We have lived through more than 1300 years of Muslim-Christian conflicts.
Charles V was the unlucky emperor born to handle his Castile-Aragon Grandparents’ legacy of the Spanish Inquisition. Charles V Emperor was the grandson offspring of  Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the artisans of the Spanish Inquisition. The Catholic Monarchs were the pioneers of creating “the” European institutional legal and religious core system of discrimination, torture, persecution, and punishment tied to the Catholic Church. The Spanish Inquisition was the institutional strategy utilized by the successors of the Arian Visigoths, who were expelled from their former territories by the Umayyad Muslims in the year 711. The Visigoths left the Iberian Peninsula but did not disappear, they moved out to France, the German Nations, and probably to England.  We believe that the Visigoths mutated to become part of Charlemagne´s Carolingian team, who was the first Holy Roman Emperor crowned by Pope Leo III in Rome (year 800 CE). Later, East Francia advanced to become Germany, and the Roman Empire baton changed to the Ottonians (919-1024), then to the Salians (1024-1138), next to the Stauffers (1138-1250), succeeding to the Weak Monarchs Interregnum (1250-1347), followed by the Luxembourgs (1347-1437) and ultimately the Habsburgs consolidation who led the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations until WWI. While all this was happening in Germany, something else was occurring, in parallel, inside the Iberian peninsula: The successors of the Christian Arian Goth rulers were crusading to expel the Muslims.

Charles V in the context of the Reconquista.
In consequence, to analyze Charles V’s period without looking at the 700 years of the Reconquista is like losing sight of what was truly the philosophical crusade mindset of the European rulers of Charles V’s time. The Spanish Inquisition was the last resort utilized to extirpate the “non-liked” minority residents, the Jews, the Muslims, and the heretics out of Spain. We perceive that the rulers of the House of Trastámara (Castile) and the House of Aragón, were linked genetically to the dynastic lineage of the Arian Visigoths. And by the end of the 15th century, this royal alliance came to be represented by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile.
The Spanish Inquisition was the ultimate strategy to kick out all the racial groups that were not aligned with the Catholic faith, and who were not the original residents of that territory. But despite that everyone thinks that the Inquisition was a religious persecution; we conceive that during the period of Ferdinand-Isabella, it wasn´t a religious “system” of punishment per se, but it was a racial institutional warfare, where religion played a crucial role. Remember that in Europe, the monarchs of every kingdom were always fighting in between to consolidate their lands. Europe had a typical system of warfare resolution: domination, exclusion, slavery, and extinction of conquered populations in the medieval ages. The Spanish Inquisition was the “exterminium” solution of the rulers of Spain in their quest to demolish the cultural traditions of the “non-Christian” populaces.
In short, we believe the Spanish Inquisition was the last remedy, that utilized religion, to finalize the process of “Reconquista”. It was invented to resolve future conflicts between these minorities. It was the “cheapest business strategy” to finally kick out, kill, or remove whatever was not liked by the new Castile-Aragon regime. With the Spanish Inquisition, we can demonstrate, or it is clear how political authorities, most of the time, utilize religious power to gain or install their policies.

To observe the “Reconquista” as a separate event from the “Crusades” in Europe is a huge mistake. To consider the Catholic Monarchs´ mandate as divorced from the crusade holy warfare is an extraordinary error. To see the Spanish Inquisition as an isolated legacy of Charles V’s life is also incorrect. We must assume that Charles V simply linked the Holy Roman Empire with the successors of the Visigoth (Arian catholic) rulers of Spain with an “official tenure”, a requirement needed to continue the crusading spirit that characterized the European consolidation of Christianity after Charlemagne. And this link was part of a greater plan: the AEIOU Austrian purpose. Please remember that Frederick III, the father of Maximilian I of Austria coined the AEIOU motto: Austriae est imperare orbi universo (it falls to Austria to rule over the whole globe). Before the arrival of Charles V as King of Spain, the Habsburgs already knew about the Americas extension. Columbus, the Genoese was also fulfilling a mandate that was linked to the Habsburgs.  It is in that sense that we have prepared the following set of 24 slides, considering the Spanish Inquisition as a business strategy (in terms of today’s conceptual analysis – see slide 19).

We were trying to observe the phenomenon of the Spanish Inquisition from the point of view of historical precedence, not as a cause for the degradation and destruction of Jews, Muslims, and Conversos; but as a result of more than 7 centuries in which the Visigoths´ successors were trying to recover their land. The utilization of the Catholic Church as the “investigators of religious heresy” was nothing more than the philosophical and ideological framework structure that allowed the cleaning of the Jewish religious minorities ( in 1492, the Jews only represented between 2 to 10% of the Spanish population) and the terror strategy to tame and control a significant number of Muslims and Moriscos living mainly in Granada, Aragón, Catalonia and Valencia. According to several authors, in 1492, the population of Islamic origin was estimated in between 500,000 and 600,000 people out of a total population of 8,116,190. This means that Muslims made up roughly 7.1% to 9.3% of the peninsula’s population.

We have been reviewing several sources of information about the Spanish Inquisition, nevertheless we are still gathering the facts that may help us to organize the crusade holy warfare context of Europe and its impact in the conquest and colonization of America. We are analyzing the situation from 8 dimensions: philosophical, cultural, race, economic, religious, social, military and political. Today we have developed the first 4 dimensions, and we will continue next week with the rest. Finally, we are still trying to figure out the connection between the Muslims and Spanish America during the 16th century. Somehow we believe that several Moriscos came to America, in different waves of migrations, during that century.

We kindly encourage you to download and print these slides. Write notes on your paper material, and feel free to add your thoughts and comments please. All our strategic reflections are included in this document. Feel free to share it and discuss it with your colleagues and friends.

The historical context of Charles V was a unique one-of-a-kind stage setting in globalization terms: Two emerging regions (Castile-Aragon and Burgundian-Habsburg) with a Holy Roman Empire coverage umbrella, conquering and colonizing a new land at the other side of the Atlantic, a new land of at least 30 times its European territorial size, implementing a religious atrocious inquisition, coming out of freshly defeated plagues and commanding a medieval warfare approach inside Europe and internationally.

In our next episode, I will add a couple of supplementary strategic reflections. We invite you to visit Episode 10 to discover them.

To be continued…

Announcement.
Next Friday 13th of December, we will continue with Episode 10 “Charles V: The Spanish Inquisition Part II”. Our next chapter will include the rest of the dimensions of our analysis. In the meantime, we truly hope that you might commit to read one book about the Spanish Inquisition that we have recommended in our bibliography.

Musical Section.
Our selection of music during this saga will be fitted with songs and concerts that could have been listed on the most important Billboard during the 16th century. Today, we have chosen a collection of Melodies of the Middle Ages. The Youtube channel is Medieval Horizons Music.

Thank you for reading http://www.eleonoraescalantestrategy.com. It is a privilege to learn. Blessings.

Sources of reference and Bibliography utilized today. Shown in the set of slides.

(1) https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/islamic/pages/spain.html

Disclaimer: Eleonora Escalante paints Illustrations in Watercolor. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. All are used as Illustrative and non-commercial images. Utilized only informatively for the public good. Nevertheless, most of this blog’s pictures, images, or videos are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images unless otherwise stated.