Christian Kingdoms Research Articles

Jewish history and gentile memory: The expulsion of 1492

During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, the Christian kingdoms and principalities in northern Iberia extended their power southward. They acquired territory and people that, since the first quarter of the eighth century, had been under Islamic rule. The kingdoms of Leon-Castila, Aragon, and Portugal (especially the former two) contained greater numbers of non-Christians - Jews and Muslims - than any other Christian territory in western Europe. Until the late fourteenth century the kind of public life led in these states was termed convivencia, "peacefully living together," and in Jewish usage Iberia was termed Sefarad (Obadiah 20: literally the farthest northern point of Jewish migration in Syria; figuratively, a refuge remote from Palestine). Jews played a subordinate but crucial role in these kingdoms, which have been termed sociologically incomplete societies, i.e., requiring the presence and service of non-Christians for some governmental functions - chiefly financial and professional - that Christian subjects could not or would not perform. Although Jews were needed, they were also excluded from high public office, as were Jews elsewhere in Christian Europe. In 1391 a number of riots broke out in different parts of Iberia, directed against Jews. As a result, about half the Jewish population of Iberia converted to Christianity. This was an event unprecedented in history - and one for which the Iberian church and society, indeed any contemporary Christian church and society, were utterly unprepared. A generation or so later, in the 1440s, new anti-Jewish movements began again, directed this time also against the "New Christians," or conversos, as they were called. The reasons for some of this resentment against conversos as well as

Tolerancia e intolerancia en los reinos cristianos de la España medieval: el caso de los judíos

This study, based on the provisions relating to the Jews contained in the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X the Wise, analyzes under what conditions the existence of the Jews was tolerated in the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. Secondly, it discusses the causes for the rise in anti-judaism in the 14th and 15th centuries. It concludes by reflecting on the lessons of the past and how they can be applied in coping with the problems which affect a pluricultural Europe at the end of the 20th century.

The emergence, development and historical continuity of the sephardi courtier class

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L'Ethiopie va-t-elle éclater ? Conflits politiques, économie et société en pays arssi (1900-1935).

Abbas Aji—Is Ethiopia Going To Break Up? Political Clashes, Economy and Society in Arssi Land (1900-1935). The Ethiopian modem state has corne out of conquest, as the south was incorpo-rated into the Christian kingdom of Shawa, whose power grew under Menelik II (1889-1913). Following the centralization of the state, traditional Abyssinia's socioeconomic model was imposed. In the south, it took the form of colonial feu-dalism, which entailed expropriating land, installing a political and judiciary administration, and establishing cultural domination through language and religion. Two interdependent variables, class and ethnie group, help us understand political, economie and cultural clashes between center and periphery, herein Oromo. Although the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution has apparently resolved the social class antagonism of a feudal-capitalistic society, it has neither settled the nationality problem nor undone structures of domination. Ethnie conflicts and national groups'aspirations are still the major causes underlying bloody warfare and the crisis of the united state. Whether this empire-state will survive or break up depends on a fair and coherent settlement of ail these problems.

Richard Kilby: A Study in Personal and Professional Failure

The image of the minister of the word current amongst English evangelical protestants and puritans was both exalted and ambiguous. Ministers were ‘the lord’s ambassadors, the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the dispensers of God’s mysteries, the builders of God’s church and the chariot and horsemen … of a Christian kingdom.’ However, the qualities and qualifications necessary successfully to fulfill that role were onerous in the extreme. To be a true minister it was necessary firstly and essentially to preach, which in turn entailed the mastering a large range of scholarly skills, involving knowledge of the original languages, of logic, rhetoric, church history, and theology. But it was necessary also for a true minister to be personally godly, first because he had to lead his flock toward a Christian life not merely through exhortation but also through example and, second, because his own spiritual condition, the integrity of his calling both as a Christian and as a minister, vitally effected the efficacy of his ministry. After all, the deeper his own understanding of the word—always as much a function of spiritual insight as formal learning—and the more completely his own character had been made over by the sanctifying activity of the Holy Spirit, the more effectively he could communicate his saving message to his flock.

Hobbes & the Two Kingdoms of God

There was once, under Moses and his successors, a kingdom of God and there will be another after the second coming of Christ. But no such kingdom can exist in the present, and therefore rebellion against the sovereign, here and now, cannot be justified in its name. Going beyond this generally well-understood purpose of Hobbes's theology, Professor Schwartz argues here that the distinction between the Jewish and Christian Kingdoms of God, as Hobbes presents it, informs his discussion of a well-ordered commonwealth in Leviathan. This commonwealth avoids the defects of the Jewish kingdom-instability and confusion resulting from incorrect notions of sovereignty, liberty, and human nature-and its subjects, like those of the future Christian kingdom, are obedient to sovereign authority.

