Fighting for Salvation

Interesting. Can you provide a reference?

The anni discretionis are mentioned in the Canon 21 of the 4th Council of the Lateran (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Co ... he_Lateran ) as the age, from which on the yearly confession is required.

Franz Gillmann in Die "anni discretionis" im Kanon Omnis utriusque sexus (c. 21 conc. Lat IV) ; unter besonderer Rücksicht auf Dr. Johann Ernst: Die Zeit der ersten hl. Kommunion und die "Jahre der Unterscheidung" seit dem IV. allgem. Konzil vom Lateran (1215), Historisch-dogmatische Untersuchungen über das kommunionpflichtige Alter ; mit einem Anhang - worldcat.org/title/anni-disc ... /174876731 - puts them at 7 years.

This fits nicely with Rebecca Blum's Das Erziehungswesen im 12./13. Jahrhundert und dessen Reflex in Hartmanns von Aue Gregorius grin.com/de/e-book/39767/das ... -hartmanns , in particular her cp. 2.1.1 (which is freely accessible under the link above). Incidentally, the organization of Apprentices in Infantia, Pueritia and Adolescentia is well motivated by this chapter.

Study of the European middle ages requires at the very least capability to read Latin, English, French, German and Italian, so I am not too apologetic for not striving to give sources in "English only".

Cheers

Anyway, a Faery or Demon with enough Might would be able to pass an Aegis.

If it cannot, then it would bribe some mundane servants to do the "dirty job". Faeries and Demons can lure, blackmail or convince people to do stuff (and the most powerful Aegis cannot stop a mundane invasion).

I fully agree they would have no interest whatsoever in the child's soul. But they would probably have a lot of interest in the story woven when somebody tried to "regain" the child's soul. So I bet they would indeed "try to gain the child's soul", they would just make sure that somebody learned of this so they could try to stop them, thus feeding them vitality. In the end, the soul would be absolutely irrelevant for the faerie, but the struggle would surely taste yummy.

Well, the simplest to hand is newadvent.org/cathen/01209a.htm

This is a reasonable and practical stance to take for the game writers and for STs. It allows people to still choose what metaphysical truths best fits their campaign. I have always thought though, that there is enough material in the corebook to argue that ArsM5's default position is that the Catholic Church is essentially objectively right. The strongest example in my mind being that the transubstantiated eucharist is absolutely immune to magic. The transubstantiation of the eucharist is a very strange idea and it seems to me that the eucharist being immune to magic has specific implications about the trinity, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the institution of the sacrament of Communion. For context, I'm not a Catholic. I'm just observing. It always seemed to me that it made spiritual conflicts more solid when people know what the rules are and can feel more drama about the results of actions, so I tend to run Ars Magica as though the Catholic Church is just right and Judaism and Islam get divine participation for being "close enough". But that's just a personal choice.

Additionally, I know that the RoP book establishes that Faeries are interested in vitality and the consensus is that they would not be interested in souls, however, this seems odd to me. After all, faeries go through a lot of effort to accumulate and attract psychic energy. They don't seem interested in the attention of animals. What makes human attention so special? Wouldn't it makes sense if the energy that faeries crave came from the soul?

As my understanding of faeries go, want and ability are two entirely separate things. Faeries are creatures of glamour and vitality, with no soul. Saying that the energy faeries accumulate is from the soul is perfectly reasonable, and even an understandable, though I would say in standard Ars Magica a faerie isn't interested in claiming the soul per se... but the faerie is definitely interested in the story by which a soul can be claimed. They gain vitality from the act of playing through the story by which the soul is imperiled. A faerie fisherman would compete with a mortal fisherman, with the excuse that it needs to catch Old Big Fisheye from the cove before the mortal, because the faerie needs to feed his family, but if he actually catches the fish, he doesn't need to eat it, nor does he really have a family necessarily. (He may then go kidnap local children, so he has a family to feed, and thus generate more stories)

Actually I think it's pretty appropriate for a faerie to compete for a child's soul, and if it wins it cackles maniacally and yells, 'And now this soul is mine!'. Then extends a glamour of eternal sleep on the child and escapes. Another faeire totters up on unsteady feet and says the heroes need to go to the realm of Hades to rescue the soul, offers to show them the way... But if the village is burned down by vikings while the heroes are away, the child dies, and his still-safe soul goes off to heaven as per any normal infant death.

It is alos likely that if competing with faeries it won't be the actual soul that is in contest- though whatever it is will probably serve as a heck of an arcane connection to the child...