CHAPTER 66
Volume II: the Land across the Water MILLENNIUM
The turn of the millennium was a moment of great hope, hope that drowned in disillusionment when the Messiah failed to return. Etruria’s impatient masses turned to the secular world for salvation. This turning, a challenge to Concordian hegemony, was tied to the demise of the Castilians. The Curia had restrained their excesses and fostered the growth of the towns,25 but once the Castilians were ousted and the other city-states began to grow in confidence and wealth, Concord’s claims of moral authority began to chafe.
The Curia, now widely seen as a parasitical encumbrance, sought a distraction, and a mad melic obliged by initiating a vicious persecution of Marian Pilgrims to the Holy Land.26 In the centuries since the collapse of the Etruscan Empire, the Radinate and Etruria had coexisted by a simple but effective policy of ignoring each other’s existence.27 Etruria’s role was essentially passive.28 It did not contest Radinate dominance of the Middle Sea. It stoically endured raids by Ebionite pirates.
That defensive stance changed as the Curia employed orators to proclaim the duty of all good Marians to free Jerusalem from the schismatics. Deus lo Volt! resounded from the marshes of Ariminum to the towers of Rasenna. Etrurians, briefly, had common cause.