Persecution and Toleration in pre-colonial Africa: nineteenth-century Yorubaland

When Christian missionaries penetrated sub-Saharan Africa during the nineteenth century, three main persecutions of their converts caught the attention of Europe. The earliest took place in Madagascar between 1837 and 1857, when several hundred converts attached to the London Missionary Society were killed. The last of the three occurred in the Buganda kingdom of East Africa and culminated on 3 June 1886 when some 26 Baganda Christians were burned on a single pyre. Both these persecutions took place in autocratic and expanding kingdoms whose modernising rulers had initially welcomed missionaries for their skills. In both kingdoms the missionaries converted younger members of the ruling class. In both, the deaths of the modernising rulers precipitated traditionalist reactions in which converts were killed more to discourage and control Christianity than to extirpate it. Both persecutions were bounded in time. Both failed, leading only to further Christian expansion, the capture of power by Christian modernisers, and their use of the authoritarian political institutions to create overtly Christian kingdoms.

The Significance of the Regal Consecration of Edgar in 973

In the history of medieval regal and imperial anointing the consecration of Edgar as king of the Angles and Saxons in 973 deserves very special attention. For the ceremony, performed seventeen years after Edgar's succession to the throne of Mercia and fourteen years after he had become king of Wessex, was apparently without precedent either in biblical or medieval times. How are we to make sense of a consecration which by its very nature should inaugurate the reign and constitute the king, and which now took place more than a decade and a half after Edgar had been firmly in power? If we consider the consecration against the background of contemporary continental customs then the magnitude of the problem emerges in all its clarity, for by the late tenth century inaugural anointing had assumed its place at the opening of the reigns of most of the kings of western Europe. Regal consecration had been customary among the Franks for well over a century and for nearly as long in Burgundy; there is evidence that anointing took place from an early date in the small Christian kingdoms of Spain, and finally, after the consecration of Otto 1 in 936, inaugural anointing also became established in the German kingdom. In each case the Old Testament provided the pattern for the anointings: it was the pouring on of the holy oil which worked the regeneration of the prince in virum alium (1 Kings x.6), giving him a new heart (1 Kings x.9) and thereby constituting him as ruler over God's people (1 Kings x.1). Henceforth the spirit of God was with the king (1 Kings x.8) and as the christus Domini he enjoyed divine sanction and protection (1 Kings xxiv.7).

Joseph Whitwell Pease and the Quaker Role in the Campaign to Suppress the Opium Trade in the British Empire

