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How Bad was the Spanish Inquisition? (Short Animated Documentary)

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Join an activity with your class and find or create your own quizzes and flashcards.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZFW_BfD9M0

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Ten Minute History - The Early Spanish and Portuguese Empires (Short Documentary)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmFcUpvFphQ

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https://www.britannica.com/place/Spain/Muslim-Spain

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The conquest

In the second half of the 7th century ce (1st century ah), Byzantine strongholds in North Africa gave way before the Arab advance. Carthage fell in 698. In 705 al-Walīd I, the sixth caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, the first great Muslim dynasty centred in Damascus, appointed Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr governor in the west; Mūsā annexed all of North Africa as far as Tangier (Ṭanjah) and made progress in the difficult task of propagating Islam among the Imazighen. The Christian ruler of Ceuta (Sabtah), Count Julian (variously identified by the Arab chroniclers as a Byzantine, a native Amazigh, or a Visigoth), eventually reached an agreement with Mūsā to launch a joint invasion of the Iberian Peninsula ( see also North Africa; Islamic world).

The invasion of Spain was the result both of a Muslim readiness to invade and of a call for assistance by one of the Visigothic factions, the "Witizans." Having become dispossessed after the death of King Witiza in 710, they appealed to Mūsā for support against the usurper Roderick. In April or May of 711 Mūsā sent an Amazigh army headed by Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād across the passage whose modern name, the Strait of Gibraltar, derives from Jabal al-Ṭāriq; in July they were able to defeat Roderick in a decisive battle.

Instead of returning to Africa, Ṭāriq marched north and conquered Toledo (Ṭulayṭulah), the Visigothic capital, where he spent the winter of 711. In the following year Mūsā himself led an Arab army to the peninsula and conquered Mérida (Māridah) after a long siege. He reached Ṭāriq in Toledo in the summer of 713. From there he advanced northeast, taking Zaragoza (Saraqusṭah) and invading the country up to the northern mountains; he then moved from west to east, forcing the population to submit or flee. Both Mūsā and Ṭāriq were recalled to Syria by the caliph, and they departed in 714 at the end of the summer; by then most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim control.

The rapid success of the Islamic forces can be explained by the fact that Hispano-Visigoth society had not yet succeeded in achieving a compact and homogeneous integration. The Jews, harassed by the legal ordinances of Toledo, were particularly hostile toward the Christian government. Moreover, the Muslim conquest brought advantages to many elements of society: the burden of taxes was generally less onerous than it had been in the last years of the Visigoth epoch; serfs who converted to Islam ( mawālī; singular: mawlā) advanced into the category of freedmen and enrolled among the dependents of some conquering noble; and Jews, who were no longer persecuted, were placed on an equal footing with the Hispano-Romans and Goths who still remained within the Christian fold. Thus, in the first half of the 8th century, a new society developed in Muslim Spain. The Arabs were the ruling element; a distinction was made between baladiyyūn (i.e., Arabs who had entered Spain in 712 under Mūsā) and Syrians (who arrived in 740 under Balj ibn Bishr). Below them in status were the Imazighen, who made up the majority of the invading troops, whose numbers and influence continued to grow over the course of centuries because of their steady influx from Africa. Then came the native population who had converted to Islam, the musālimah, and their descendants, the muwallads; many of them were also (i.e., connected by patronage with an Arab) or even themselves of Amazigh lineage. This group formed the majority of the population because during the first three centuries social and economic motives induced a considerable number of natives to convert to Islam. Christians and Jews who kept their religion came next in the social hierarchy, but their numbers decreased in the course of time. Finally, there was a small group of slaves (Ṣaqālibah)-captives from the northern peninsula and other European countries-and black captives or mercenaries.

