[LMB] Chalion Equivalences (was: Possible Convert)

[Louann Miller]

paal at gis.net wrote:
> (re Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella)

> 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 mostly repealed 

My own take (based on less information than I'd like to have) is that
Spain had two, okay three, strokes of what were seen as good luck at the
time which turned out to be bad luck.

One: the Reconquista, which firmly implanted in the national soul that
religious fanaticism and hatred of outsiders were A Good Way To Get
Things Done.

Two: the really insane amounts of gold and silver that flowed into the
country from the New World. This both (1) firmly cemented the chivalric
predisposition that the only way for a gentleman to get money was to go
kill people and steal theirs, none of this (disdainful sniff) _trade_
business, and (2) threw their money supply into insulin shock. The fact
that I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's "System of the World"
trilogy may be biasing me a bit, but still.

Three: The guerilla resistance to Napoleon, which re-affirmed the idea
that the modern world (e.g. any idea invented after 1500) was a bad,
foreign, anti-God sort of thing that should be resisted in the name of
church and crown.

I welcome input from the better-informed, but that's what I've got at
the moment.