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I apologize in advance if this has been explained in a book, but I have not found any explanation to this question. There are multiple characters from the Horus Heresy that are still surviving in the modern setting (Bjorn, Guilliman, etc.), yet no one has tried to dispose of a book written by one of the most heretical beings in the universe? It doesn't make sense to me. Unless they won't do it because of the backlash it will cause, I don't see why they wouldn't.

I mean, the back lash is reason enough, especially for a pragmatist like Guilliman. As absolutely necessary as religious reformation can sometimes be it is almost universally a bloody affair.

thing is there AREN'T a tyon of people from the heresy era still alive.

Let's count em out (ignoring chaos and xenos because no one would trust a word out of their mouths)

1: Bjorn.. Bjorn is an ancient dreadnought of a space marine chapter. despite his being everywhere on the table top, it's supposed to be pretty rare for him to be woken up. And when he IS woken up he's eaither a: fighting enemies, or B: telling the space wolves the old stories. He's not in a position to march down to terra and demand they give up emperor worship. even if he was so inclined too (which TBH I don't think he is)
2: Cawl: Cawl has mostly stayed in the shadows inventing stuff, and TBH the Imperial cult is proably good for the admech (imagine how the modern Imperium would be if you took their intolerance and made it towards any form of worship, you'd inevitably have civil war)
3: Gulliman: just got back and has the common sense not to rip the IoM asunder

1 - The ministorum doesn't entirely come from Lorgar's book - he's the highest profile pre-siege advocate of Emperor-worship, but far from the only one (heck, the inhabitents of molech had the legend of the stormlord before the Imperium ever contacted them).

2 - The various cults all took their own take on whatever source material they had; most 'emperor protects' types in the heresy have hand-written pamphlets, meaning the contents morph and shift with each 'generation' and writer, as each splinter of the cult established its own doctrine.

3 - This was added to experiences during the heresy - the ability of faith to repel the daemonic (recorded via experiences such as Keeler's) was added; that's something not in the Lectitio since Lorgar didn't know about daemons at the point he wrote it.

4 - The Temple Of The Saviour Emperor, the entity which becomes the ministorum, is openly founded by a siege army veteran called Fatidicus, a cobble-together of all the various cult cells brought together by Keeler, after the siege, and has a melange of their various doctrines.



Essentially, it can be assumed a big chunk of the Lectitio's content is in the Ministorum's theology, but it doesn't come entirely from the one source, and that's before adding ten millenia of inspired saints (like sebastian thor). The priests aren't just sat there with a copy of Lorgar's book.

Equally, there's no reason that they necessarily know which bits are and aren't extracts from the lectitio. Hand-written copies of chunks of the book, re-written and annotated, may have gone into the original ministorum doctrine, but unless they have a complete copy of the original (they probably don't, as that sort of thing might well have been destroyed) then how do they know which they are?


Equally, if they know, for the more pragmatic, Lorgar was loyal when he wrote it, and it's well-written.


in The Emperor's Gift, Bjorn, when confronted with the phrase "god-emperor" says "that stupidity is what started our problems in the first place" or some such words. I don't doubt he'd love to see the ecclesiarchy kicked out.

The cult mechanicum (pre being an adeptus) actually survived and thrived alongside a legally secular imperium. That particular bit of hypocracy was officially enshrined in the Treaty of Olympus which kicked the crusade off.

locarno24 wrote:

Essentially, it can be assumed a big chunk of the Lectitio's content is in the Ministorum's theology, but it doesn't come entirely from the one source, and that's before adding ten millenia of inspired saints (like sebastian thor). The priests aren't just sat there with a copy of Lorgar's book.

Equally, there's no reason that they necessarily know which bits are and aren't extracts from the lectitio. Hand-written copies of chunks of the book, re-written and annotated, may have gone into the original ministorum doctrine, but unless they have a complete copy of the original (they probably don't, as that sort of thing might well have been destroyed) then how do they know which they are?

^this. You have to understand that most of 40k's factions are a grimdark satirization of some aspect of human history. Space Wolves=Vikings, Necrons=Egyptians, Tau=communists with robots, imperial knights=feudal knights, etc. Much of the imperium's backstory satirizes differents aspects of Roman Catholic history. Dark Angels=Reformation, Black Templars/Sisters of Battle=Crusades, etc. The ecclesiarchy is largely just a blatantly obvious satire of the Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical structure. You have a holy book produced and compiled at the advent of the religion's development. Said book is later officially adopted by the arbitrary religious authority that develops alongside the holy book. This causes a sort of Euthyphro's paradox (google it). Is the book holy because it is a divinely inspired source? Or is it because a divinely inspired source (i.e. the church/ecclesiarchy) says it's holy? Rome/40k's Ecclesiarchy chooses the latter option. This means that the standard for religious truth rests in the religious structure, not the book itself. As such, doctrine can develop and/or evolve, changing the fundamental structure of the religion over time. Thus, what you get in 40k is a religion that contains the original teachings of Lorgar within it, but is radically different from what it looked like at its initial foundation.

Also it doesn't matter that it was written by Lorgar. Lorgar writing the foundations of the book doesn't make it a holy text, the fact that it is approved by the Ecclesiarchy is what makes it a holy text.

The answer is pretty simple. The Lectitio Divinitatus has NOT retained its holy status in the 40k Imperium.
Fatidicus is not Lorgar and Lorgar is not Fatidicus.
[edit]That would be like saying that the Avesta retained it's holy status in the Catholic church because the Bible uses a lot of concept and idea first laid of in the Avesta, i.e. that would be incorrect.

 TapedTempest wrote:
I apologize in advance if this has been explained in a book, but I have not found any explanation to this question. There are multiple characters from the Horus Heresy that are still surviving in the modern setting (Bjorn, Guilliman, etc.), yet no one has tried to dispose of a book written by one of the most heretical beings in the universe? It doesn't make sense to me. Unless they won't do it because of the backlash it will cause, I don't see why they wouldn't.

Because the general Imperium do not know about the traitor Primarch's. The lectitio was also written before Lorgars fall and the Eclesiarchy probably let it ride as it is useful.

Also, the imperial cult actually helps protect from chaos, similar to holy water hurting demons etc. So the word bearers actually helped create something which opposes their current allegiance in an ironic way.

the every end of Plague war addresses this a bit BTW.