The period between 711 and 756 is called the dependent emirate because Muslim Spain, or Al-Andalus, was dependent on the Umayyad caliph in Damascus. These years were marked by continuous hostilities between the different Arab factions and between the various social groups. Nonetheless, Muslim expansion beyond the Pyrenees continued until 732, when the Franks, under Charles Martel, defeated the Muslims, led by the emir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghāfiqī, near Tours. This battle marked the beginning of the gradual Muslim retreat. A major Amazigh uprising against the Arabs in North Africa had powerful repercussions in Muslim Spain; it caused the depopulation of the northwestern peninsula, occupied at that time mainly by Imazighen, and brought the Syrian army of Balj to Al-Andalus, which introduced a new motive for discord. This situation changed with the establishment of an independent emirate in 756 by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I al-Dākhil, an Umayyad prince who, having succeeded in escaping from the slaughter of his family by the ʿAbbāsids and in gaining power in Al-Andalus, became independent of them politically (not religiously; he did not adopt the title of caliph).

The independent emirate

The dynasty of the Andalusian Umayyads (756-1031) marked the growth and perfection of the Arabic civilization in Spain. Its history may be divided into two major periods-that of the independent emirate (756-929) and that of the caliphate (929-1031)-and may be interpreted as revolving around three persons of like name-ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I (756-788), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II (822-852), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (912-961)-and the all-powerful ḥājib (chief minister) Abū ʿĀmir al-Manṣūr (976-1002).

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I organized the new Arab state. Vigorously checking all dissident elements, he endeavoured to base his power on the Eastern aristocracy affiliated with his house and heaped upon it property and riches, though he nonetheless treated it ruthlessly when it showed signs of rebellion. He protected the religious authorities who represented orthodoxy, and, through a series of punitive campaigns, he held in check the Christians of Asturias. In the eastern part of the country he was troubled by intrigues of the ʿAbbāsids, and in the north he had to cope with the ambitions of Charlemagne, who menaced the valley of the Ebro (Ibruh). As discussed above, Charlemagne failed; he was forced to raise the siege of Zaragoza, and in the course of his retreat the Basques attacked and destroyed his rear guard at Roncesvalles (778), an event which is celebrated in the great medieval epic The Song of Roland. The Franks had to be content with occupying the upper valleys of the Pyrenees. The Frankish advance ended with the Muslim seizure of Girona (Jerunda) in 785, Barcelona (Barjelūnah) in 801, and Old Catalonia, which were later taken back by the Franks and formed part of the Spanish March.

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I's successors, Hishām I (788-796) and al- Ḥakam I (796-822), encountered severe internal dissidence among the Arab nobility. A rebellion in Toledo was put down savagely, and the internal warfare caused the emir to increase the numbers of Slav and Amazigh mercenaries and to impose new taxes to pay for them.

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II inaugurated an era of political, administrative, and cultural regeneration for Muslim Spain, beginning a sharp "Orientalization" or, more precisely, an "Iraqization." ʿAbd al-Raḥmān's most severe problems sprang from his restless vassals in the Ebro valley, especially the convert Banū Qāsī family and the Mozarabs. Incited by the extremist chiefs Alvarus and Eulogius (the latter being canonized after his death), the Mozarabs sought to strengthen their Christian faith through the aura of martyrdom and began to publicly revile the Prophet Muhammad, an action punishable by death from 850 onward, according to Mozarabic sources. The emir sought to persuade the blasphemous to retract, but, failing in his attempts, he imposed the death penalty. The "vogue" of seeking martyrdom was a reaction of the conservative Mozarabic party against the growing "Arabization" of their coreligionists. The conflict ended in 859-860, and, despite official tact, this provocation by the Christians led to the execution of 53 people and was finally disavowed by the ecclesiastical authorities.

In foreign policy, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II conducted intensive diplomatic activity, exchanging ambassadors with the Byzantine Empire and with the Frankish king Charles II (the Bald) and maintaining friendly relations with the sovereigns of Tāhart, who lent military support to Muslim Spain. He confronted the constantly growing incursions of the Vikings (Norsemen), whom he defeated in the vicinity of Sevilla. Furthermore, he established permanent defenses against the Viking invaders by creating two naval bases, one facing the Atlantic at Sevilla and another on the Mediterranean shore at Pechina near Almería.

