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001545 Visit since July 31, 2004
| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY, a History
of The Mexican people (Chapter 1) |
by Prof. German Estrada
August, 2004 |
THE FOREFATHERS (part
15th) continues..
One generation after the Reconquista, Catholic Spain
confronted a challenge it had not counted on. In distance
Germany, Martin Luther, a wayward Catholic priest,
nailed his ninety-five theses on the door of a church.
Luther and his disciples called themselves Protestants,
and their heresy spread to Sweden and France. Not long
afterward, the Frenchman John Calvin, another dissident,
broke with the pope and the catholic church, giving
Protestantism a foothold in Holland and Scotland. A
bit later, the opportunistic Henry VIII severed England's
ties with Rome and established the Anglican church,
an ally of the Protestants on the Continent. The Protestant
Reformation had started.
With the blessings of Rome, Charles I, a fanatical
believer, declared Spain the defender of the true faith.
Spain became the cradle of the Counter-Reformation,
the Catholic response to the Protestant challenge.
Charles as well as Phillip II seldom failed to employ
force to stem the tide of heretical doctrines. The
wars against the infidels were joined together with
imperialistic adventures on the Continent and against
the Turks. From the Council of Trent there emerged
a revitalized church, ready for battle with the disbelievers,
more than ever convinced that God was on its side,
and, increasingly, intolerant of dissident views. Earlier,
in 1536, Ignatius Loyola had organized the Jesuits,
a militant order and axis to the Counter-Reformation.
At a time when Protestants decried the pope, Loyola
and his Jesuits swore absolute submission to him, vowing
to fight heresy everywhere. Spain's leaders adopted
additional measures to stamp out heresy, which virtually
shut Spain's doors to humanistic influences and foreign
ideas. One was the revival of the Inquisition.
Often employed by Protestants
scholars and theologians to vilify Spain's past,
the Inquisition, or Holy Office, dated from thirteenth-century
Castilla. Among its top villains were Archbishop
Ximénez de Cisneros,
confidant of Isabella, and Fray Tomás de Torquemada,
whose name historians made synonymous with it. The
Catholic kings used the Inquisition, as one writer
phrased it, not merely to "homogenize" Spain's population
but also to control a restless burguesía in
the commercial cities. More than Moslems, this goal
had in mind the Jews, key elements in the commercial
and financial sectors, rivals of the landed nobility.
Relying on the Inquisition, the Catholic kings drove
the Jews out of Spain.
Religious orthodoxy had more-pernicious consequences,
also linked to the Jewish issue. For many Spaniards,
purity of faith required a purity of race or blood.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, the doctrines
of limpieza de sangre had gained quite popular
appeal. At this time, official policy started to exclude
conversos, Jews who embraced Catholicism, from public
and church office. One could not trust converses, because
despite their public subservience to Christianity,
they remained Jews. In 1520, moreover, the revolt of
the townspeople, or comuneros, in Castilla,
at first confined largely to the urban centers, had
brought to the fore a hatred of foreigners and their
ways. Artisan guilds, for instance, began asking for
proof of limpieza de sangre as a condition
for membership, closing their doors not only to Jews
and converses but to Moors as well. In 1609, the Moriscos,
officially Christian Spaniards of Arabic culture, suffered
the fate of the Jews; 275,000 Moriscos fled Spain.
Their expulsion, like the earlier ban on Jews, hurt
Spain; Moriscos were not only a key element in agriculture
but bastions of the wool industry of Toledo and Sevilla. Source: From the book Triumphs
and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his
author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization.
(W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London). We'll continue with this fascinating
book.
estradanav@yahoo.com
Prof. Germán
Estrada is the author of the best selling book,
"México
Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know
About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto
Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books,
Books as well as directly from the author by internet.
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