THE MAGISTERIUM
The End of the Magisterium
Provided to YouTube by Entertainment One U.S., LP
The End of the Magisterium · Lorne Balfe
His Dark Materials (Original Television Soundtrack)
The Church
This section will explore the Catholic Church analogy Philip Pullman has imbedded within the Magisterium, including historical events, hierarchy, and control, as well as stark contrasts, including the absence of a deity worthy of worship within the Magisterium. I examine the arguments regarding Pullman’s atheism and disdain for theocracy, using the source material of Milton’s poem Paradise Lost and articles written about Pullman’s point of view.
Church History
Lyra contrasts the church in her world known as the Magisterium because it must solidify its power through the “abolition of inventiveness, creativity and curiosity” (Cantrell), all things that Lyra personifies. The authority of the Magisterium will feel familiar because it resembles the Catholic Church during its most potent and terrifying peak of power (Walsh). It merges actual Protestantism and Catholicism into a single megalomaniacal fantasy conglomerate (Padley). Pullman looked to papal history while in the development of this authoritarian institution (Walsh).
The Investiture Controversy
In the video, Dr. David Neiman explains the Investiture Controversy. Many consider this the beginning of the church’s omnipotent governance and what paved the way for Pope Innocents III in 1198 to turn the Catholic church into the most powerful institution in Europe, and he the most powerful figure, able to affect the daily lives of everyone who lived there. (Walsh)
The Consistorial Court of Discipline
In the world history of His Dark Materials, Pope Calvin establishes the Consistorial Court of Discipline, an organization that vehemently stamps out dissent and heresy, much like the infamous Spanish Inquisition. Unlike the Spanish Inquisition, though, the Consistorial Court of Discipline never ended operations (Walsh). Another deviation from history in His Dark Materials is that the fictitious Calvin is the last Pope. Pullman eliminates the papacy in favour of faceless bureaucrats that run callous and malevolent disinformation campaigns with the sole purpose of controlling the narrative and the population.
“The Papacy itself had been abolished after Calvin’s death, and a tangle of courts, colleges, and councils, collectively known as the Magisterium, had grown up in its place. These agencies were not always united; sometimes a bitter rivalry grew up between them. For a large part of the previous century, the most powerful had been the College of Bishops, but in recent years the Consistorial Court of Discipline had taken its place as the most active and feared of all the Church’s bodies.”
(Pullman)
This passage helps establish the normal of Lyra’s world by “playing on the reader’s knowledge of church history even as it distorts it” (Cantrell). The audience will recognize the “ecclesiastical power and political absolutism” (Cantrell) of the Magisterium and weighs it against the antagonists introduced throughout the series.
In Lyra’s world, the church itself is the almighty; there is no deity for a congregant to worship; you either work with and for the church to promote its strict rules, or you are its enemy. “The church provides an evil in His Dark Materials against which the variously motivated forces for good can unite” (Padley). A central theme to the television show is the good-versus-evil face-off between dogma and censorship, and the heroic spirit of free inquiry (Parker).