JOSEPH WHITWELL PEASE AND THE QUAKER ROLE IN THE CAMPAIGN TO SUPPRESS THE OPIUM TRADE IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE By John V. Crangle* Joseph Whitewell Pease1 was the most prominent opponent of the opium traffic in the British Empire during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Assuming in 1881 the leadership of the London-based Anglo-Indian Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade (S.S.O.T.), he effectively elucidated the moral implications of governmental commerce in the drug in Asia, making the trade the subject of one of the most publicized debates of the period. Before it was over the controversy involved prime ministers and prelates, intellectuals and civil servants, and Liberals and Tories. Ultimately, the anti-opiumists triumphed; their adversaries , who had counted among their number cabinet members and viceroys, went down to defeat; in 1907 Parliament initiated the legislative suppression of the oriental opium trade. The opposition to Britain's implication in the commerce started on a small scale and dated from the First Opium War (18391842 ).2 During the war the Emperor of China was praised in England for desiring to exclude opium from his dominions,3 and "the sin of the opium trade" was blamed upon Britain.4 However , not much progress was made until after the middle of the century. The Society of Friends showed an early interest in the matter. In 1858 its Meeting for Sufferings condemned the opium trade for its "grievous results as regards the inhabitants of both India and China, greatly to the reproach of this professedly Christian *John V. Crangle is Associate Professor of History at Benedict College, Columbia, South Carolina. 1.Joseph Whitwell Pease (1818-1903), the son of the famous railway pioneer Edward Pease of Darlington, was director and chairman of businesses in coal, manufacturing, iron, and railways in the north of England. He was president of the Peace Society, an opponent of capital punishment, a partisan of Home Rule, and Liberal M.P. (1865-1903). D.N.B., 1901-1911, p. 90; obituary, Times, June 24, 1903, p. 12; Who Was Who, 1897-1916, p. 554. 2.David Nelson Rowe, Modern China (New York: Van Nostrana, 1959), pp. 18-19. 3.Editorials on the Opium War, Dublin University Magazine, (May, 1840), pp. 40,89,593. 4.Alfred Mallalieu, "War with China and the Opium Question," Blackwood 's Edinburgh Magazine, XLVII (March, 1840), p. 380. 63 64QUAKER HISTORY nation." A memorial was forwarded to the First Lord of the Treasury which stated : We cannot reflect without deep sorrow on the part our countrymen have taken in originating and carrying on this immoral traffic. We must regard it as incompatible with the maintenance of those principles of religion and morality which this nation professes to uphold.5 Other Non-Conformists welcomed the Quaker announcement. The Record wrote, "So thoroughly convinced of the iniquitousness of the East India Company's opium traffic, and of the great and persevering efforts that will be required to obtain its suppression , that we welcome these new allies into the field." The paper expressed the hope that anti-opiumists would "keep the matter incessantly before the Christian public."6 Major reformers supported suppression. Lord Shaftesbury,7 the famous factory reformer, moved a resolution in parliament in 1843 against the trade which denounced it as "destructive of all relations of amity between England and China . . . and utterly inconsistent with the honour and duties of a Christian kingdom."8 The Radical, Sir Wilfred Lawson,9 unsuccessfully moved a resolution in 1870 "that this House condemns the system by which a large portion of the Indian Revenue is raised from opium . . ."10 The foundation of the Anglo-Indian Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade in 1874 gave the cause an organizational basis. Founded by the Darlington industrialist Edward Pease,11 a brother of Joseph Whitwell Pease, the S.S.O.T. established a headquarters in London whence it issued a flood of publications and directed a nation-wide program of agitation. The S.S.O.T. made considerable progress during the late 1870's in conjunction with the Society of Friends (an alliance made easy by the fact that certain key...

The Diffusion of Aristotle's Moral Philosophy in Spain, ca. 1400 — ca. 1600

Throughout much of the Middle Ages the Iberian Peninsula had been responsible for the transmision to Europe of many of Aristotle's works and those of his Arab commentators. Without the ‘school’ of translators, which flourished at Toledo for nearly a century after its foundation in the 1120s by archbishop Raimundo, the twelfth-century revival of Aristotelianism at Paris would scarcely have been possible. But the motley Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula benefited less from the tradition of Arab scholarship than did their northern neighbours. Intellectual concerns were rather narrowly limited to the requirements of the schools and interest in the moral writings of Aristotle was therefore less pronounced than it was in the sphere of natural philosophy. The evidence for Spanish scholarly initiatives in respect of Aristotle's moral philosophy before the beginning of the fifteenth century is, indeed, slender; there are some commentaries and compendia used in teaching but certainly nothing to compare with the activities of Grosseteste, Moerbeke, Burley, and Oresme.

Social Formation and Political Adaptation in Ethiopia

Up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Ethiopia remained essentially what it had been for centuries – a highly isolated, thoroughly traditional, fervently Christian kingdom. During the closing decades of the last century, the kingdom was greatly enlarged through a vast territorial expansion southwards which created the Ethiopian empire as it is today, and established the Christian Ethiopians as the dominant group within the heterogeneous state. The expansion, and the contemporary appearance of European imperialism in the Horn of Africa, helped to break down the historic isolation of this ancient society. In the decades that followed, sporadic attempts to introduce modernisation in Ethiopia had only a superficial impact, and it was only after World War II, following a brief but painful experience with Italian colonialism during 1935–41, that this process commenced in earnest.

