And then a disaster of unimaginable proportions struck. Between 75 and 200 million people died in Europe within the span of just 7 years. This means that between 30 and 60% (and in the south of Europe up to 75%) of all population died. Even today, seeing every other person you know die in front of you would mess with people’s heads a lot. We’ve heard of 2 people dying of Ebola in this country, and there is already an unhinged response to that. Of course, the illiterate, unsophisticated Europeans of the XIVth century did not react calmly and rationally to the devastation of the Black Death. They freaked.
It seems that the plague had been brought to Europe on the merchant ships traveling to the continent’s southern shores from the East. More often than not, there would be Jewish merchants on those ships. So what was the conclusion that the medieval Christians drew? Obviously, they thought, “Jews, East, all of those dark-haired people who speak Arabic, weird religions and habits, all of that travel here and there – God is punishing us for tolerating all this stuff.”
So Christians freaked out and started persecuting first the Jews and the Muslims for not practicing the right religion and then, when there were no more Jews and Muslims, they were persecuting each other for not practicing their shared religion correctly. In 1492, after the Jews were expelled from Spain and the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula destroyed, the King and Queen of Spain sent Columbus to look for more people to convert to the right religion and then persecute for not practicing it correctly. What ISIS is doing to less fundamentalist Muslims today, Spain did to Protestants in the XVI and XVIIth centuries. And then again to the Republican Spaniards in the 1930s and 1940s.
This freakout lasted until the XVIIIth century when, finally, Christians looked around, scratched their heads, and said, “OK, what the hell was that, again?” Obviously, these were not all Christians but a tiny minority of the most educated and intelligent among them. They started realizing that maybe it would be best to leave religion in the realm of the spiritual and the private and organize societies according to the principles other than the correctness of people’s religious practices.
This is a worldview that many people still haven’t managed to adopt fully. The political life of the US, for instance, still centers around this issue, although civilization is steadily, albeit slowly, conquering minds, one brain at a time. But the legacy of the terrified Medieval folks is still here. Whenever something goes amiss, the XIVth-century thinking of “something must be wrong with the evildoers’ religion” switches on. Just yesterday, I read a long and passionate article, arguing that Islam makes people violent because blah blah something in the Koran blah blah blah while something else in the Bible blah blah blah blah. Of course, as a literary critic, I can tell you that any work of literature can say to anybody whatever that anybody chooses to see in it. Blaming violence on books is as intelligent as blaming it on TV shows or video games. The course of human history has demonstrated that if people feel like killing, raping and torturing, they can find a justification for that in pretty much any book, newspaper, speech, TV show, online game, or the way the clouds look in the sky this morning.
Clarissa's Blog 
Enjoyed the posts. Do you want to write about the Spanish Civil War too?
What about Spain during and after WW2, and how it deals with its past today?
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I’m writing a whole book on that, so yes, I’ve got quite a bit to say. 🙂
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\\ I’m writing a whole book on that, so yes, I’ve got quite a bit to say.
I would love to read a post about Spain during and after WW2.
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Thank you Clarissa! My knowledge of history is limited but I’m working to expand it. Most of what I know about the centuries-old conflict between east and west comes from Andrew Wheatcroft’s “Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam,” 2005. That is only one source among hundreds. I suspect that Wheatcroft is mostly even-handed and accurate, but he writes from a European perspective. I’d be interested to know your take on his book.
To get a sense of the volume of information available on east-west conflict, your readers need only go to Amazon.com and search for “Infidel.”
Wheatcroft’s sensational account of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 describes striking differences between the eastern and western navies and sailors. I’m not sure how accurate his portrayal is, but I doubt that the significance of religion is exaggerated.
Of course, Lepanto took place after Ferdinand and Isabella had more or less unified Spain, and nearly 100 years after Columbus. I suspect the Muslim and Arab civilizations were already in decline by that time.
I wonder if the preeminence of the Arab world in science and culture was based on earlier advances made by Arab society BEFORE Islam? As far as I know, the Muslem religion itself was not a primary source of learning or art.
In fact, probably the decline of the Arab world from its previous greatness to more recent stagnation can be largely attributed to religious influences? That’s a question, not a statement.
I think both Christians in the north of Spain and Muslims in the south were both guilty of religious repression. Didn’t both Christians and Muslims force Jews to convert?
I also wanted to comment on your assertion in Part I that we have the Muslim culture in southern Spain to thank for preserving Roman and Greek culture. I think a great deal of credit should go to the monks in Ireland.
This historical discussion is extremely important for North America and Europe as we consider the threat of Islamist terrorism. The point I want to stress is that the terrorism of the first 14 years of the new century is not a passing irritant. In view of history, we can expect this conflict to continue for a long time, to become much more dangerous, and to grow exponentially. Islamist terrorism is based on deeply held and emotional religious beliefs. It bears no resemblance to the wars of the past century, which were nationalistic wars for resources and economic hegemony.
In the age of the internet and airline travel, extremism of any sort can spread to every corner of the world; organizations of any persuasion can communicate and coordinate instantaneously; and small numbers of committed fighters are free to travel everywhere.
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