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THE FRANSISCAN ORDER
Not all friars were Gestapo bullies. St Francis from Assisi close by
Florence in present day Italy founded (in 1209) a movement which was
based on returning to the religion preached by Jesus who acquired no
wealth and extolled the virtues of giving to the poor and living
without wealth. Some 100 years after his death the Monks were finding
it increasingly hard to live as their founder preached and many began
the gather wealth like the rest of the Catholic Church. This caused a
serious split in the ranks with horrific results. The wealthy ones were
well accepted by the Pope but those who returned to the simple monastic
life of giving all their wealth away to those in need were deemed
heretics and were summarily dealt with by the Inquisition Office.
The Franciscans and the Dominicans had a 100 years
“war”
with each other over a theological issue as follows: The issue was over
which parts of Jesus body ascended to heaven and which
didn’t. A
thinking Franciscan monk pointed out that Jesus shed much blood on the
ground at the time of his crucifixion and surely the spilt blood would
have remained on earth! The Dominicans said that all parts of Jesus
would have gone to heaven to which the Franciscan replied
“would
this have included his foreskin?!”(remember Jesus was a Jew).
The
Pope finally had to intervene and told the warring monks not to discuss
the subject again and that it would be finally determined by the
Vatican.
500 YEARS AGO
THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
The Spanish Inquisition, (1478) which is the best known of these
hideous acts, was indeed a mirror image of its medieval predecessor
with two notable exceptions.
- The Roman Catholic Church initially had nothing to do with
it.
The perpetrators were the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and
Isabella. After some months of ethnic cleansing, the Pope sanctioned
the action but from time to time complained of its excessive brutality.
The royals took no notice and continued unabated.
- The “heretics” being burnt at the
stake were not
pious preachers like the Cathars but Spanish Jews who had been living
peacefully and happily in a Spain ruled by the Islamic Moors for much
of their 700 years of rule. Later in 1542, the Spanish were sanctioned
by Pope Paul 3rd and also turned on Protestant Christians both in Spain
and their Spanish Netherlands.
Anti Semitism in Spain.
Indeed Jews had been targets for ethnic cleansing by the Catholics in
the north of Spain since 1350 and to survive many had converted or
pretended to convert to Catholicism. Many of these so called Conversos
had achieved high government office, because of the better education
they got within the Jewish community. Both King Ferdinand and
separately before they were married Queen Isabella had Conversos as
advisors on financial and state affairs. Many of these Conversos were
eliminated at the time of the Inquisition. It is salutary to note that
when Ferdinand and Isabella financed Columbus’ trip west
which
enabled him to discover the “new land” America,
Columbus
who some say was a Jew, had Jewish navigation charts and a Jewish
interpreter and they found a country where Jewish persecution has never
really existed. The Inquisition office never gained roots in North
America but was certainly very active in Spanish and Portuguese South
America.
Shooting themselves in the foot.
It has been said after 1492 that when Spain expelled all the Muslim
Moors (originally from North Africa) they lost all their best sources
of science, art, and sensuality and when they exterminated the Jews
they lost all their intelligencia and perhaps have never recovered to
their former greatness.
The Inquisition in Spain lasted a further 200 years until 1740 when the
English Navy, by then all powerful, took Gibraltar as a naval base from
which to rid the Mediterranean Sea of the Muslim Ottomans. The hideous
acts of the Spanish now leaked out to the rest of the world
particularly when the Spanish ceded Gibraltar to the British on the
basis that they would not allow Jews to settle. Incover fact the
British took no notice and Gibraltar soon housed a thriving Jewish
community. It took Napoleon to finally rid Spain of The Inquisition
when he conquered the land (1808) and forbade anti Semitism. When
English General, the Duke of Wellington retook Spain from the French in
1834 he reinstalled a Spanish King, Ferdinand 7th, but on the proviso
that Jews were no longer to be victimised.
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