1699 Edict of Correction

This article or section is a work in progress. The information below may be incomplete, outdated, or subject to change.

The 1699 Edict of Correction Addressed to the Church of Elwynn was passed by the Congress of Chryse on 17.III.1699 AN, receiving the assent of the High Presidium of the Benacian Union on the same day. The Edict was promulgated on 20.III.1699 AN through publication in the first edition of the Gazette of the Chryse Chronicle.

Purpose of the Edict

The edict empowered the Magisters-Carnifex to take possession of the assets of the Church of Elwynn, to detain its clergy, and to examine the totality of its written material; be it administrative, archival, or theological in nature. The totality of the Church was to be examined for its compatibility with the Covenant and the 613 Commandments. Any aspect of the Church found to be incompatible with the new social order implemented by the Benacian Union in the aftermath of the Second Elwynnese Civil War was to be corrected, redacted, or superseded, as the magisters deemed appropriate. Any clergy who proved obstinate or refused to accept coordination and harmonisation into the new ideological system were to be liquidated at the earliest opportunity. The mass arrest and detention of surviving clergy by the Elwynnese Landstorm and the Internal Security Bureau, coordinated by the Panopticon Department and the Magisters had begun in Amokolia and Upper Elwynn a fortnight prior to the publication of the Edict, which therefore merely had the effect of commencing the round-up in Alalehzamin, Mishalacia, and the Sovereign Confederation.

The Edict also made provision for the torture and execution of those suspected of hiding priests, liturgical texts, and religious artefacts from the authorities, along with all relatives of the condemned. The Edict specified slow-slicing, a method encountered in the wars against the Jing during the 17th Century after Norton, as the form of torture and execution to be carried out, whilst also stipulating that the execution was to be conducted in front of the assembled community of the district in which the offence occurred. The mutilated bodies of the condemned to then be hung in a gibbet for thirty days before the rotten carrion meat was to be disposed of through burning, again to be conducted in public.