Church and State in Ethiopia 1270-1527

The thirteenth century ushered in an active development in both Church and State in the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, The process had already started in the Zagwe period, but it was considerably intensified with the rise of the new dynasty founded by Yikunno-'Amlak in 1270. This development manifested itself in various ways in the period with which the present study is concerned. Within the kingdom itself, the power of the king over his vassal chiefs, his army, and his wealth tremendously increased. The literary re-awakening of the Church led to the revival of monasticism and brought in a series of reform movements initiated by the new monastic leaders of the country. Of much greater importance to the history of the whole area of the Horn of Africa was the rapid expansion of the territorial limits of the Christian kingdom, and the evangelization of many of the conquered areas. These outward movements of expansion of both Church and State were most active in the reigns of 'Amde-Siyon (1314-44) and Yishaq (1413-30), who were the most outstanding military leaders of the kingdom in the whole of our period. Their campaigns pushed the Christian frontiers far into the heart of the Muslim dominated areas beyond the Awash in the east, the rich Sidama country between the left bank of the Abbay and the lake region of the rift valley in the south, and the Agew and Felasha country consisting of Goojam and what is today the Province of Begemdir in the west and in the north-west. The literary and religious activities of Zer'a-Ya'qob (1434-68) were essentially an attempt to etsabilize the manifold conquests of his predecessors, and to give sound institutional bases for both church and State in the whole of the Christian Empire. The relatively radical programmes which he rigorously put to effect during his reign were not continued by his successors, and with the reigns of a series of minor kings the diverse regional and religious interests fully reasserted themselves. The absence of a strong, xinited leadership for half a century (following Be'ide-Maryam's reign) sapped the Christian kingdom of much of its political and military strength, and led in the end to the brilliant successes of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, otherwise known as Gragn.

¿Fue la crisis política del Occidente musulmán del siglo XIII debida a un cambio climático? Una aproximación histórica al fin del Periodo Cálido Medieval

Durante el siglo XIII se produjo una sucesión de revueltas que supuso la desaparición del Imperio almohade y su sustitución por poderes regionales en al-Andalus, el Magreb y el Magreb al-Aqsà. La historiografía ha presentado el surgimiento y pugna entre estos poderes como un fenómeno social, político e, incluso, cultural y religioso, con el que se ha podido explicar su aniquilación o marginalización. Este trabajo pretende contextualizar los hechos desde una perspectiva medioambiental, de forma que la desintegración del califato almohade, el surgimiento de aquellos poderes y la progresión de los reinos cristianos en la península ibérica puedan entenderse desde una visión global de cambio climático y una posible crisis agrícola.

The Importance of Gerard of Csanád as the First Author in Hungary

Early Hungarian history is so poor in sources of contemporary origin that any work written and any writer living in the early Árpádian age is bound to provide information on the period — the beginnings of the Hungarian Christian kingdom of the Middle Ages. The Venetian-born Benedictine monk, Gerard, who from 1030 to his death in 1046 occupied as its first bishop the see of Csanád, is one of these writers. Gerard is not an historian in the true sense of the term. He is no Gregory of Tours, no Venerable Bede. He was a learned, western-educated ecclesiastic who in his theological writings left many a side remark on his age and on the political and social background of his religious activities in Hungary from the mid-1020s through the mid-1040s. His major theological treatise on the Song of Daniel, hisAdmonitionesto the heir of King Stephen on the Hungarian throne, and his participation in compiling the legal statutes enacted by Stephen and his council make him, beside the king, the most important historical personage of Hungarian history of the time. His works together with thevita minorand the biography of King Stephen by Bishop Hartvic form a valuable source of historical information. His own life is covered by a short though trustworthyvitacomposed in the early 1080s.

The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: a Twelfth-Century Jewish Description of North-East Africa

The travel literature of medieval Jewry may yield new information about the African past. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, a case in point, throws light on the little-known eastern Sudan of the twelfth century. From the Itinerary may be reconstructed trade routes south from Alexandria to Christian Nubia, east from the Upper Nile Valley to southern Arabia and India, and west to the Fezzān and, ultimately, to the western Sudanic States. Commodities traded included wheat, raisins, figs, copper, salt, gold, precious stones, and slaves. These routes tied in with the better known trans-Saharan, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean networks of trade. Benjamin's Itinerary describes a spectrum of political development ranging from primitive Negroids south of Aswan and the tribal Beja and Rabīʻa Arabs to the more sophisticated Arab-controlled city-State of Aswan and the Christian kingdoms of Nubia. Benjamin mentions Christian Nubia only in passing, but indicates that ʻAiwa still flourished as a trading kingdom as late as 1170.

Georgia In The Reign Of Giorgi The Brilliant

THE political career of King Giorgi V of Georgia, commonly known as Giorgi Brdsqinvale or George the Brilliant, spans an eventful period in the history of the Near East. When Giorgi first came to the throne in 1299, the Il-Khan dynasty of Persia under the able Ghazan Mahmud Khan was at the summit of its power. Ghazan's empire with its vassal states stretched from India to the Mediterranean and Black Seas. He controlled most of Anatolia, including the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the Christian kingdom of Little Armenia. In 1300 he even seized and held Damascus for a short period. From these strategic positions, the Mongols of Persia were a constant menace to both the Mamluks of Egypt and the Khans of the Golden Horde.