His successors Muḥammad I (852-886), al-Mundhir (886-888), and ʿAbd Allāh (888-912) were confronted with a new problem, which threatened to do away with the power of the Umayyads-the muwallads. Having become more and more conscious of their power, they rose in revolt in the north of the peninsula, led by the powerful Banū Qāsī clan, and in the south (879), led by ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣūn. The struggle against them was long and tragic; Ibn Ḥafṣūn, well protected in Bobastro and in the Málaga mountains, was the leader of muwallad and even Mozarabic discontent in the south of Al-Andalus, but his defeat in 891 at Poley, near Córdoba, forced him to retreat and hide in the mountains. ʿAbd Allāh, however, was unable to subdue the numerous rebels and thus left a weak state for his grandson, the great ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, who from 912 was able to restore order. He subdued all of Al-Andalus, from Jaén (Jayyān) to Zaragoza (Saraqusṭah), from Mérida (Māridah) to Sevilla (Ishbīliyah), and the Levant. He even challenged Ibn Ḥafṣūn successfully-especially after the latter's political error of reverting to the Christianity of his Spanish ancestors, a move that caused the desertion of numerous muwallads who regarded themselves as good Muslims. When Ibn Ḥafṣūn died in 917, his sons were forced to capitulate, and in 928 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III captured the theretofore impregnable fortress of Bobastro.

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In the second half of the 7th century ce (1st century ah), Byzantine strongholds in North Africa gave way before the Arab advance. Carthage fell in 698.

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Background

Isabella, who lived during troubled times for the Spanish monarchy, was the daughter of Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784 - 1833), a Bourbon ruler, by his fourth wife, Maria of the Two Sicilies (1806 - 1878). She was born October 10, 1830.

Her Father's Reign

Ferdinand VII became king of Spain in 1808 when his father, Charles IV, abdicated. He abdicated about two months later, and Napoleon installed Joseph Bonaparte, his brother, as the Spanish king. The decision was unpopular, and within months Ferdinand VII was again established as king, though he was in France under Napoleon's control until 1813. When he returned, it was as a constitutional, not absolute, monarch.

His reign was marked by quite a bit of unrest, but there was relative stability by the 1820s, other than having no living children to pass his title to. His first wife died after two miscarriages. His two daughters from his earlier marriage to Maria Isabel of Portugal (his niece) also did not survive infancy. He had no children by his third wife.

He married his fourth wife, Maria of the Two Sicilies, in 1829. They had first one daughter, the future Isabella II, in 1830, then another daughter, Luisa, younger than Isabella II, who lived from 1832 to 1897, and married Antoine, Duke of Monpensier. This fourth wife, Isabella II's mother, was another niece, daughter of his younger sister Maria Isabella of Spain. Thus, Charles IV of Spain and his wife, Maria Luisa of Parma, were Isabella's paternal grandparents and maternal great-grandparents.

Isabella Becomes Queen

Isabella succeeded to the Spanish throne on the death of her father, September 29, 1833, when she was just three years old. He had left directions that Salic Law would be set aside so that his daughter, rather than his brother, would succeed him. Maria of the Two Sicilies, Isabella's mother, supposedly had persuaded him to take that action.

Ferdinand's brother and Isabella's uncle, Don Carlos, disputed her right to succeed. The Bourbon family, of which she was a part, had until this time avoided female inheritance of rulership. This disagreement about succession led to the First Carlist War, 1833-1839, while her mother, and then General Baldomero Espartero, served as regents for the underage Isabella. The military finally established her rule in 1843.

Early Uprisings

In a series of diplomatic turns, called the Affair of the Spanish Marriages, Isabella and her sister married Spanish and French nobles. Isabella had been expected to marry a relative of Prince Albert of England. Her change in marriage plans helped alienate England, empower the conservative faction in Spain, and bring Louis-Philippe of France closer to the conservative faction. This helped lead to the liberal uprisings of 1848 and to Louis-Philippe's defeat.

Isabella was rumored to have chosen her Bourbon cousin, Francisco de Assis, as a husband because he was impotent, and they largely lived apart, though they did have children. Her mother's pressure has also been credited with Isabella's choice.

