Spain: Cordoba Bishop Rejects Muslim Prayers In Cathedral

Cordoba, 28 Dec. (AKI) - The Bishop of the southern city of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, has turned down a request from its Muslim community to be allowed to pray with Christians in its cathedral - a former mosque. Asenjo was quoted as saying the joint use of consecrated places of worship would "generate confusion" and lead to "religious indifference". Asenjo also said that the Bishopric had valid legal documents entitling the Catholic Church to sole use of the building. Moreover, while Catholics are able to live in peace with other faiths, and the Cordoba Diocese wants to maintain its good relations with local Muslims, Cordoba's Christian roots should be respected, Asenjo argued.

Spain's Islamic Board, which represents a community of some 800,000 in a traditional Catholic country of 44 million, argued in a letter to Pope Benedict XVI that such a move in Cordoba could serve to "awaken the conscience" of followers of both faiths and help bury past confrontations.

The organisation stated that they were not aiming at re-establishing the Cordoba Mosque - now a Unesco world heritage site - nor reviving Andalusia, the pre-Christian Muslim civilisation of Spain, of which Cordoba was the capital. Rather, the demand should be seen as a move to encourage tolerance and reconciliation, the Islamic Board argued.

"What we wanted was not to take over that holy place, but to create in it, together with you and other faiths, an ecumenical space unique in the world which would have been of great significance in bringing peace to humanity," said its letter to the pontiff.

The Cordoba mosque was turned into a Catholic cathedral in the 13th Century after the city was conquered by King Ferdinand III in the war to drive the North African Moors from the Iberian peninsula.

Christian princes were in Spain long before the Muslims got there or before Islam even existed. The only good result of the Muslim invasion was probably the unification of Spain, because the kingdoms finally had to unite in order to drive out the invaders. It wasn't easy, because many of them had worked out accomodations with the Muslims (the king didn't mind giving away a certain number of young subjects every year) and many of them hated each other even more than they hated the Muslims.

The alliance between Aragon and Castilla was the final result of gradual consolidation, with one of the reasons for this being the increasing resistance of the Christian kings to the Muslim raiders.

Interestingly, Christianity in Spain had been infected by Arianism, which is certainly the heretical form of Christianity upon which Mohammed based some of his delusions. It was essentially a religion that regarded Jesus as non-divine but important, although ultimately just another leader or prophet. Sort of like today's Unitarians.

The Visigoths were Arians. After Ricaredo renounced Arianism and became a Catholic, which was the religion of most of the Spanish people (in contrast to that of the Visigothic ruling class), the Spanish kingdoms began to form a more consolidated front. However, the primary reason that the Muslims were able to get into Spain in the first place was that they were hired by one Spanish Christian king to attack another. This should be an object lesson to us all, although I doubt that it will be. Certainly not to the Europeans, who hate us so much they would form an alliance with the Devil himself if they knew how to send him an e-mail.

I think you are confounding two different invasions as well as the question of whether or not it was Arianism infecting Roman Catholicism, or the other way around.

Spanish history is exceedingly complex.

The Umayyad Dynasty initially established a unitary state in Spain after mopping up the lightly populated Visigothic kingdoms as almost an afterthought. That state eventually devolved into a series of kingdoms.

The North, unconquered by the Moslems since it was, economically, a disaster, was reorganized by a foreign invader from CORNWALL, not Spain since the Spanish aristocracy didn't survive the Moslem conquest.

Along the way a second Moslem invasion occurred in an effort to drive out the Christians who'd successfully penetrated the Islamic South, and to re-establish the unitary state.

They succeeded for a while.

As the Kingdom of France pospered and dragged itself out of the Dark Ages they began providing serious numbers of mounted knights for use in the various wars in Spain.

I suppose some native Spaniards might well have joined the French and Cornish, but there was always a cheaper source of soldiery among the dispossesed in France.

After reading a gazillion books about the history of Medieval and Islamic Spain over the years, I have yet to find a reason to credit the native Spanish population in the South any credit for eliminating Islamic rule. Rather, they seemed to enjoy it.

It's hardly propaganda. With the fall of the Umayyad dynasty back home in Mesopotamia, you had a tremendous influx of Moslems into Spain.

That's when the Ladino speaking Jews also arrived.

Conversions were numerous even when not coerced.

We are discussing a VERY LONG period of time in a unique civilization.

The Islamicization of Classical Spain was quite thorough until the Reconquista really got going, and that took several hundred years.

Your reference to "Medieval" is not informative since this history runs from 711AD, which is clearly "Dark Ages", or the earliest part of the Medieval period, and does not end until 1492. That's roughly 781 years ~ a coon's age fur shur. Conditions during the latter part of that period in Spain were far different than conditions during the earlier part.

