Alonsus Secundus

Alonsus II (Common Alonsus Secundus; born Johannes Waldebert Moorwhelp) is the Archbishop of the Church of the Holy Light as elected by the Council of Bishops on May 10 2803 A.D., in which capacity he is Bishop of Stormwind and Chief Shepherd of the College of Canons. Alonsus is regarded as an accomplished missionary, philosopher, and commander.

This page is a work in progress and will be worked on in no particular order.

Early Life
Suddenly and at a tender age, Johannes found himself in leadership of Clan Moorwhelp. Said to be born in the purple, the first son of his Lord Father while he was patriarch. The entire burden of his clan, which enjoyed a Golden Age under his father and grandfather, rest squarely upon his shoulders.

Johannes was never comfortable with worldly power, though. He preferred an unremarkable life, much to the chagrin of his older brothers who, though covered by the nostalgic fog of time, most certainly count have managed the wealth of the clan with more efficacy. Upon the death of his father, Johannes distributed much of his money unwisely.

As a Clan patriarch, Johannes joined his older brothers on the field of battle. Perennial clan feuds would eventually see the hill clans wrapped up with the Bronzebeards in the War of the Three Hammers. In the early spring of the first year of the war, the first series of Dark Iron raids would ravage the country side, taking his brothers, his kinsmen, and his wife.

Mutilated, Johannes served the war through and was offered an ancestral seat on the Senate. Shamed, mentally feeble, and uninspired by the idea of statesmanship, he set aside the purple toga for a coarse hair shirt, departing for the woods to live a life of solitude and ascetism.

For untold years, Johannes wandered through the moors and forests, eating only fallen fruit and raw vegetables, preaching only to wild animals and plants. He was never strong, and now unceasing fasting ruined his digestion and played havoc with his heart. Yet Johannes looked upon these years as the happiest, most fulfilling of his life.

But these years would not last forever. Wandering across ancient spans, no longer covered by the dark of the woods, he stumbled into the late Arathor. Curious about these people and their way of life, Johannes wonders into what would be the late Arathorian Empire and a culture deeply rooted in the Church of the Holy Light.

Johannes was taken up with the raputrous language of this new philosophy. He regarded it as the fulfillment of all that he had felt and learned by his decades of lonely contemplation on the universe about him. For several decades, Johannes mastered the philosophy of the Light by careful study. Though the language was not easy for him to learn, he was able to eventually suppress even his accent to conform as much as possible. He desired to belong in this human society and have a purchase of its way of life.

Studying daily in the local church, Johannes befriended the priests there and, though the philosophy was very human centric, became known as a sage. After several years of service, Johannes was given a place in the imperial institute of higher learning as a professor of the Dwarven Language. Chiefly, he taught priests that would be some of the first to go and reap the fields of Dwarven society and unite Dwarvish priesthood with a higher purpose. He was given a place as a servant in the imperial court and a Caretaker.

In this capacity, Johannes was sent to keep care of a variety of powerful relics in Stratholme, a rising cultural center in the world at that time. The Bishop of Stratholme, Æþelwulf, chose Johannes to be ordained as a priest of the Light and the Order of Preachers.

Priesthood
Johannes's practice as a priest was far away from chancellors, lawyers, and nobles for some time. Remarked by his contemporaries as a quiet priest preferring a simple life, his life within the order of the priesthood brought him all over the Eastern Kingdoms, most immediately to Quel'Thalas. His mission to Silvermoon proved to be formative to him as it became apparent that the esoteric elves would ripple the waters of the Church of the Holy Light. Johannes was a moderate voice to the elves in a time where a struggle between purists and mages was wearing at the balance in the wider Church.

Though he often traveled to remote missions, he made his home in Lordaeron City, and in many ways, he became culturally assimilated. Johannes penned many works of philosophy from his order's home in Purgation Isle, but his readership was very limited, and his ideas would not begin to take root for several centuries.

Moorwhelp witnessed countless changes of power within his order, his church, and in the wider world. His order seemed to fill and empty in pulses that to humans were lifetimes, but to a long-lived dwarf was the beat of a heart. This lead Moorwhelp to become a very detached priest as the courses of years faded away with his fast-paced surroundings.

(WIP)

Following his extended stay in Northrend, then Priest Johannes returned to Northshire Abbey in hopes of returning to his practice of the priesthood and duties as Caretaker under the direction of the Order of Northshire, a reclusive group of clerics who kept the esoteric traditions of the Clerics of Northshire safeguarded from change in the wider Church of the Holy Light.

Under Benedictus
Johannes was a most unlikely candidate for success. Of venerable age, balding, and frail, he had no craving for the episcopal office. He often complained in the early months of his episcopacy that he was "so stricken by sorrow that he could scarcely speak."