Rule Ended by Revolution

Her authoritarianism, her religious fanaticism, her alliance with the military and the chaos of her reign - sixty different governments - helped bring about the Revolution of 1868 that exiled her to Paris. She abdicated on June 25, 1870, in favor of her son, Alfonso XII, who ruled beginning in December 1874, after the First Spanish Republic collapsed.

Even though Isabella occasionally returned to Spain, she lived most of her later years in Paris, and she never again exerted much political power or influence. Her title after abdication was "Her Majesty Queen Isabella II of Spain." Her husband died in 1902. Isabella died April 9 or 10, 1904.

You can also read about Queen Isabella's in History on this site, in case this Isabella isn't the one you were looking for

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Why Was Was Isabella II of Spain Reign Controversial?

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Isabella, who lived during troubled times for the Spanish monarchy, was the daughter of Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784 - 1833), a Bourbon ruler, by his fourth wife, Maria of the Two Sicilies (1806 - 1878). She was born October 10, 1830. Ferdinand VII became king of Spain in 1808 when his father, Charles IV, abdicated.

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Ferdinand VII, King of Spain | British Museum

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Also known as Ferdinand VII, King of Spain primary name: primary name: Ferdinand VII other name: other name: (King of) Spain other name: other name: (King) Fernando VII

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Catharists

The Inquisition has its origins in the early organized persecution of non-Catholic Christian religions in Europe. In 1184 Pope Lucius III sent bishops to southern France to track down heretics called Catharists. These efforts continued into the 14th Century.

During the same period, the church also pursued the Waldensians in Germany and Northern Italy. In 1231, Pope Gregory charged the Dominican and Franciscan Orders to take over the job of tracking down heretics.

The Job of Inquisitors

Inquisitors would arrive in a town and announce their presence, giving citizens a chance to admit to heresy. Those who confessed received a punishment ranging from a pilgrimage to a whipping.

Those accused of heresy were forced to testify. If the heretic did not confess, torture and execution were inescapable. Heretics weren't allowed to face accusers, received no counsel and were often victims of false accusations.

Bernard Gui wrote the influential guidebook for Inquisitors called "Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Depravity" in the early 14th Century. Gui himself pronounced over 600 people guilty of heresy and was featured as a character in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose.

There were countless abuses of power. Count Raymond VII of Toulouse was known for burning heretics at the stake even though they had confessed. His successor, Count Alphonese, confiscated the lands of the accused to increase his riches.

In 1307, Inquisitors were involved in the mass arrest and tortures of 15,000 Knights Templar in France, resulting in dozens of executions. Joan of Arc, burned at the stake in 1431, is the most famous victim of this wing of the Inquisition.

Conversos

In the late 15th Century, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella of Spain believed corruption in the Spanish Catholic Church was caused by Jews who, to survive centuries of anti-Semitism, converted to Christianity.

Known as Conversos, they were viewed with suspicion by old powerful Christian families. Conversos were blamed for a plague and accused of poisoning peoples' water and abducting Christian boys.

Ferdinand and Isabella feared that even trusted Conversos were secretly practicing their old religion; the royal couple was also afraid of angering Christian subjects who demanded a harder line against Conversos-Christian support was crucial in an upcoming crusade against Muslims planned in Granada.

Ferdinand felt an Inquisition was the best way to fund that crusade, by seizing the wealth of heretic Conversos.

Torquemada

In 1478, under the influence of clergyman Tomas de Torquemada, the monarchs created the Tribunal of Castile to investigate heresy among Conversos. The effort focused on stronger Catholic education for Conversos, but by 1480, the Inquisition was formed.

That same year, Jews in Castile were forced into ghettos separated from Christians, and the Inquisition expanded to Seville. A mass exodus of Conversos followed.

In 1481, 20,000 Conversos confessed to heresy, hoping to avoid execution. Inquisitors decreed that their penitence required them to name other heretics. By the year's end, hundreds of Conversos were burned at the stake.

