Monday, November 25, 2024

It is the 25th of November 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm your guest host, Sam Leanza Ortiz.

Thank you, Dan, for having me back here for this Thanksgiving week, where we’ll be jumping around from Hawaii to France, from the eighth century to the nineteenth century, but today we start in Spain, with the Treaty of Granada that was signed on this day in 1491.

 Granada – not the Caribbean island, “Grenada,” but Granada is a region in southern Spain that had been a Muslim stronghold for centuries, and as we’ll learn, it was to be the last in Europe. Since the arrival of the Umayyad Muslims from North Africa in the eighth century, Christians in Europe felt threatened, and they launched what historians have later called “the Reconquista.” This term, less prescriptive than descriptive, groups together a series of Christian campaigns to “reconquer” Muslim-held territories in the Iberian Peninsula.

These campaigns proved successful, for by the middle of the thirteenth century, the Emirate of Granada struck a deal with Ferdinand III of Castile for vassalage that was to last until 1491. It lasted as long as it did for few reasons. First, Granada maintained internal strength with a steady ally to the south in Morocco and a decent trading economy out of its port city, Málaga.

Second, by the fifteenth century, Spain, like so many other European countries, was an amalgam of different kingdoms and duchies that often fell out with one another, preventing any coherent political progress. The kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were among the largest, and the marriage of Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469, eventually - after a short, minor war of Spanish succession - created a unified Spanish crown that could achieve more ambitious political goals, namely the reconquest of Christian Spain and its subsequent expansion.

Granada, surrounded on land by Castile with the Mediterranean to its south, stood little chance against Spain’s initiatives. The war in Granada kicked off in 1481, with all of Castile’s money and arms put against it. A brief truce allowed the last sultan of Granada, Muhammad XII, to resume his vassal status.

This paused the conflict for three years until Spain decided to attack again, and a series of sieges brought Granada to its knees, the last of which paralyzed the city of Granada for eight grueling months, until the Treaty yielded a provisional surrender on this day in 1491, with a formal capitulation taking place in January 1492.

Though the sultan returned to Morocco, the terms of the treaty were, all things considered, generous to the conquered Muslims, who retained their religious freedom. Mosques remained open, their religious laws were not overturned, and the religious eco-system – one of general tolerance – remained relatively the same, even as Islamic power came to an end.

Spain did not stop there in its pursuit of Christian political dominance. Shortly following the conquest of Granada, Spain expelled its Jewish population, an unfortunately all too common policy of medieval Christendom. With the home front politically united under Christian rule, the Spanish monarchs turned their sights westward and authorized perhaps their greatest claim to fame – the sponsorship of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the new world that would bring even more lands under their rule, and Christianity to the Western hemisphere.

Back in Granada, local clerics, particularly the Archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, pursued a policy of persuasion, seeking free, honest conversions, instead of the forced conversions so connected with Spanish Catholicism at this time. But, we make that connection for a reason, and as so often happens in history, louder parties with better connections prevailed, and Queen Isabella’s confessor, the Archbishop of Toledo, pushed a policy of force that ended in rebellion.

Christianity grew, at least nominally, near and far, and for this reason, Pope Alexander VI gave Ferdinand and Isabella the title of “the Catholic monarchs.” The “Reconquista” was complete, and Islam was to live on in Spanish culture, particularly in the south where it lasted the longest, but any of its effectual political power was ceded to those Catholic monarchs on this day in 1491.

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary, from Psalm 63:

You, God, are my God,
    earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
    my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
    where there is no water.

² I have seen you in the sanctuary
    and beheld your power and your glory.
³ Because your love is better than life,
    my lips will glorify you.
⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
    and in your name I will lift up my hands.
⁵ I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
    with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 25th of November 2024 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

 This show has been produced by Christopher Gillespie.

 This show has been written and read by Sam Leanza Ortiz, who reminds you that if you are talking about a tropical destination like Grenada, it’s the Caribbean, but if you go there on a Spanish galleon in search of treasure, it’s the Caribbean.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.