To move us and convince us to accept the thousands of Afghans who have failed to fight for their lives and freedom, the feminists and socialists on duty this August tell us what the Taliban regime means, especially for women, “Back to the middle ages”…
We have public opinion journalism that we don’t deserve. Jokes aside. The teachers who raised these talking busts and the directors of the radio and television companies that run the microphones deserve it. Leave the Middle Ages alone, you cretins! I know this is being used like the culmination of ignorance, oppression, savagery and other vicesbut the time has come to destroy the themes about this millennium of European history that are being made in universities, in order to leave them and spread throughout society.
Cathedrals, parliaments and bills of exchange
First, it must be borne in mind that the decline in living standards, demography, trade and political stability began at the end of the Roman Empire and continued until the 10th century, when the invasions of Muslims, Normans and Magyars ended. Since then, the Middle Ages (a concept created later, such as Byzantium, Anjou Empire, Enlightenment, or Weimar Republic) has been expanding its the renewing and creative power fed by Christianity, oh fear!
I know they found universities under the double protection of monarchies and papacy. The circulation of professors, students and books among various universities was enormous. The titles were accepted without the cumbersome procedures that have to go through today. And Latin served as the ubiquitous and simpler English language.
The first parliaments appear, limiting the power of kings and imposing taxes. The sensation takes place in León in 1188 and then moves to other kingdoms. In those legislative chambers where monarchs ask for money, there are attorneys sent by cities, commoners and bourgeois, who argue on equal terms with aristocratic and church magnates.
I know build Romanesque churches and Gothic cathedrals… Chivalry spreads by promoting the ideals of justice and praising women. Long-distance navigation and trade are developed, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Baltic and Constantinople. Genoese and Venetians bring spices. The Portuguese begin to reach the African coast, and the Castilians conquer the Canary Islands. A financial loan is accepted and payment methods such as a bill of exchange are being developed. Masterpieces are written in Romance languages that are beginning to emerge, and miracles are created in sculpture, carving, and painting. Tens of thousands of people study in parish schools, regardless of gender.
Islam, while retaining its aggressiveness and expansion, soon fell into cultural and scientific lethargy. In the 9th century (during the reign of Caliph Al-Mutawakkil), the school of the Mu’tazilites was defeated, and the interpretation was imposed that the Quran was created by Allah and that it collects all the necessary human knowledge. Hence the scientific stagnation of Islam and the periodic destruction of libraries, similar to the one carried out by Almanzor in Cordoba. Call School of translators (which consisted of the Crown’s commission to translate books to scholars) was born in Toledo only after the conquest of the city by Alfonso VI in 1085.
In a striking text recently published in the magazine Spanish mind (No. 226, May-June 2021) Professor Luis Suarez explains the taxation of the late Middle Ages in some words that readers Digital freedom:
The difference between the mentality of men of the late Middle Ages and our own could not have been more radical, and this can be seen in taxes. The idea of a progressive tax would seem monstrous. Medieval tax is indirect in nature: they pay for land, goods or raw materials. But when, for the needs of the state, the direct tax on the state expands and expands, it is not established gradually, but, on the contrary, regressively. That is, once the poor are split up who do not pay, a fortune scale is set for the payout; Upon reaching a certain level, all properties exceeding it were exempt from tax. This behavior is extremely strange to us, but the people of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were very careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs: without the rich, what hope do the poor have of finding a livelihood?
Yes, the Inquisition originated in France in the XII century against the heresy of the Cathars, but the burning of witches by the thousands, religious wars, the confiscation of communal lands by monarchs and the insatiable nobility under the pretext of Reform and the closure of universities in different European countries for foreigners took place in New time, in the 16-17 centuries … In France, the revolution closed all universities, considering them a relic of the old regime.
Women with power
Christianity, which places the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, as the most exalted human being, softened first through customs and then through legislation, Roman laws, which they put the women in constant care. Thus, in the Middle Ages, women had legal capacity: they could testify and inherit, make contracts, and even create companies.
Many of them dedicated their lives to what they wanted; An example is the Hispanic Egeria, a pilgrim to holy places between 381 and 384, who also wrote an account of her travels because They knew how to read and write!
They were also considered worthy to participate in government. We can refer to Roman empresses such as Helena, mother of Constantine and who opened the Holy Sepulcher; Gala Placidia, daughter of Theodosius; and Theodora, wife of Justinian. And Queen Baddo, wife of Recaredo, who signed the minutes of the Third Council of Toledo, at which the Goths were converted to Catholicism. Other powerful Visigoths were Brunkilde and Goswinta.
V late The Middle Ages meet the first queens-owners. In Spain, the list is opened by Urraca de Leon (r. 1109–1126). Berenguela I of Castile ruled for only a few weeks, in 1217, and abdicated in his son Ferdinand III… She then served as the governor of the kingdom, and after the child came of age, as an adviser. Since I believe that the Middle Ages ended with the discovery of America, I include Isabella I of Castile (reigned 1479–1504). Navarre had the following 13th century queens: Juan I (reigned 1274-1305), Juan II (reigned 1328-1349), Blanca I (reigned 1421-1445), Leonore I (reigned 1479) and Catalina. I (p. 1483-1513).
And we cannot forget the abbots of the monasteries, some of whom opposed kings and magnates. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), ambassador of the Florentine Republic, demanded that Pope Gregory XI return to Rome and cleanse the Church. Does anyone know a Muslim woman who would dare to reproach the Caliph for his behavior?
Loss of women’s rights occurs in the modern eraespecially after the French Revolution. Napoleon’s Civil Code, later copied in the rest of Europe, introduces two novelties to the law in force at the time in Europe: the reintroduction of divorce and the transformation of women into minors.
Age of Genocides
How do generations born in the twentieth century, the most criminal and genocidal in history, dare to criticize another time? Since 1914, disrespect for human life and dignity has become incalculable. Two world wars; abortion has become a soulless industry; the death camps of communist and national socialist tyranny; politically motivated famine in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Bengal; terrorism (almost always leftist ideology); streams of refugees fleeing wars and paradise on earth …
To force his subjects to resist and fight the German invasion, Stalin established a punishment regime for those who weakened him, which only from mid-1941 to the whole of 1942 included the execution of the NKVD at least 198 thousand Red Army soldiers (Norman Davis, Europe in the war of 1939-1945). Neither the monarchs nor the most ruthless generals of the Middle Ages treated their troops with such cruelty.
Afghans (and Saudis, and Yemenis, and Somalis …) would like to live with the status of medieval Christian women. Let’s not apologize for what our elders have done, or let the distraught left take what we are.