Spanish Inquisition

Hearing the complaints of Conversos who had fled to Rome, Pope Sextus proclaimed the Spanish Inquisition was too harsh and was wrongly accusing Conversos. In 1482 Sextus appointed a council to take command of the Inquisition.

Torquemada was named Inquisitor General and established courts across Spain. Torture became systemized and routinely used to elicit confessions.

Sentencing of confessed heretics was done in a public event called the Auto-da-Fe. All heretics wore a sackcloth with a single eyehole over their heads. Heretics who refused to confess were burned at the stake.

Sometimes people fought back against the Inquisition. In 1485, an Inquisitor died after being poisoned, and another Inquisitor was stabbed to death in a church. Torquemada managed to round up the assassins, burning at the stake 42 people in retaliation.

Torquemada's downfall came when he investigated members of the clergy for heresy. Complaints to Pope Alexander VI convinced him that Torquemada needed tempering. Torquemada was forced to share leadership with four other clergymen until he died in 1498.

Inquisitors General

Diego de Deza took over as Inquisitor General, escalating the hunt for heresy within cities and rounding up scores of accused heretics, including members of the nobility and local governments. Some were able to bribe their way out of imprisonment and death, reflecting the level of corruption under de Deza.

After Isabella's death in 1504, Ferdinand promoted Cardinal Gonzalo Ximenes de Cisneros, the head of the Spanish Catholic Church, to Inquisitor General. Ximenes had previously made a mark in Granada persecuting the Islamic Moors.

As Inquisitor General, Ximenes pursued Muslims into North Africa, encouraging Ferdinand to take military action. Upon seizing African towns, the Inquisition became established there. Ximenes was dismissed in 1517 after pleas from prominent Conversos, but the Inquisition was allowed to continue.

Roman Inquisition

Rome renewed its own Inquisition in 1542 when Pope Paul III created the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition to combat Protestant heresy. This Inquisition is best known for putting Galileo on trial in 1633.

In 1545, the Spanish Index was created, a list of European books considered heretical and forbidden in Spain, based on the Roman Inquisition's own Index Librorum Prohibitorum. In other nods to Rome's concerns, the Spanish Inquisition focused on the rising population of Spanish Protestants in the 1550s.

In 1556, Philip II ascended the Spanish throne. He had previously brought the Roman Inquisition to the Netherlands, where Lutherans were hunted down and burned at the stake.

Inquisition in the New World

As Spain expanded into the Americas, so did the Inquisition, established in Mexico in 1570. In 1574, Lutherans were burned at the stake there, and the Inquisition came to Peru, where Protestants were likewise tortured and burned alive.

In 1580 Spain and Portugal ruled jointly by the Spanish crown and began rounding up and slaughtering Jews that had fled Spain. Philip II also renewed hostilities against the Moors, who revolted and found themselves either killed or sold into slavery.

Philip II died in 1598 and his son, Philip III, dealt with the Muslim uprising by banishing them. From 1609 to 1615, 150,000 Muslims who had converted to Catholicism were forced out of Spain.

By the mid-1600s the Inquisition and Catholic dominance had become such an oppressive fact of daily life in Spanish territories that Protestants avoided those places altogether.

End of the Spanish Inquisition

In 1808, Napoleon conquered Spain and ordered the Inquisition there to be abolished.

After Napoleon's defeat in 1814, Ferdinand VII worked to reinstate the Inquisition but was ultimately prevented by the French government, which helped Ferdinand overcome a fierce rebellion. Part of the agreement with France was to dismantle the Inquisition, which was defunct by 1834.

The last person to be executed by the Inquisition was Cayetano Ripoll, a Spanish schoolmaster hanged for heresy in 1826.

The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition still exists, though changed its name a couple of times. It is currently called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Sources

God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World. Cullen Murphy.
Inquisito. University of Notre Dame.
The Spanish Inquisition. Cecil Roth.

Fact Check

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The Inquisition has its origins in the early organized persecution of non-Catholic Christian religions in Europe. In 1184 Pope Lucius III sent bishops to southern France to track down heretics called Catharists. These efforts continued into the 14th Century. During the same period, the church also pursued the Waldensians in Germany and Northern Italy.