The term “dark ages” I don't credit. It is a thesis now out of date. Once upon a time the entire period, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire, to the 15th century was called “The Dark Ages,” then historians began talking about the “Renaissance of the 14th century.” Then of the 12th, and then the Carolingian Renaissance, and the Merovingian Renaissance. After awhile talking about the “Dark Ages” became passé. So when I refer to something medieval I'm talking about most of the period between the fall of the Western Empire and the breakup of Christendom. Although you know damn well what I was talking about when I referred to “Gothic Spain.”

The fact remains, that the overwhelming majority of the subject population, descendants of the Hispaniae of Roman times, where Catholics ; even though their influence was limited in the Visigothic Arian court (in fact the Suevi, the other Germanic tribe to settle in Spain, had already been converted to Catholicism even before the Goths).

In the late 6th century Visigothic Spain was brought into the Catholic fold, like most of the barbarian kingdoms, by a Catholic princess. Ingunthis, of the Merovingian court, was married to Hermengild, son of Leovigild king of the Goths. It would seem that, as did Clovis over Clotilda, Hermengild fell in love with Ingunthis. His Catholic wife, with the help of St. Leander Bishop of Seville, brought him to the true Church of God. This lead to a quasi civil war between son and father, the latter who wanted Hermengild to recant and come back to Arianism. The Catholic peasants of course favored Hermengild and proclaimed him king though neither he nor his father were willing to move directly against the other at first. Eventually though war did breakout and Hermengild was captured, offered the chance to apostatize, he refused and was martyred in 585 ad. Nevertheless his brother Reccared, who inherited the throne on the death of Leovigild the next year, was also sympathetic to his brothers faith. He had his brother's murderers executed and in 587 convened a synod of both Arian and Catholic Bishops in which he announced his own conversion (he had also been instructed in the faith by St. Leander).

The Council of Toledo in 589 spells it out clearly “We confess, then, that we are converted to the catholic Church from the Arian heresy, with all our hearts, with all our soul and with all our mind.” (García Villada, Historia eclesiástica de Españ, II, p 71.).

So, Spain is Catholic, however you want to cut it, BFORE the Muslims bloody invasion in the 8th century. period. Go find some other thread to post your Muslim lies on.

Traditionally historians cut off the Dark Ages at about 1000. They still do.

Not all historians buy into this business of a period of time devoid of substantial manuscripts as being anything other than a "dark age".

As far as Spain being fully Roman Catholic BEFORE the Moslem Invasion, we really don't know very much at all about Spain from roughly 541 to 711, a vast environmental or climate disaster having occured earlier wiping out civilization in most of Northern and Western Europe.

The remaining documents not burned in the hearth to keep warm are not a fair or representative sample of either the news or the level of civilization in the region.

It really isn't surprising to find a document found elsewhere attesting to something that may, in fact, not have happened ~ to wit, the total conversion of the Arian Christians to Rome ~

This period of time is more appropriately handled by archaeology than history anyway.

BTW, one of the things we don't know about the Iberian peninsula is if the Celts who dominated the North followed Roman, Orthodox or "Irish" liturgical traditions. On the other hand, the Cronish who came later did (not that they were really opposed to Rome, but who could check up on them without wading through a Moslem Sea.).

Traditionally historians cut off the Dark Ages at about 1000. They still do.

As a pedagogical tool, nothing more. They don't always begin the middle ages at that point either. Some consider the so called "Dark Ages" to be the beginning of the medieval period analogous to the thesis, following Gibbon, that the entire period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance was the Dark Ages.

Not all historians buy into this business of a period of time devoid of substantial manuscripts as being anything other than a "dark age".

I have myself collections of works dating from the time we are talking about. That no one reads the manuscripts (mostly Church documents) from this particular period does not mean that it was an illiterate age. If you knew anything about the history of the period you'd know that.

You don't know much about it, but I doubt you've gone farther than a high school level history, if that. Do some serious research, then come back with references like I have. Until you do, you're just spiting a lot of idiocy along the lines of the old 19th century view that the age was dominated by dirty unwashed people who doubted the souls of women and who were ruled over by nobles who spent all their time riding through the peasants' fields. Even Gibbon knew there were hordes of manuscripts from the period, and was himself familiar with them, though his whole belief that Christianity was a negative influence on civilization led him to ignore the significance of church documents, and the writings of saints.

BTW, one of the things we don't know about the Iberian peninsula is if the Celts who dominated the North followed Roman, Orthodox or "Irish" liturgical traditions.

Yes we do, I specifically referred to this in my last post... Gallacia was settled by the Germanic Suevi who converted to the Catholicism of their peasants even before the Goths did. In any case the Gallacians did not have much contact with the Celtic peoples of the British Isles, and besides to suppose that they did would contradict your supposition that this was an illiterate dark age .

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