Hello everyone! I’m Jacob, Community Manager for Paradox Studio Black. As we get closer to the release of By God Alone, there are still a number of mechanics and features that we haven’t covered in detail. Several of these developed into systems substantial enough to warrant a closer look than we could fit into our earlier diaries. So today, we’ll be taking a closer look at a selection of those systems. Namely: Saints, Monastic Orders, the Great Schism, and Antipopes.
We’ll also be spending some time on the Orthodox Church and how it is represented in By God Alone. While Catholicism remains a major focus of the expansion, Christianity more broadly is an important part of its scope, with Orthodoxy playing a distinct role in several of the systems we’ll be discussing today.
For By God Alone, we have added a canonization system for landed rulers, allowing them to put a departed ancestor forward to be recognized as a saint. Dulia (Veneration of Saints, or Hagiokatátaxis in Greek rites) must be Permitted or Core in your Rite, and the canonization decision does not appear if that tenet is Unknown or Prohibited.
The same system is also available outside Christianity, using terminology appropriate to the religion in question, whether that is a Wali, a Divus, a Siddha, a Kami, or a Venerated Ancestor. Non-Christian faiths do not need Dulia to access it.
The process consists of two decisions: First, you choose a deceased ancestor of your dynasty and faith who is not already a saint, has at least one trait their rite considers Virtuous, and none it considers Sinful. That first pick does not cost anything, so you can still back out. The second step is choosing where they will be consecrated; this acts as confirmation of the decision and is what actually triggers the cost of it.
Where your ancestor can be buried depends on the faith:
Faiths with clerical regions and appointed clergy consecrate the deceased in a cathedral in your realm, either on your own ecclesiastical estate or on a vassal bishop's.
Other faiths can consecrate the deceased at one of their holy sites within your realm.
Each province can only hold one saint, so occupied sites remain in the list but cannot be selected. Once every cathedral or holy site is taken, neighbouring county capitals open up, so you always have somewhere to lay them.
[Submitting a petition to canonize a new saint]
Both the piety and gold cost scale with how many saints your dynasty has already produced. If Dulia is one of the rite's actual tenets rather than merely permitted, the cost is discounted. There is a 25-year cooldown on taking the decision, which is why we kept the cost off the first step: backing out of the decision before picking the burial site is free.
Whether that confirmation creates the saint on the spot depends on whether your faith has a Head of Faith. Chalcedonianism does not have one, so the saint is created immediately upon taking the decision. After the Great Schism, however, Catholicism and Orthodoxy each have a Head of Faith who will receive your petition and decide whether or not to grant it. You are shown an estimate of how likely they are to grant it based on factors such as the candidate's virtues and whether the Head of Faith is cynical. If they refuse it, you are refunded for the cost. If you are the Head of Faith yourself, you skip the petition and the saint is created immediately, just like in Chalcedonianism.
[The petition is submitted]
Once the saint exists, they receive the Saint trait and appear in the Saints tab of the Faith view, split between those buried in your realm and those outside it. Their burial province becomes a travel point of interest, so characters moving through the area can visit the tomb.
[A new saint is consecrated]
If Dulia is a tenet of the rite, a successful canonization also grants every ruler of the faith the A New Intercessor modifier for 5 years (a little monthly piety and same-faith opinion). The Select a Patron Saint decision, as mentioned above, is a separate loop: you pick one of the Apostles (Peter, Paul, John, Matthew, Mark, or Luke) and gain a modifier based on their virtues. Saints canonized through the course of a campaign are not added to the list of options for that decision.
[Selecting a patron saint]
We have introduced an Extract a Relic decision available for saints buried within lands under your control. A relic serves as a unique holy artifact, granting a monthly piety bonus to any ruler of the same faith who holds it. Relics also enhance court grandeur, giving you a reason to retain one at court, bestow it upon a kinsman, or preserve the saint’s remains at their tomb. Each saint can provide up to four relics, though the AI will always leave at least one remaining.
[Choosing a saint to extract a relic from]
The extraction uses the same piety and gold formula as canonization, including the Dulia discount when the rite actually holds that tenet, with a 2-year cooldown. Visiting the tomb in person lets you draw a relic for less than it would cost from afar. If Dulia is a tenet of the rite, each extracted relic also receives an extra blessing, and drawing one from your own dynast grants dynasty prestige.
[An extracted relic artifact]
Holy Orders are now split into two distinct categories. Military Orders remain the familiar religious warriors who lease castles and cities and can be hired to fight Hostile or Evil faiths at the cost of piety. Monastic Orders instead represent the spiritual side of religious life: they lease temple holdings, champion a single core tenet of their founder’s rite, and provide their patrons with piety and spiritual fulfillment. They do not raise levies or men-at-arms and cannot be called into military conflicts.