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The Textual Representations

by L J Sackville

Description

Contents

Author

Reviews

The first book to deal with all the principal treatments of heresy and anti-heretical writings during their heyday in the thirteenth century.

Heresy is always relative; the traces that it leaves to us are distorted and one-sided. In the last few decades, historians have responded to these problems by developing increasingly sophisticated methodologies that help to unravel and illuminate the tangled layers from which the texts that describe heresy are built, but in the process have made our reading of heresy fractured and disconnected.
Heresy and Heretics seeks to redress this by reading the different types of anti-heretical writing as part of a wider, connected tradition, considering all the principal orthodox treatments of heresy for the first time. Drawn from the mid-thirteenth century, a time when both medieval heresy and the church's response to it were at their zenith, they describe a spectrum of material that ranges from the theological arguments of some of the greatest thinkers of the age to the homely sermons of the wanderingpreachers. In considering the whole scope of anti-heretical writing from this period, it becomes apparent that, far from being an artificial construct isolated from reality, the church's treatment of heresy in fact had a far morecomplex relationship with its subject matter.

Dr L.J. Sackville teaches in the Department of History, University of York.

Introduction
To avoid evil: anti-heretical polemic
To retreat from sin: texts for edification
Who walks in shadow: the canon-legal perspective
High is the heart of man: inquisition texts
De heresi
Appendix: Perfecti as a term to denote heretics
Bibliography

L.J. Sackville is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of York.

"The sheer scale of material covered and its detailed analysis constitute a significant contribution to medieval scholarship." PARERGON

"A well-researched analysis." AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW

"This is the clearest and most comprehensive analysis yet published of the literature generated by the effort to confute and eliminate heresy in the thirteenth century. [...] students of thirteenth century heresy will be in Sackville's debt for her careful analysis of the varieties of the genre." ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW

"A comprehensive overview of the anti-heretical literature of the central Middle Ages. [...] Sackville has made available an exceptionally useful descriptive guide that takes the reader on a tour among inquisitional literature, registers, legal texts, and antiheretical tracts. All of this is bound together with an interesting textual study of various themes found in these works. [It] will be useful to both researchers and students, providing a finding guide and descriptive assessment of particular late-twelfth- and thirteenth-century inquisitional literature." THE CATHOLIC HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century

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by L J Sackville Description Contents Author Reviews The first book to deal with all the principal treatments of heresy and anti-heretical writings during their heyday in the thirteenth century. Heresy is always relative; the traces that it leaves to us are distorted and one-sided.

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macrohistory.com
(EUROPE, 1201 to 1500 CE - continued)
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EUROPE, 1201 to 1500 CE (6 of 7)

The Rising Powers of Portugal and Spain

The Black Death had encouraged the development of sailing ships that would not require a lot of manpower. The Portuguese built such ships - three-masted ships with stern rudders that could sail forty-five degrees into the wind, carry more cargo and sail the high seas. These ships carried cannon that fired stone or iron balls, which could demolish a ship at a distance, reducing the need for armed marines. Cannon and gunpowder came to Europeans by way of the Mongols, who were using these in the 1200s.

Sea captains benefited from pilot books - first created around the year 1280. Away from shore they benefited from use of a magnetic compass and from an astrolabe for measuring the angle of celestial bodies from the horizon, the astrolabe enabling sea captains to determine their location north and south. Positions east and west were calculated from speed and time.

The Portuguese were interested in trade. They reached the Canary Islands, off the coast of northwestern Africa, in 1415. They discovered the Azores Islands in 1419, about 900 miles west of Portugal. Of concern to the Portuguese was Islam. They wished to find a route to India that outflanked Muslim dominated trade routes. They also wished to convert the "heathen" and to establish Christian colonies. In 1424 they began to colonize Madeira Island. They warred against Muslims at Ceuta and Tangier. In 1441 a ship brought back to Portugal the first slaves and some gold dust. In 1443 the Portuguese discovered the four by two-mile Arguin (Arguim) Island - a 1000 mile (1600 kilometer) sail from the Canaries. An increase in slave trading followed, the Portuguese buying more slaves from Africans. The Portuguese saw themselves as giving the slaves an opportunity to become Christians.

