In Self-Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, chapter authors assert the applicability of Stephen Greenblatt's self-fashioning theory, originally framed within ...Elizabethan England, to medieval and early modern Iberia in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
Astrology in the Middle Ages was considered a branch of the magical arts, one informed by Jewish and Muslim scientific knowledge in Muslim Spain. As such it was deeply troubling to some Church ...authorities. Using the stars and planets to divine the future ran counter to the orthodox Christian notion that human beings have free will, and some clerical authorities argued that it almost certainly entailed the summoning of spiritual forces considered diabolical. We know that occult beliefs and practices became widespread in the later Middle Ages, but there is much about the phenomenon that we do not understand. For instance, how deeply did occult beliefs penetrate courtly culture and what exactly did those in positions of power hope to gain by interacting with the occult? InA Kingdom of Stargazers, Michael A. Ryan examines the interest in astrology in the Iberian kingdom of Aragon, where ideas about magic and the occult were deeply intertwined with notions of power, authority, and providence.
Ryan focuses on the reigns of Pere III (1336-1387) and his sons Joan I (1387-1395) and Martí I (1395-1410). Pere and Joan spent lavish amounts of money on astrological writings, and astrologers held great sway within their courts. When Martí I took the throne, however, he was determined to purge Joan's courtiers and return to religious orthodoxy. As Ryan shows, the appeal of astrology to those in power was clear: predicting the future through divination was a valuable tool for addressing the extraordinary problems-political, religious, demographic-plaguing Europe in the fourteenth century. Meanwhile, the kings' contemporaries within the noble, ecclesiastical, and mercantile elite had their own reasons for wanting to know what the future held, but their engagement with the occult was directly related to the amount of power and authority the monarch exhibited and applied.A Kingdom of Stargazersjoins a growing body of scholarship that explores the mixing of religious and magical ideas in the late Middle Ages.
This revealing analysis of everyday language use among Moroccan immigrant children in Spain explores their cultural and linguistic life-worlds as they develop a hybrid, yet coherent, sense of ...identity in their multilingual communities. The author shows how they adapt to the local ambivalence toward Muslim culture and increased surveillance by Spanish authorities. * Offers ground-breaking research from linguistic anthropology charting the politics of childhood in Muslim immigrant communities in Spain * Illuminates the contemporary debates concerning assimilation and alienation in Europe's immigrant Muslim and North African populations * Provides an integrated blend of theory and empirical ethnographic data * Enriches recent research on immigrant children with analyses of their sense of belonging, communicative practices,and emerging processes of identification
The Crown of Aragon. A Singular Mediterranean Empire recovers the history of an important late medieval crossroads, that brought peoples from Iberia to Greece together and promoted culture as a means ...of cohesion.
Apogee of Empire Stein, Stanley J; Stein, Barbara H
2003, 2004-12-01
eBook
Once Europe's supreme maritime power, Spain by the mid-eighteenth century was facing fierce competition from England and France. England, in particular, had successfully mustered the financial ...resources necessary to confront its Atlantic rivals by mobilizing both aristocracy and merchant bourgeoisie in support of its imperial ambitions. Spain, meanwhile, remained overly dependent on the profits of its New World silver mines to finance both metropolitan and colonial imperatives, and England's naval superiority constantly threatened the vital flow of specie.
When Charles III ascended the Spanish throne in 1759, then, after a quarter-century as ruler of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Spain and its colonial empire were seriously imperiled. Two hundred years of Hapsburg rule, followed by a half-century of ineffectual Bourbon reforms, had done little to modernize Spain's increasingly antiquated political, social, economic, and intellectual institutions. Charles III, recognizing the pressing need to renovate these institutions, set his Italian staff—notably the Marqués de Esquilache, who became Secretary of the Consejo de Hacienda (the Exchequer)—to this formidable task.
In Apogee of Empire, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein trace the attempt, initially under Esquilache's direction, to reform the Spanish establishment and, later, to modify and modernize the relationship between the metropole and its colonies. Within Spain, Charles and his architects of reform had to be mindful of determining what adjustments could be made that would help Spain confront its enemies without also radically altering the Hapsburg inheritance. As described in impressive detail by the authors, the bitter, seven-year conflict that ensued between reformers and traditionalists ended in a coup in 1766 that forced Charles to send Esquilache back to Italy. After this setback at home, Charles still hoped to effect constructive change in Spain's imperial system, primarily through the incremental implementation of a policy of comercio libre (free-trade). These reforms, made half-heartedly at best, failed as well, and by 1789 Spain would find itself ill prepared for the coming decades of upheaval in Europe and America.
An in-depth study of incremental response by an old imperial order to challenges at home and abroad, Apogee of Empire is also a sweeping account of the personalities, places, and policies that helped to shape the modern Atlantic world.
Covers the period from 711 to1502, giving readers a substantial overview of what it was that made Muslim Spain a unique and successful society, and of its powerful legacy in the formation of modern ...Spain.
Al-Andalus, the Arabic name for the medieval Islamic state in Iberia, endured for over 750 years following the Arab and Berber conquest of Hispania in 711. While the popular perception of al-Andalus ...is that of a land of religious tolerance and cultural cooperation, the fact is that we know relatively little about how Muslims governed Christians and Jews in al-Andalus and about social relations among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. InDefining Boundaries in al-Andalus, Janina M. Safran takes a close look at the structure and practice of Muslim political and legal-religious authority and offers a rare look at intercommunal life in Iberia during the first three centuries of Islamic rule.
Safran makes creative use of a body of evidence that until now has gone largely untapped by historians-the writings and opinions of Andalusi and Maghribi jurists during the Umayyad dynasty. These sources enable her to bring to life a society undergoing dramatic transformation. Obvious differences between conquerors and conquered and Muslims and non-Muslims became blurred over time by transculturation, intermarriage, and conversion. Safran examines ample evidence of intimate contact between individuals of different religious communities and of legal-juridical accommodation to develop an argument about how legal-religious authorities interpreted the social contract between the Muslim regime and the Christian and Jewish populations. Providing a variety of examples of boundary-testing and negotiation and bringing judges, jurists, and their legal opinions and texts into the narrative of Andalusi history, Safran deepens our understanding of the politics of Umayyad rule, makes Islamic law tangibly social, and renders intercommunal relations vividly personal.
This work, in honour of Elena Lourie, focuses on various areas of interaction between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the late medieval Crown of Aragon and its environs. Topics include war, military ...campaigns, government, politics, and economics.
Based on extensive study of the primary and secondary sources, Smith here provides a full account of the combined influence of crusade, heresy and inquisition in and about the lands of the Crown of ...Aragon until the death of James I the Conqueror in 1276.
Unearthing Franco's Legacy addresses the debate in Spain resulting from the discovery and exhumation of mass graves created by General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
