So why did 'Columbus sail the ocean blue' in 1492?

wnd.com ^ | 8/4/2019 | Bill Federer

[rktman]

“There are but 155 years left … at which time … the world will come to an end,” wrote Christopher Columbus in his book “Libro de Las Profecias,” composed in 1502 between his third and fourth voyages.

Columbus continued: “… The sign which convinces me that our Lord is hastening the end of the world is the preaching of the Gospel recently in so many lands.”

Though his predictions were off, Columbus’ writings revealed his motivation for setting sail on his first voyage Aug. 3, 1492, with the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria. He sought to find a sea route to India and China as the Islamic Ottoman Turks had closed off the land routes 40 years earlier.

The background of the Islamic state occupying large areas of Europe began when Muslim crusaders, called “Moors,” invaded Spain in 711 A.D. With a cavalry of 80,000, Moors wielding curved scimitar swords, “went through all places like a desolating storm.” The Mozarabic Chronicle, 754 A.D., recorded that thousands of churches were burned and: “God alone knows the number of the slain.”

In 846 A.D., just 46 years after Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome’s old St. Peter’s Basilica, 11,000 Muslims on 73 ships invaded Rome and sacked the Basilica. They looted old St. Peter’s basilica and desecrated the grave of St. Peter. Invaders then trashed the remains of St. Paul, which were in the historic church, San Paolo fuori le Mura (St Paul’s outside the Walls). As a result of this invasion, Pope Leo IV began building a massive wall to protect the Vatican from Muslims raiders.

[Fresh Wind]

He wanted to open the first Italian restaurant in the New World.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hzDJiVfJo

[Cronos]

Now look at Spain and the EU today demanding that Britain give up Gibraltar as part of Brexit.

The EU isn't demanding it

Spain has always claimed that the British illegally conquered that land

The historical FACT is that the English and Dutch fleet conquered Gibraltar in 1704 during the (arguably first world war) Spanish war of succession and the English got it after fighting off the Dutch

The people of Gibraltar continuously vote 98% + that they wish to remain a British colony, so that settles the question of the ROCK of Gibraltar

HOWEVER, Spain has a point about the land on which the airport is built. THAT isn't part of the Treaty of Utrecht and the airport is technically built on Spanish land

incidentally 96% of native Gibraltarians voted to REMAIN in the EU. But out of those 96%, I believe very few would want to leave the UK and go to Spain, so they are in a bad position - they don't want to leave the UK nor the EU (unlike Scotland which is happy enough to leave the UK and join the EU)

[Cronos]

The trade routes to the east were closed to Europe when the Muslims took Constantinople.

Yes and Gibraltar no longer matters so much to the UK because the UK now mainly exports services

I forgot to add to the above - the situation of Gibraltar's airport lying on Spanish territory is kinda vaguely like the situation of Hong Kong -- the Kowloon territories were on a 99 year lease (unlike Hong Kong island which was "forever") but w/o Kowloon, HK was not viable

It's only an analogy - the differences are that, unlike Kowloon, the airport land in Gibraltar was not under any treaty so technically on Spanish land. And Spain isn't going to war with England for Gibraltar. And Gibraltar is still viable without the airport land.

[Cronos]

On the present course Spain will be a Muslim country in 20-40 years

Actually it isn't - neither is the UK nor the US going to be Muslim countries (the rate of growth in the past 10 years is the same)inhabitants who are Muslim - but the majority are temporary residents from Morocco. The actual number of Moslem citizens is about the same % as the USA and far lower than the UK's

[Cronos]

The people in southern Italy have Greek features - as it was part of Magna Graecia. The actual "arab" or semitic genetics are around 1% or less. They do have some Berber genetic % - but these seem mostly from Roman times or earlier

Moslems were in southern Italy for a few decades and a century or so in Sicily, but were a tiny military elite residing on top of a larger population - their genetic contributions are miniscule

[Cronos]

err.. actually false over-simplification.

Spain freed itself from 700 years of moorish (muslim) rule. - Spain didn't suddenly free itself.

This is the Iberian peninsula in 800 AD. Mostly Moslem, but there was a chunk in the North-West that was still Christian

Then here's Iberia in 1000 AD

And you see that 25% is already in Christian hands

Then 1200 AD - and most is already in Christian hands

And in 1400

And already by 1400 nearly everything is in Christian hands

<=============

So chunks of Spain were under Muslim rule for only a few decades (Galicia, Basque country) at most. And other chunks were there for centuries

[Cronos]

Next, the Spanish Inquisition

The total number executed was too many - it was 3000 people over 400 years. Yet that's lower than the numbers killed in the Witch hunts in the UK and the Americas at the same time