Though Johannes regarded his episcopacy as a punishment, he immediately threw himself into the struggle for order in the midst of disunity. He began his administration of the troubled Diocese of Stormwind with an act of penance on behalf of his predecessor for his heresy: a pilgrimage to the Tomb of Uther the Lightbringer, in which he was joined by many of the clerics of the Kingdom of Stormwind. To no apparent, immediate avail, the move left Stormwind free to fester in heresy and schism while Johannes made his pilgrim way through the deconstructed Lordaeron. But the priesthood would be unified by this penitential act in a way that he did not predict.

In his writings to the scattered of Stormwind, he urged that "spiritual mothers and fathers could not be so absorbed in external cares as to forget the inner life of the soul, nor neglect external things in the care for one's inner life. One who is compelled by necessity of his position to speak of the highest things must also exemplify the highest things."

The words were autobiographical. Nothing seemed too great, nothing too little for his personal care. His labors are more astonishing when one considers that he was in poor health and often confined to bed. "For a long time," he wrote to an unnamed friend, "I have been unable to rise from my bed. I am tormented by the pains of illness: a kind of tongue-like flame that seems to pervade my whole body as the plague: to live is pain. I am daily dying, but never die."

During Johannes's time as Bishop of Stormwind, the Diocese of Stormwind held an extensive patrimony following the Archiepiscopal Hegemony. Unglamorous, though extensive and productive, the holdings rested on the mainland around Stormwind City. These lands cumulatively made the Church of the Holy Light one of the wealthier land owners in the Eastern Kingdoms. Quite naturally, then, during the Elemental Invasion and other national emergencies, officials of the patrimony stepped in to collect land taxes and feed the population. The head of this tax and welfare system was Johannes.

And there he was in the threadbare robes of a humble brother, sending the priests to work the fields and eating alongside the pauper. "Priests, the bridge-keepers of the divine and the mortal, must mingle compassionate with the necessities of the lowly. The more kindly compassion descends to the lowest, the more vigorously it recurs to the highest," he penned in an urgent letter to the priests.To eschew the traditional robes of his office was to eschew pride, Johannes thought.

Johannes, however, was provoked and irritated by the pretention of his numerous high-born rivals. He strained every nerve to stomp on the fingers of any high-handed sinner that would attempt to bring profane motive to the Church of the Holy Light. His efforts were often waylayed by rivals of his that would not accept his censure. One notable instance would be referred to post-humously as the Bauvlet Crisis. Lord Terick Bauvlet, Stormwind marshal and Lord of the Black Morass, imprisoned and tortured many priests in the Stormwind Stockades after a long, failed struggle to force Johannes's hand in consecrating bishops that would openly preach total war with the New Horde.

Time in prison could not blunt Johannes's vengeance against all who would not repent of high-handed blasphemy. After a Silvermoon-orchestrated slaughter of pilgrims at the Tomb of Uther the Lightbringer, Johannes marshalled a crusade against the Blood Knights. He preached in the streets, "[S]o Our Lord Uther the Lightbringer did stay to die at the hands of his apprentice for love of his King, so too shall we go to die in defense of he that defended, overthrowing this evil and consuming ourselves in the bargain to do it."

Reception
After the abdication of Caspius, the Council of Bishops entered into the third conclave since the Third War. After the third vote and the third hour, Johannes Moorwhelp was elected unanimously and chose the name Alonsus Secundus in homage to the patron saint of Stormwind City, Alonsus Faol. His unprecedented, swift election was very well received by the wider public; however, a minority of the elite within the Church of the Holy Light are not pleased by Alonsus' election. Since Alonsus' election, he has dedicated himself to the revival of the Silver Hand, the reform of Council of Bishops legal code, and the unification of the Church of the Holy Light.

Decrees
Decreta: The Light has been pleased guards against forgery, exhorts believers to be faithful, and announces His Holiness' intention to keep current advisors and work with them for very serious reform, especially to the Silver Hand and the Council of Bishops.

Decreta: The Crowning Dawn lifts all previous out-standing excommunications; announces investigation of all loss of priestly faculty; clarifies the offices of the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Vicar, and Lord Chancellor; founds the Congregation of the Treasury, the Congregation of the Chancery, and the Congregation for Sacred Texts; and makes several minor changes in the leadership of Congregations.

Decree 3: Perfect Unity and Communion subsumes the Orthodox Church into the fold of the Church of the Holy Light; it establishes that the Orthodox Church shall retain self-governed nature, independent from the Council of Bishops non-doctrinal decision-making; it establishes the position of Patriarch of the Council of Bishops on the authority of the Archbishop; it establishes the Oecumenical Council in likewise; it establishes the filial relationship between Patriarch and Archbishop; it asserts the Archbishop as the supreme head of the Church of Light; it invalidates the excommunications that began the crisis and any thereafter; it acknowledges apology to Orthodox believers on behalf of the Council of Bishops.