Any landed duke or above whose faith permits monasticism can take the Found Monastic Order decision, so long as they are a theocracy or have a clerical puppet to act through, and they have a county with room to raise a new church. The decision costs piety and gold, with a 10-year cooldown, and it starts a monastery in an empty province of that county. Once the holding is finished, you choose the order's tenet and its first Abbot.
[Found Monastic Order decision]
Founding a Monastic Order lets you pick which tenet the order will spend the rest of the game spreading, increasing its popularity as a whole and encouraging AI rulers to adopt it as a personal tenet. Chalcedonianism has no Head of Faith, so that opinion bonus only becomes relevant once a Head of Faith has been established.
If an existing order has enough monasteries in your domain and you do not already patronize it, the Patronize Monastic Movement decision lets you become the order’s Patron, bringing its leases under your patronage and allowing you to align yourself with an order whose tenet better matches your goals. Additionally, the Head of Faith has the ability to dismantle unwanted orders, using a new interaction to destroy any Monastic Orders following a tenet that is now forbidden by the faith.
Several named Monastic Orders already exist at game start, including the Benedictines, Cluniacs, Cistercians, and Studites, with extra leases depending on the start date. Rather than drawing from a simple list or generating names at random, newly founded orders pull from a database, weighted by appropriate historical circumstances. For example, founding a military order in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 11th century strongly favors historical templates such as the Knights Templar, whereas a 9th-century order in Poland might yield a name like The Order of St. George, falling back on generic cultural names only when no historical templates fit the situation.
[Founding a new Monastic Order]
A Monastic Order is led by an Abbot, usually the highest-learning member of the Order, and is not playable. Additionally, the Monk trait is now a leveled trait with its own XP track, with tiers of the trait granting bonuses to Learning. Monks from powerful dynasties will gain XP in this trait faster, and supporting Orders will help your dynasty members position themselves as future Abbots.
[Selecting a tenet for the order to promote]
Orders grow through temple leases and donations. The Bestow a Monastery interaction leases a church holding to the order, granting you piety and spiritual fulfillment in return. The monks will then develop that holding and its surroundings, spread their rite, and evangelize their core tenet to local rulers. The Donate to Monastic Order interaction lets you support the order directly with gold, or treasury if your government uses it, for the same piety and fulfillment rewards.
You can also send a courtier to the Abbot through the Ask to Take Monastic Vows interaction. Inductees receive the Devoted trait, preventing marriage and secular inheritance, and gain seniority within the order over time based on Learning, piety, and dynasty rank. With enough seniority, they may eventually become Abbot.
On death, a monastic founder whose rite permits or holds Dulia, and who is pious enough, can be beatified through the same canonization path as above. Depending on their stance on the Monasticism Doctrine, Faiths may or may not have Monastic Orders as part of their religious structure. For those that do, Monastics can play an important role in determining which Tenets rise to prominence and which characters are drawn into religious life.
At the 867 start, East and West still share a single faith: Chalcedonianism. What differs is the rite: characters in the East follow the Greek, Slavic, or Georgian Rite, with Constantinople serving as a Rite Founder rather than a rival Head of Faith, since Chalcedonianism has no Head of Faith at all.
[The Greek Rite in 867]
Orthodoxy only emerges as an independent faith if the Great Schism occurs. The split takes the eastern rites along with it, establishing the Ecumenical Patriarchate as Orthodoxy's Head of Faith. While governance tools like synods and ecumenical councils are shared, the Eastern side maintains distinct rite mechanics.
The Greek rite starts with The Pentarchy (Pentarkhía), and with By God Alone it also takes Celestial Hierarchy and Divine Liturgy. The Pentarchy gives the faith’s holy sites additional importance as patriarchal seats: developing them increases local development, while completing a pilgrimage circuit through them grants piety, spiritual fulfillment, and a skill point the first time you visit each one. The Slavic Rite, added through the Cyril and Methodius story, adapts that liturgy to Slavic languages and allows clerical marriage. The Georgian Rite sits alongside them as a third eastern option.
After the split, Catholic and Orthodox will treat each other as Astray rather than as Hostile heretics.
The College of Cardinals remains a specifically Western institution. It exists under Chalcedonianism in 867 and passes to Catholicism after the Schism, while Orthodoxy instead establishes the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We’ll return to the College in a bit.