And, it's a lower conviction rate than the civil courts

What WAS the inquistion? It wasn't targeted against Protestants (there were practically none in the Iberian peninsula), it wasn't particularly against Jews (if they didn't convert, they were kicked out - not nice either, but stick with this) - it was targeted against sleeper agent Muslims who faked conversion to Christianity but were a fourth estate

the REASON the Spain is wholly Catholic and Spanish, without (until very recent years) a Muslim or Moorish "fifth column" within is BECAUSE the Spanish Church carried on relentless spiritual warfare and uprooted Islam utterly and totally drove it from Spain, after 500 years of entrenchment. That is no mean feat. The Muslims themselves were not as effective at WHOLLY driving Christians from the Middle East as Spanish Catholicism was at expunging Islam from Iberia. Nowhere else on the battlefield between Islam and Christianity were the Muslims not only defeated in the field and at sea (by Spain, in Spain and at Lepanto and elsewhere), but the religion actually extinguished. The Spanish were militarily very aggressive and effective - that is why they won - but that militant nature was also expressed spiritually, which is why they also won the spiritual war with Islam.

the Spanish inquisition during its time was the least brutal judicial institution in early modern Europe.

it's aim was eradicating the MOSLEM fourth column

Out of 200,000 odd people prosecuted by the Inquisition during the centuries of its existence, about 3500 were executed. An execution rate of less than 2%. The vast majority of people were absolved or convicted/reconciled without severe punishment.

Out of the roughly 350, 000 converts from Judaism present in Spain during the 1500s and 1600s, probably less than 1000 were executed over a period of 200 years or 7 generations. If we annualize the execution rate, it means that you are more likely to be murdered as a London resident in 2018 than you were to be executed as a Jew in Spain by the Spanish Inquisition. 1.6/100,000 compared to a homicide rate of 2.4 in London.

The Spanish inquisition was the only court in Europe which did not systematically use torture. Every secular court in continental Europe did so with no limit whatsoever while the Spanish Inquisition had strict rules and restrictions on its use. In fact it was frequent for petty criminals to blaspheme when apprehended to come under the inquisitions jurisdiction. According to Jewish American historian Stephen Haliczer, torture was used in less than 2% of cases, never more than one session in total and always following strict procedure.

If we just look at the same time and only in Protestant Germany, over 35,000 witches were burned during the same period. Just compare the death count with the total of 3,500 for the whole range of crimes over which the Inquisition had jurisdiction in the entire Spanish empire.

That's only Germany - there were witch hunts in the British Empire as well

The Spanish Inquisition was bad by today's standards. But it was pretty good for the standards of the time. It certainly does not compare to the hundreds of thousands massacred in Central Europe during the Counter Reformation, the 30,000 Huguenots massacred in France or the estimated 260,000 gruesomely executed in England alone, including thousands of Catholics, during the same period.

[Cronos]

So, let me repeat that -- The Spanish Inquisition was bad by today's standards. But it was pretty good for the standards of the time. It certainly does not compare to the hundreds of thousands massacred in Central Europe during the Counter Reformation, the 30,000 Huguenots massacred in France or the estimated 260,000 gruesomely executed in England alone, including thousands of Catholics, during the same period.

So that "draconian brutality over 25 generations" is demonstrably a false statement in your post, n_and_v

[meowmeow]

The Troubles is a great read...read it while traveling through Ireland many years ago.

Bookmark for later...great thread!

[Cronos]

I assume you meant to put /sarc at the end of your post :)

[Cronos]

"were transplanted Polish nobles with a tight family connections to Northern religious orders of Knights"

Wherever did you get that from? Both his parents were Italian for generations

[Rebelbase]

Heard about the old time sailor men. The’d eat the same thing again and again. Warm beer and bread they said could raise the dead but it reminds me of menu at a Holiday Inn.

[mad_as_he$$]

Chris apparently knew the correct diameter of Erf but since his father in law shared the Viking scale of how far it was across the ocean he decided to go on the smaller scale.

[null and void]

It was a bit of an over simplification. Thanks for the extra info.

[Cronos]

It was a common error.

That the Spanish threw out the last Muslim rulers in 1491 belies the fact that for hundreds of years they had already conquered back large chunks of the peninsula.

It is also a common error about the Spanish inquisition - this is propaganda spread by English Anglicans - along with the other propaganda by Gibbons (who praised Islam among other things)

[Alas Babylon!]

Columbus also sailed from Ireland to Iceland earlier... Picked up a lot of Viking lore and newer info there, too.

[iowamomforfreedom]

bkmrk

[dfwgator]

Maybe he just felt like it.

[rktman]

Or a nagging wife in the same manner as hildabeast? Or worse-—moochie?!

[teppe]

Sorry I got busy and lost the jist of this thread. But I did find your comment that Columbus discovered America as a result of Muslims closing the overland-spice trade routes very interesting. And truthfully, I had never heard that before.