the Reconquista

Examples of the Reconquista in the following topics:

• The Reconquista

  • The Reconquista is a period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula dominated by almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians and followed by the Spanish Inquisition.
  • The Reconquista ("reconquest") is a period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, spanning approximately 770 years, between the initial Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 710s and the fall of the Emirate of Granada, the last Islamic state on the peninsula, to expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.
  • Historians traditionally mark the beginning of the Reconquista with the Battle of Covadonga (most likely in 722) and its end is associated with Portuguese and Spanish colonization of the Americas.
  • The period of Reconquista and the Spanish Inquisition that followed, turned Catholicism into the dominant religion of Spain, which have shaped the development of the Spanish state and national identity.
  • Explain how the Reconquista led to Spain's increasing commitment to Catholicism

• The Silo D'Oro

  • It begins no earlier than 1492, with the end of the Reconquista, the sea voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World, and the publication of Antonio de Nebrija's Grammar of the Castilian Language.
  • The last great writer of the period, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, died in 1681, and his death usually is considered the end of El Siglo de Oro in the arts and literature.
  • Velázquez's most famous painting is the celebrated Las Meninas, in which the artist includes himself as one of the subjects.
  • The Palace of Charles V located on the top of the hill of the Assabica, inside the Nasrid fortification of the Alhambra.
  • Granada Cathedral: Foundations for the church were laid by the architect Egas starting from 1518 to 1523 atop the site of the city's main mosque.

• The Crusades

  • The Crusades were military campaigns sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church during the High and Late Middle Ages.
  • Generally, the Crusades refer to the campaigns in the Holy Land sponsored by the papacy against Muslim forces.
  • The Holy Land had been part of the Roman Empire, and thus the Byzantine Empire, until the Islamic conquests.
  • At the western edge of Europe and of Islamic expansion, the Reconquista (recapture of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims) was well underway by the 11th century, reaching its turning point in 1085 when Alfonso VI of León and Castile retook Toledo from Muslim rule.
  • The heart of Western Europe had been stabilized after the Christianization of the Saxon, Viking, and Hungarian peoples by the end of the 10th century.

• Arts and Sciences

  • The renaissance of the 12th century was a period of many changes at the outset of the High Middle Ages.
  • The increased contact with Byzantium and with the Islamic world in Spain and Sicily, the Crusades, and the Reconquista allowed Europeans to seek and translate the works of Hellenic and Islamic philosophers and scientists, especially Aristotle.
  • The rediscovery of the works of Aristotle allowed the full development of the new Christian philosophy and the method of scholasticism.
  • The first half of the 14th century saw the scientific work of great thinkers.
  • The affluence of the merchant class allowed extensive patronage of the arts, and foremost among the patrons were the Medici.

• Spanish Exploration

  • Only late in the century, following the unification of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and the completion of the reconquista, did an emerging modern Spain become fully committed to the search for new trade routes overseas.
  • The object of the third voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal claimed was located to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.
  • An agreement was reached in 1494, with the Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the world between the two powers.
  • The Spanish conquest was also facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox), common in Europe but never present in the New World, which reduced the indigenous populations in the Americas.
  • The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan died while in the Philippines commanding a Castilian expedition in 1522 which was the first to circumnavigate the globe.

• The Islamic Golden Age

  • The end of the age is variously given as 1258 with the Mongolian Sack of Baghdad, or 1492 with the completion of the Christian Reconquista of the Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus, Iberian Peninsula.
  • The use of paper spread from China into Muslim regions in the 8th century, and then to Spain (and then the rest of Europe) in the 10th century.
  • The best known fiction from the Islamic world is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, which took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century, although the number and type of tales vary.
  • He believed in the eternity of the universe.
  • The traditional instrument of the Arabic calligrapher is the qalam, a pen made of dried reed or bamboo.

• Establishment of the National Assembly

  • Its members had been elected to represent the estates of the realm: the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobility) and the Third Estate (the commoners) but the Third Estate had been granted "double representation" (twice as many delegates as each of the other estates).
  • On June 17, with the failure of efforts to reconcile the three estates, the Third Estate declared themselves redefined as the National Assembly, an assembly not of the estates, but of the people.
  • Following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, the National Assembly became the effective government of France.
  • In an attempt to address the financial crisis, the Assembly declared, on November 2, 1789, that the property of the Church was "at the disposal of the nation."
  • Thus the nation had now also taken on the responsibility of the Church, which included paying the clergy and caring for the poor, the sick, and the orphaned.

• The Constitution of 1791

  • The Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution of France that turned the country into a constitutional monarchy following the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime.
  • For instance, the Marquis de Lafayette proposed a combination of the American and British systems, introducing a bicameral parliament, with the king having the suspensive veto power over the legislature, modeled on the authority then recently vested in the President of the United States.
  • The greatest controversy faced by the new committee surrounded the issue of citizenship.
  • Redefining the organization of the French government, citizenship, and the limits to the powers of government, the National Assembly set out to represent the interests of the public.
  • The National Assembly was the legislative body, the king and royal ministers made up the executive branch, and the judiciary was independent of the other two branches.

• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  • The Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the period of decline in the Western Roman Empire in which it disintegrated and split into numerous successor states.
  • The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control; modern historians mention factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army, the health and numbers of the Roman population, the strength of the economy, the competence of the Emperor, the religious changes of the period, and the efficiency of the civil administration.
  • The reasons for the decline of the Empire are still debated today, and are likely multiple.
  • The Ostrogothic Kingdom, which rose from the ruins of the Western Roman Empire.
  • Analyze, broadly, the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire.

• The Fall of Constantinople

  • The restored Byzantine Empire converted to Catholicism to get aid from the West against the Ottoman Turks, but the Turks defeated them by conquering Constantinople, thereby causing the final collapse of the Byzantines.
  • In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans.
  • The Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, widely regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages, failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottoman Turks.
  • A popular saying at the time was "Better the Turkish turban than the Papal tiara."
  • The conquest of the city of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire was a key event in the Late Middle Ages, which also marks, for some historians, the end of the Middle Ages.