If you own By God Alone, the Christian Church Situation is running for the whole game. As mentioned in previous dev diaries, it has several chapters (and can move somewhat freely between them regardless of order): Fragile Unity, Saeculum Obscurum, Conversion, Reform, Investiture Crisis, Crusade, and Concord. The Great Schism is not one of those chapters; it is a second track sitting on the same situation, and it only exists while East and West still share the Chalcedonianism faith. This track keeps score of how close the Roman and Greek rites are to breaking communion, and you will see that score visualized as a bar on the situation window. It keeps updating regardless of whatever chapter the Church Situation happens to be in, until the split happens or is prevented.
[The Christian Church]
Chalcedonianism cannot establish a Head of Faith. Rome and Constantinople are heads of rite on that shared faith, and that is as high as either office can go until the Great Schism occurs.
Schism progress rises from acts that pit the Roman and Greek rites against each other while they still share Chalcedonianism:
A king of one rite declaring war on a king of the other.
A holy site converting between them, or being demoted.
A head of rite murdered or anathematized by the other side.
An Ecumenical Council vote that strips a core tenet or doctrine from the rites.
A king or landed prelate crossing from one of those rites to the other.
[Schism progress overview, accessible from the Christian Church Situation panel]
Christian players get a toast each time one of those acts adds progress to the split, until the Schism itself happens.
A lot of that progress actually plays out at Ecumenical Councils, as events in the hall rather than as toasts. Before the debates even open, the Roman and Greek rites can pick a fight over various liturgical disagreements. First Among Equals is the quarrel over whether every church answers to Rome. The Bread of the Altar is unleavened wafer against risen loaf. Matter of Language is Latin against Greek. You can try to talk the champions of either side down, take a side yourself, or, if you are hosting the council, settle the question outright. Defusing the quarrel adds no schism progress; taking a side or overruling one of the Rites does.
[Matter of Language, one of the Ecumenical Council debates that can push Chalcedonianism closer to schism]
When a king or landed prelate crosses from the Roman Rite to the Greek Rite (or vice-versa), The One Left Behind event can fire. That event only happens while Chalcedonianism is still the shared faith. Someone who kept the old rite (a courtier, a vassal, or a cleric who appears at court if nobody else will) asks what you think you have done. You can reassure them, try a Learning duel to bring them over, or dismiss them; the crossing itself still adds schism progress.
[The One Left Behind, triggered when a ruler switches from Roman Rite to Greek Rite, or vice versa]
The Wound Will Open event is your warning that a crisis is brewing. This event tells you that if grievances keep coming, the next Saeculum Obscurum chapter is where the Schism will be decided.
[The Wound Will Open, which fires once the Great Schism progress reaches its threshold]
Saeculum Obscurum is a crisis chapter of The Christian Church, and it can arrive for plenty of reasons besides the Schism itself. Once schism progress has reached its threshold, entering that chapter unlocks the Cause the Great Schism decision, the Prevent the Great Schism decision, and the Sway Schism Stance character interaction. Every Christian ruler has to take a stance on the matter: whether to stand with Rome or Constantinople, or whether to oppose a split. Standing with a Rite feeds Cause. Opposing a split feeds Prevent. AI rulers will typically follow their own rite, but you can use the Sway Schism Stance interaction to attempt changing their mind on the matter. Acceptance cares about whether you are asking them to betray their own rite, whether they are a religious head, whether their personal tenet belongs to the favored side, and whether they are Zealous or Cynical.
[The Church Situation has entered Saeculum Obscurum after reaching the Schism threshold]
Cause and Prevent progress are only shown during Saeculum Obscurum, and only once the Schism progress has reached its threshold. Both need a king or above who is Head of Faith, head of rite, or who has puppeted one of those offices as a clerical puppet. In Chalcedonianism, that usually means acting as (or through) a Head of Rite. Both also ask you to clear a short checklist: very high piety, control of the necessary holy sites, the matching stance from No Divisions Among You, and the support of seven clerical main-power rulers who share your stance and are already your puppet, friend, lover, or hooked by you.
The Cause the Great Schism decision is the path that wants the old communion broken. The Prevent the Great Schism decision seeks to hold Christendom together. Prevent triggers Communion Preserved for every Christian ruler in the Situation, and the peacemaker may seat a spiritual Head of Faith at Rome or Constantinople, or refuse so the Chalcedonian Church stays without one. Cause, predictably, breaks the existing communion and triggers the Great Schism.
If a conclusion is not reached before the Saeculum Obscurum chapter ends, the Great Schism occurs automatically.
[The Schism is prevented]
The Schism effect is the same whether a character forced it or the chapter ran out on its own. Catholicism takes the Western rites and the Papacy, Orthodoxy takes the Eastern rites and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and Chalcedonianism is shattered. Cardinalates move with the Catholic faith, and characters who had already picked a stance convert to the new faith alongside their Rite.
