Purchase
From historian James Reston, Jr., comes a riveting account of the pivotal events of 1492, a year when towering political ambitions, horrific religious excesses, and a drive toward adventure and conquest changed the world forever.
Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors
Doubleday
October 2005
384 pages ISBN: 0385508484 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
The Dogs of God chronicles one of the most savage
epochs in human history, the years of the Spanish
Inquisition. In an effort to consolidate their power on the
Iberian peninsula and free themselves from the yoke of the
Vatican, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella turned to the
priest Tomás de Torquemada, a member of the Dominican
order. Torquemada urged an Inquisition that would
strengthen the sovereigns’ authority throughout Spain,
particularly in the coming campaign against the Moors of
Granada. When Granada fell, tens of thousands of Muslims
were given the choice of converting to Christianity or
facing death or banishment. Torquemada then turned his
ferocity on Spain’s Jews, forcing upon them the same grim
choice. And in the end, more than 120,000 Jews left their
homeland. With rich characterizations of the central players and
breathtaking descriptions of the starkly beautiful Iberian
peninsula, Dogs of God also portrays a time during which
the entanglement of religious and political passions set
the stage for the birth of modern Europe. Ferdinand and
Isabella, in solidifying their control over the Iberian
peninsula, also presaged the creation of the modern state,
with its centralized authority and its collective sense of
identity. Reston’s engrossing narrative brings all of the horrors of
the Spanish Inquisition into a terrifyingly brutal focus.
And he looks beyond the dark deeds of 1492 as well,
capturing the excitement of exploration and the promise of
the future that was born in the same year. With an iron
grip secured on the political affairs of Spain, Ferdinand
and Isabella turned their eyes toward the New World and the
creation of an empire—and toward a young sea captain named
Christopher Columbus.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|