist archbishop, keeping himself close to the people.

Third Conclave
The third conclave of the council was soon underway, perhaps the most largely attended conclave of all time. The faithful stood shoulder to shoulder, guardsmen lined the halls. Two billows of purple smoke ascended from the tower of the Abbey of Northshire, before the fated white smoke symbolized that a new pontiff had been elected unanimously. The fastest conclave since the election of Alonsus Faol, Johannes Moorwhelp emerged as the simply dressed Alonsus II. A procession was held to Stormwind, his own diocese, where he was coronated and announced his cabinet.

He chose to retain his diocese of Stormwind, and for the first time since Alonsus, the titles Chief Shepherd and Archbishop coincided. The decision to keep Stormwind was a difficult one for Alonsus, who had made Stormwind his home for just under a decade. Though the call was a difficult one, the decision was ultimately made with the ideal that none among the council were yet ready to manage

Much to the surprise of all, he announced that he would not be changing any cabinet members from the chosen of Caspius, his rival. This, he thought, would show that despite his platform of reform, he was more than willing to work with the body as it was. This would later prove fatal for the tenuous peace he was working to create.

Reforms
Johannes's reforms were swift and decisive. No scholarly Columban or courtly Caspius, Alonsus was ever the administrator and facilitator, and his archiepiscopacy took that character. He brought in help for his varied projects from all walks of ecclesiastic society, even bringing in his rival, Archbishop Caspius.

He set about to reform the antiquated canon law, suspending the old and drafting a new with the help of a few experts. He finally finished the decade-old business of the promulgation a central rubric for all official rites of the Church. He brought Silver Hand orders together in closer communication in hope of a revival of a congregation for all paladins of the Alliance, something that he has not yet realized.

Excepting canon law, his most sweeping reforms were to the way the church hierarchy works, namely in the formation of provinces and dicasteries, a move that he hoped would solidify what he called a "church central", a network of utilities such as education, sacred doctrine, legal, and financial institutions that would act to equip holy orders for more efficacy and cooperation in the works of the Light.

The greater successes his reforms had, the more inspired came his follow-up. Education was thriving, doctrinal discussion was vibrant and active, liturgy was regular, and the priesthood was growing immensely. Problems arose as the newly-organized powers began to step over the boundaries of one another, and Alonsus struggled to mediate the problems in ways that ended with cordial relations between all bishops.

This internal conflict began to boil over and resulted in stagnation in the election of bishops as varied factions held grudges against the other. This stagnation was something that deeply troubled Alonsus, but he had a plan that would hopefully end in a more diverse council that could not be so easily stalled by internal strife. As part of his reforms to provinces, he would spread the power of the nomination of bishops from the direct purview of the council to a system of local synods, who would submit their nominations to bishops.

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The Hidden Year
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