From that point the Christian Church Situation keeps running, now affecting two faiths instead of one.
[The Great Schism]
Once the Schism has occurred, Chalcedonianism cannot be restored as a unified faith. Instead, during Concord, two decisions allow either Catholicism or Orthodoxy to mend the divide by absorbing the other faith’s rites. The conquest version, the Mend the Great Schism Through Conquest decision, asks an emperor to hold the five old Patriarchal Sees with same-faith bishops. The diplomatic version, the Mend the Great Schism Through Diplomacy decision, asks a king to hook, befriend, or puppet both Heads of Faith and to gather clerical support on both sides. A character who took the decision to cause the Great Schism cannot, for obvious reasons, take either of these.
In 1066 and 1178, the Prevent the Great Schism and Cause the Great Schism decisions are disabled, as the Schism has already occurred by these dates. Mending is the tool that remains.
Building on what we showed in our earlier previews, the College of Cardinals functions as the clerical electorate for Western Christendom. In this system, every cardinal acts as both elector and candidate, with the next Pope selected from a focused shortlist of three distinct papabile archetypes: the Pious, the Populist, and the Powerful.
The Pious: the cardinal whose life already reads like a saint's. Their Piety level weighs heaviest, then their Learning skill, followed by the Scholar, Pilgrim, and Mystic traits. Sinful traits will penalize them more strongly than Virtuous traits benefit them.
The Populist: the name already cheered in the streets. Prestige, friends in the College, and popular personal tenets matter here, and the Promulgate Word of Pious Deeds decision can help promote them.
The Powerful: the prelate with the means to hold the throne. Rite landmass, holy sites, dynasty prestige, and bought Papabile Score all feed this seat.
A cardinal can campaign as Powerful or Populist, which takes them out of the other seats, or take a decision to renounce their candidacy and leave the race entirely. The College window shows the three archetypes, who is voting for whom, and which core tenet the winner is expected to swap in if they rise. If the winner follows a different Rite from the current mainline, that Rite becomes the new mainline, giving you a reason to care about the election even if you never sit on the throne yourself. The incoming Pope can change what the faith holds as a core tenet, and whose liturgy the faith treats as first.
[The College of Cardinals, giving an overview of who the next Pope is likely to be]
The Pope uses the Appoint Cardinal interaction to appoint new cardinals, up to a hard cap of 70, and an alert fires if the College drops below 15 members. If you have used the Puppet Clerical Ruler interaction on the Pope, then you can fire Appoint Cardinal through them, allowing you to elevate a theocratic vassal or a landed kinsman without waiting for Rome to notice them. Mitre and Crosier on the Servants of God dynasty legacy track (more on that later) makes dynasty members more likely to be chosen in the first place.
For a landed king who is not the Pope, the cleaner loop starts at home. Put the kinsman you want on your council as Court Chaplain, then use the Request Cardinalate for Court Chaplain interaction on the Pope. The chaplain leaves your council if a Cardinalate is granted, and they become your clerical puppet (if you do not have one already). For a secular ruler, this is the whole point: you now have a cardinal who answers to you. A clerical character can also use the Request Cardinalate interaction on the Pope for themselves, allowing them to climb their way up the church ladder.
[Requesting a cardinalate]
Once your candidate is in the College, the rest is pressure. The Increase Papabile Score interaction spends piety to raise a cardinal's score, and you can spend enough in one go to put them first as the Powerful. When you do, cardinals who heed you lean toward that candidate: your vassals, your family, your puppets, and people who already like you. Apostolic Succession as a personal tenet adds a further bump. The Influence College of Cardinals Vote interaction is the other lever: you pick an elector and the candidate you want them to back, they favor that name for 20 years, and a puppet or a strong hook auto-accepts the interaction. A gold bribe helps when you have neither. Princes of the Church makes dynasty members stronger papal candidates on top of all of that.
If you are playing the cardinal yourself, the Promulgate Word of Pious Deeds decision is how you campaign as the Populist. If you are the secular puppeteer, you are buying the Powerful seat and lining electors up behind it. Either way, the Give Cardinal Order interaction lets the Pope, or a liege who has puppeted the cardinal, spend piety to have them marshal church resources to:
Improve development.
Convert faith.
Increase control.
Accelerate cultural fascination.
Improve epidemic resistance.
Improve or undermine legitimacy.
