Comment by jajko
3 days ago
To be honest, I don't ever saw the reason to make him some sort of almost-martyr. People were wrong and fighting for a good cause many times in history, stuff is always way more complex than surface glance reveals.
The moral of the story isn't how great he was, but how horrible the church was in punishing any dissent (which itself was a highly political process) and how ridiculous it was that they had any sort of power over whole society. And power they had, and rarely used it for some greater good.
> To be honest, I don't ever saw the reason to make him some sort of almost-martyr.
I think the best reason is what you already describe:
> how horrible the church was in punishing any dissent
> how horrible the church was in punishing any dissent
Cancel culture of the time.
> but how horrible the church was in punishing any dissent
I mean, he was put under a house arrest. Many nobles would make his life far more unpleasant if he would present them as he did present pope.