Reconquista

There was an army from Morocco that arrived to try and relieve pressure on Granada, the Emirate of Granada, which was the last Muslim polity on the peninsula.

Obviously it failed, the Christians won, and the so-called Reconquista continued from there.

On October 30th, 1918, the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Mudros, or the Armistice of Mudros, ending its involvement in World War I, and really ending the empire.

On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther mailed his 95 Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz.

It was the same year.

It was the same year when Isabella Ferdinand actually fully, full finished the Reconquista in Granada.

And a few months later, they think, give money to Columbus to go and discover a new world.

That's an incredible year.

Many different political entities that were similar to each other slowly came together to result in the formation of Spain, but that doesn't mean that you dissolve completely.

Elements of your self-government remain.

So what happened in particular, so during the Reconquista, We need to do an episode about Reconquista.

This word is annoyingly popular in modern politics for many reasons.

It was one of the Crusades that was, we think of the Crusades to Jerusalem when we think of the word Crusades, but there were Crusades happening everywhere.

There was Reconquista in Spain.

It became like a cultural movement.

When did they start? 1095 is when the first is launched.

yeah well i i think one of the most important things is the the distinction the difference really between ashkenazi uh Jews, so the Jews who were living in Christian Europe, which goes from Spain to Russia, and those living in Muslim lands, because for the Muslims, Jews and Christians were so-called people of the book, and if they paid their taxes, there would in principle be no reason for antagonistic relations between these communities.

Whereas, especially in the Reconquista in Spain, you know, when Spain was reconquered by the Christian knights and the Moors were driven out.

The Muslims were driven out.

They also instituted the Inquisition to look for Jews and throw them out, which is why one of the great thinkers in philosophy, Baruch Spinoza, came to Holland, for instance.

Anyways, Nicholas is now a bishop and a cardinal, and Pope Eugene immediately puts him to use as a papal legate.

First, he's sent to Catalonia to represent the pope in the ongoing Reconquista efforts and rally crusade support, and then he will be sent to Scandinavia.

Interesting.

The Viking peace... might be relevant because Nicholas's role in Scandinavia is going to be huge.

We often think of the European Middle Ages as a period defined by its wars.

The Crusades, the conflicts between England and Scotland half-remembered in Braveheart, the Spanish Reconquista, and not least, the Hundred Years' War.

The Middle Ages were indeed a violent time, though not on the scale of the early modern era that followed, with its increasingly vast armies and decades of devastating war.

The Thirty Years' War was orders of magnitude more terrible than its longer medieval predecessor, not that the latter was exactly good for anyone living through it.