The Destroy Cardinalate interaction lets the Pope remove a cardinal. It costs piety and angers the rest of the College, so if you are the Pope (or puppeting the Pope), you can use it when a cardinal you do not control is sitting in a seat you want, or when a rival dynasty has gotten there first.
Antipopes act as a rival Head of Faith to the incumbent, forming a secondary office standing in direct opposition to Rome. This allows you to establish a Head of Faith aligned with your own Rite, operating under your influence to handle gold and indulgence petitions without fear of immediate excommunication from the mainline authority. Declaring an Antipope also serves as a significant catalyst toward advancing the Saeculum Obscurum chapter within the Christian Church Situation.
There are two declaration decisions to begin this process. The Declare an Antipope decision is for a landed king or above who does not follow the mainline rite and is not a theocracy. You can pick your court chaplain or a theocratic vassal for this; they adopt your rite, become an independent rival Head of Faith, sit as your external clerical puppet, and owe you a weak hook.
[Declaring an antipope]
The Proclaim Yourself Antipope decision is for when you want the office in your own hands: a landed ecclesiastical ruler who holds a clerical region, or a secular ruler whose faith has a Temporal Head of Faith (the same decision used to challenge a Caliph; yes, Caliphal challenges are possible). Both of these need you to clear enough of a checklist (piety, holy sites, a rivalry with the sitting Head of Faith, and so on), and both cost gold and piety. During the Investiture Crisis those costs are 33% cheaper, and a few other modifiers can cut them further.
Taking either decision fires the A Rival Pope event for you, and sends a letter to every other Christian player. The Pope, predictably, also becomes a rival of the new challenger.
[Declaring a dynasty member antipope]
While a challenger exists, the Pope cannot excommunicate them, their sponsor, or anyone following them. Followers send clerical requests to the challenger instead of to the legitimate office, including the Seek Antipope's Indulgences interaction (gold for piety) and the Petition Antipope for Gold interaction. The sponsor is automatically accepted for both, which is a large part of the appeal: your Antipope is a purse and a pardon you already control.
Two casus belli close the matter: Challenge Head of Faith is fought by the Antipope or their sponsor against the legitimate office. Victory installs the challenger as Head of Faith, makes their rite the mainline, and vassalizes the new Pope if the sponsor outranks them, which is how a Catholic sponsor can replace the Pope and make their own rite the Catholic mainline. Depose Antipope is the other direction: a landed ruler of the same faith who is not a sponsor, moving against an independent one, with a hook of gratitude from the Pope if it works. Characters who have taken Apostolic Succession as a personal tenet also gain legitimacy and spiritual fulfillment for that deposition.
[Declaring war to seat your pretender as the Real Deal]
The war does not end on the peace screen, though. If the legitimate office holds, The Pretender Brought Low lets the Pope dole out judgement to the pretender, and The Price of Patronage lets them judge the sponsor: the dungeon, the gallows, or mercy. Or if they are a Sadist or Torturer, a scourging that leaves a permanent injury.
If the challenge succeeds, A Sentence for Satan's Soldier is the same choice aimed at the deposed Pope.
[Winning a war to seat an antipope, and passing judgement on the incumbent]
Finally, many of these systems also feed into a new dynasty legacy track for By God Alone: Servants of God. It is available to a Christian dynasty head, or to a dynasty that has already taken the first perk, and comes with the following perks:
Private Devotions. Living members start with more spiritual fulfillment and lose it more slowly.
Alms and Endowments. Church holdings are cheaper to build, Head of Faith petitions are looked on more favorably, and the ecclesiastical treasury is more willing to fund your dynasty.
A Faithful Flock. An extra personal tenet slot, cheaper military-order hiring, and more tenet popularity when evangelizing.
Mitre and Crosier. More tax from theocratic vassals, a stronger clerical appointment score, and a better chance of being made a cardinal.
Princes of the Church. Piety level hits harder, dynasty members are stronger papal candidates, and anyone in the dynasty can take the Guide the Christian Church decision regardless of rank, with the situation impact doubled.
[Servants of God and its perk effects]
Mitre and Crosier and Princes of the Church are the dynasty's way into the College of Cardinals. The Guide the Christian Church decision is the same one cardinals, archbishops, and Heads of Faith already use to push a chapter of The Christian Church; the last perk simply lets the rest of the family pull that lever as well. Until a Head of Faith exists, the Head of Faith petition bonus on Alms and Endowments has nowhere to apply.
And there you have it: saints whose influence can outlive them through tombs and relics, Monastic Orders shaping religious life across generations, distinct Eastern and Western traditions navigating the possibility of Schism, a College of Cardinals fighting over the future of the Papacy, and Antipopes waiting for rulers willing to challenge it.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them down below!