Aiming toward the Riches and the Saving of Souls

The kingdom of Castile had expanded to Cordoba and Seville in 1236, and since then it had been forcing Grenada to pay tribute. In 1469 Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married, more or less unifying these two kingdoms, creating what looks like the modern map of the Iberian peninsula except for the Islamic kingdom of Grenada in the south and the small kingdom of Navarre in the northeast.

Headscarves were the convention among married and some unmarried Christian women in medieval Europe. (A painting by Boccaccio Boccaccino, 1504-05)

Pursuing what they believed was God's will, Isabella and Ferdinand moved against Judaism and Islam within their realms - an effort toward creating Christianity as the universal faith. It was the time of Tomás de Torquemada, Inquisitor General under Isabella and Ferdinand. Converted Jews, Muslims and non-conforming Catholic intellectuals were among the persecuted. Of the 200,000 or so Jews who had lived in Spain, perhaps as many as 150,000 fled. And, in 1482, Castile launched a war of conquest against Grenada.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese had reached the equator, and in 1487 a Portuguese explorer, Bartolomew Diaz, sailed as far as the southern tip of Africa - the Portuguese having overcome fears of monsters at sea and boiling water at the equator.

In 1492, after having defeated Grenada, Isabella and Ferdinand backed Christopher Columbus's dream of reaching India by sailing westward. By now, many literate Europeans believed that the world was round, and Columbus was among them. He calculated that a couple thousand miles of ocean lay between his point of departure and Japan. He promised to bring back gold, whose value had risen with economic recovery following the plague. He promised also to bring back spices and silks, and he promised to spread Christianity and to lead an expedition to China.

Columbus and his crew were at sea seventy days, his crew saying their vespers and singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary every night before sleeping. The island they came upon, on October 12th, was in what today are the Bahamas. Columbus called the island San Salvador after Christ the Savior. The people he encountered, the Lucayan, Taíno, or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly. Columbus and his team moved on and explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on October 28th. From there he went to what he was to call Hispaniola (the island that today includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti).

It was a Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, who arrived at what had been Columbus's destination: India. Da Gama sailed around Africa, stopping at four places in eastern Africa along the way and picking up a guide. More than ten months after he left Portugal he dropped anchor at Calicut in India, and he returned to Portugal in 1499 with a load of spices which brought him a huge profit. From his king he received the rank of an untitled noble, a pension and property. Portugal then sent a fleet of thirteen ships to make another voyage south around Africa. The fleet was blown off course and ended in what is today Brazil, which the Portuguese claimed as theirs.

Relations between Europeans, including Columbus, and the indigenous people of the "New World" will be described in a later chapter. Da Gama's success inspired a scramble for more voyaging across the sea in search of opportunity and gold. Europe's penetration of the "New World" had begun. The new technology employed in sailing had shrunk the world. And another kind of technology was changing the world: In the second half of the 1400s printing with movable type had come into being in Europe - printing on paper. A new age was dawning.

Copyright © 1998-2018 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.

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macrohistory.com (EUROPE, 1201 to 1500 CE - continued) home | 6th-15th centuries EUROPE, 1201 to 1500 CE (6 of 7) The Black Death had encouraged the development of sailing ships that would not require a lot of manpower.

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Reconquista, English Reconquest, in medieval Spain and Portugal, a series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture territory from the Muslims ( Moors), who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century.

Though the beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to about 718, when the Christian Asturians opposed the Moors at the Battle of Covadonga, the impulse toward reconquest was expressed only sporadically through the first three centuries of Muslim hegemony. After a failed invasion of Muslim Spain in 778, in 801 Charlemagne captured Barcelona and eventually established Frankish control over the Spanish March, the region between the Pyrenees and the Ebro River. Asturian kings, presenting themselves as the heirs to the Visigothic monarchy that had ruled Spain prior to the Muslim conquest, capitalized on dissension within the Moorish ranks and expanded their holdings in the late 9th century. The Reconquest might have taken root at that earlier date had it not been for a resurgence in the power of the Córdoban caliphate and a break between the Christian kingdoms of Castile and León in the 10th century.

