[LMB] Chalion Equivalences (was: Possible Convert)

[paal at gis.net]

----- Original Message Follows -----
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, Hendon, Alison wrote:
> 
> > Personally I really hate to make these historical parallels.
> > I find Isabella's reign really repugnant.  I would prefer to
> > think that Iselle will be a more enlightened Royina.
> 
> Isabella's reign was completely repugnant; I totally agree.

I disagree in the "completely" aspect... it didn't start out as
repugnant, but the changes she and her husband made over time
increasingly became more and more intolerant and harsh and restrictive
and narrow-minded, and it was fully a half a millennium before the
intolerance and offenses instituted by Isabella and Ferdinand, got
mostly repealed (I don't know if e.g. Salic Law is still in force in
Spain.

A friend of mine years ago pointed out that perhaps the most key
precipitating factor in the expulsion order for Jews was the fall of the
di'Medici in Florence and the failure thereby of the European financial
system--the Medici had been the backbone of what today would be called
the financial services industy, in Europe, and their demise threw all of
Europe into financial disaster. Isabella and Ferdinand looked around and
saw that Spain had quite a contingent of affluent Jews, some of whom
(such as the Benveniste extended family) were extremely wealthy. With
the rising levels of extremist Christian sentiments (that was I think
also when the Turks were on a conquest binge and they had adopted Islam
and were pushing it along with being on an invasion binge, with one of
the results being lands that were majority Christian, were getting more
and more hostile towards non-Christians) political expedience was
looking for ways to prop up the finances of Spain and secure the
monarchy more securely... expelling any Jews who wouldn' convert to
Christianity and seizing all all their assets was a way to transfer
wealth from a minority which there was more and more popular culture
(Christian majority) hostility towards, get support from the Church for
carrying out its agendas of spreading  Christianity and removal of
non-Christians who wouldn' t convert and donating some of the loot to
Church coffers for Church glorification, there was other revenue
transfer from th Crown to subjects it wanted to reward/bribe, with the
properties formerly owned by Jews....

Ultimately of course Spain suffered from a shutdown of intellectual
questioning and advancement and progress, the leadership that that part
of the world had had in scholarship and invention and learning left the
country with the expulsion of Jews, the shutdown of intellectual inquiry
in favor of things like the Inquisition and orthodoxy which prohibited
open discouse and academic freedom--which drove people who wanted
change/intellectual freedom out of the country to places that didn't
persecute those not hewing to the narrow limits--the flowering of Dutch
culture was due to its breaking out of Spanish control and extending
relatively open arms intellectually to multiculturalism and its
promotion of middle class values of living comfortable and progressively
and seeking progress and comfort and intellectual challenge.  In the
short term the country benefitted from intolerance and discrimination
what today would be looked as in some ways as fascism.  In the long
term, Spain went into centuries of intellectual decline and became a
backwater and fell behind most of the rest of Europe regarding the
health, well-being, and economic well-being of its citizenry. 
 
> ~malfoy :)