Bloody Vacancy

The term Bloody Vacancy, in the history of Vaestism, refers to the thirteen years between 1503-1516 when the position of Universal Prophet was physically empty and the highest authority of Vaestdom was the Second Prysostaic Council. It began with the Council of Shalovar, and was ended by Sobiebor the Younger's successful siege of the Prysostaic Citadel and proclamation thereafter as Prophet (a victory which was followed a few months later by his defeat of his uncle Sobiebor the Elder and his unification of the Prophetic title with that of Emperor of the Vesnites, thus beginning the high Neritsovid era). The period represents an important second Vesnite experiment with conciliar government. It was characterised by intense violence in the Prysostaia and broader Argotea.

Events

The Vacancy was the culmination of political pressures which had begun in the Wars of Heresy period (1472-1490), which saw various sects fighting for control over the political and hierological institutions of Vaestdom. By the late 1480s, when Siluve II requested a major military intervention by Nerits, the primary antagonists in this contest were the Orthodoxists and the Dagomites. Nerits succeeded in destroying the Dagomites and bringing most of Vaestdom under a single political authority, and in return was rewarded with the title of Emperor of the Vesnites, an ambiguous term which allowed his progeny to lay claim to the legacy of Chotarian and Secote imperial privilege. The imperial position triggered a break within the Orthodoxists, with the so-called New Orthodoxists led by Mir Kairelis maintaining that the principle of the absolute and indivisible authority of the Prophet meant that appointing an Emperor was clearly a heretical innovation.

False rumours that Nerits had died crossing the Tormaytah gave the New Orthodoxists an opportunity to make their move in the so-called Bitter Protest, violently suppressed by Nerits' brother Spytidar Bydigelev. With the death of Siluve in summer 1498, however, they emerged once more, assassinating Spytidar and electing Mir as Prophet. The Imperialist camp responded by electing their own Prophet, Sillis, in Umarad. Beyond this, Sobiebor I was initially too busy dealing with his own recently converted High Nobility – to many of whom he seems to have suggested that he too was a secret Recondite – to attend to business in the east. By 1502, however, Mir had begun to put together a broader coalition, with Mirokrai recognising him as Universal Prophet, and in order to check this problem Sobiebor sent his brother Spytidar to broker a truce with the Orthodoxists, bearing the oblique warning that the Emperor was 'of a mind to make pilgrimage again'.

At a Council held at the spiritual heart of Old Vaestism in Shalovar, both claimants agreed that they had not been properly elected and rescinded their claims to the Prophetic chair. More momentously still, they came up with a curious and slightly tortuous neo-Ishtinist formulation to the effect that the Sacred Prophecy needed no individual human bearer, i.e. that there was no need for a single Prophet. In place of a Prophet, a Prysostaic Council representing both Imperialists and New Orthodoxists was to run the affairs of the Prysostaia and minister to the Vesnites collectively – the order that had obtained during the Conciliar period after the death of the Prophet. And as far as the contentious issue of the imperial position was concerned, the Orthodoxists accepted that it was an 'Unknown' and ceased their public attacks on the Emperor.

The conciliar order was on intellectually shaky ground and open to accusations of Desuetudinalism and Pluralism. It was unpopular with the western Scholarchate, who were already suspicious of Sobiebor and with the non-prostrate Banners. Perhaps more importantly, it was deeply resented by many of the Old Vesnite Scholars of Argotea who had formed the popular base of the elite New Orthodoxists before this unanticipated betrayal. The Emperor, however, was happy – the new Council had granted him a free hand in his disputes over land tenure at home, and the New Orthodoxists had been neutralised. The elite Scholars of the Prysostaia, meanwhile, were able to keep their clients under control for the first few years. There were even some optimistic hopes that the new conceptualisation of the Prophecy would allow for reconciliation with the non-prostrates. The Prysostaia was able to function reasonably well for almost a decade, with only occasional outbreaks of violence inevitably coinciding with the arrival of seasonal workers in Otrešveimještas in the winter months.

By 1511, however, things began to deteriorate. The death of Mir Karielis deprived the New Orthodoxists of leadership and made maintaining the fragile consensus on the Empire more difficult. The Emperor's conquests had brought all Anabbah under Vesnite control, and the Imperialist party at the Pryostaia, not without basis, were accused of triumphalism and high-handedness. There were concerns that Sillis would reverse his earlier repudiation of the Prophecy. That winter the violence was worse than usual, and extensive flooding along the Lowlands in the summer of 1512 brought things to a crisis point. An influx of angry refugees ran riot in cities across Argotea, with the authorities powerless to stop them. Sillis himself was assaulted by a mob during an unwise excursion beyond the walls of the Citadel. The crisis point finally came when the Argote notability broke with the elite in the Prysostaia, issuing the Errant Petition calling for intervention by the Lacreans. At this point Sobiebor I was forced to dispatch his nephew, also named Sobiebor, to restore order.

Although the younger Sobiebor was able to restore order among the general population of Argotea fairly rapidly, his efforts at the Prysostaia quickly ran up against the intransigence of the New Orthodoxists on the Council, who had arrested Sillis and did not want to be forced to recognise him as Prophet; he was thus symbolically barred from entering the Citadel. After literal years of deadlock spent as the de facto military governor of Argotea, Sillis' death removed a major source of anxiety on the Orthodoxists' part and Sobiebor was finally allowed to join the discussions in person in 1516. The details of the subsequent negotiations are unclear, but in Nollonger of the same year Sobiebor was himself elected Universal Prophet by the New Orthodoxists, in part, it seems, because of his willingness to recognise the so-called 'Argote Privilege'. This brought an end to the Bloody Vacancy.