In the meantime, the Christian and Islamic peoples of Spain had become tightly associated with each other culturally and economically, to the extent that consequences of the crusading spirit that manifested in the 11th century were often scarcely less harmful to the Christian conquerors than to the conquered Moors. At that time, Moorish unity broke down, and the Christian lands of northern Spain were briefly united under Sancho III Garcés (Sancho the Great), who greatly expanded the holdings of Navarre. Sancho created the kingdom of Aragon in 1035, and his successors there pursued the Christian reclamation of the peninsula in earnest. Alfonso I of Aragon captured the former Moorish capital of Zaragoza in 1118. In 1179 Alfonso II of Aragon and Alfonso VIII of Castile concluded the Pact of Cazorla, an agreement whereby the task of reconquering the Moorish kingdom of Valencia was reserved to the Aragonese crown. In exchange Aragon relinquished all claims to other Moorish-held territory in the peninsula.

After suffering a crushing defeat at the Battle of Alarcos (July 18, 1195) at the hands of the Almohad caliph Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb al-Manṣūr, Alfonso VIII appealed to other Christian leaders, and in 1212 he won the support of Pope Innocent III, who declared a Crusade against the Almohads. Supported by the armies of Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal, Castilian forces routed the Almohad emir of Morocco, Muḥammad al-Nāṣir, at Las Navas de Tolosa (July 16, 1212) and so removed the last serious Islamic threat to Christian hegemony in Spain. The way was now open to the conquest of Andalusia.

The last king of León, Alfonso IX, was succeeded upon his death in 1230 by his son, Ferdinand III, who was already king of Castile. Castile and León were thus reunited, and the new sovereign at once embarked on a great series of campaigns to subdue Andalusia. Those began with the capture of Córdoba (1236) and culminated in the surrender of Sevilla (1248). Influenced by the crusading zeal instilled into the Spanish church by the Cluniac and Cistercian orders, Ferdinand at first expelled the Moorish inhabitants of the Andalusian cities en masse but was later forced to modify his policy by the collapse of the Andalusian economy that inevitably ensued. He also assented, chiefly for financial reasons, to the establishment of the new Moorish kingdom of Granada under Castilian suzerainty. The Granadine Moors were forced to pay to Castile a sizable annual tribute, but Moorish culture experienced something of a rebirth in Christian Spain. In Toledo, a Castilian city already famous throughout Europe as a crossroads of Christian, Arab, and Jewish thought, Alfonso X established the Escuela de Traductores (School of Translators), an institution that made Arabic works available to the Christian West.

During the same period, James I of Aragon completed Aragon's part in the Reconquest. After occupying the Balearics (1235), he captured Valencia (1238). Unlike Ferdinand, James carefully worked to preserve the agricultural economy of the Moors and so established the final peninsular frontiers of Aragon. In Portugal, Afonso III captured Faro (1249), the last Moorish stronghold in the Algarve. By the end of the 13th century, the Reconquest was, for all practical purposes, brought to an end. The last significant Muslim incursion into Christian Iberia culminated with the Battle of Río Salado (October 30, 1340), where Portuguese and Castilian forces administered a crushing defeat to the armies of Marīnid sultan Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī.

The kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Portugal spent the next century consolidating their holdings, until the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 united the Spanish crown. The Catholic Monarchs, as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known, completed the conquest of Granada in 1492. Many historians believe that the crusading spirit of the Reconquista was preserved in the subsequent Spanish emphasis on religious uniformity, evidenced by the strong influence of the Inquisition and the expulsion of people of Moorish and Jewish descent.

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Reconquista | Definition, History, Significance, & Facts

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Reconquista, English Reconquest, in medieval Spain and Portugal, a series of campaigns by Christian states to recapture territory from the Muslims (Moors), who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century.