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the spanish reverence     TheSpanishReverence chapter two    In order to understand the impact of theVirgin Mary in Latin America, it is essential to understand the way in which her cult and image fit into the sacred landscape of Spain, metaphorically and literally. Muslim invasions had pushed well into the north of the peninsula during the late seventh and early eighth centuries, and Christian resistance grew in the following centuries . The Virgin would be increasingly linked with the efforts to force the Moors south again, an effort which would be completed largely by the end of the thirteenth century.The final elimination of Muslim control, however, would not be concluded until the watershed year of , when Isabel and Fernando, the Catholic Kings (known more popularly in English as Ferdinand and Isabella), would take Granada. Isabel and her consort were highly devoted to the Virgin, as were most of the Spanish of their time. Their entrance into the city of Granada in that year met ragged and hungry Christian captives released from its prisons, walking in file behind a cross and an image of Mary. The year was significant. Only a few months later, Christopher Columbus would make his famous voyage to the New World, encountering there not only the possibilities of riches (though not enough, initially, for his tastes) but also souls for conversion. Columbus, like so many of his time, was devoted to theVirgin, long regarded as the protector of mariners and identified with Stella Maris, the North Star, by far the most important of all stars to sailors and essential for navigation in the fifteenth century. Indeed, Mary as Stella Maris is still revered in Mediterranean communities. The Virgin was connected with other crucial matters during the period  ,       known as the Reconquest, during which Christian forces, when not fighting each other, were driving Muslims slowly south. Many of these same themes would recur in Latin America from the moment of encounter through the sixteenth century and indeed into the present. Mary was particularly connected to conversion in the Spain of Muslims and Jews and in the New World of indigenous peoples; to fertility, of humans, fields, and animals; and to health and especially protection from epidemics, reflecting the European plagues of the late Middle Ages and the terrible devastation from European diseases in Latin America during and after the Conquest. It is likely that parents bereft of stricken children, and children left orphans, would respond to the powerful images of Mary as a devoted and helping mother. She occupied the position of the most powerful intercessor between humans and God on land and sea. She also was identified with war and conquest, particularly of peoples perceived as non-Christian. Some scholars believe that Marian devotion in Spain was related to earlier mother goddesses, often those associated with fertility and closely tied to the Spanish landscape. In fact, it would be an error to imagine that the Iberian Peninsula before , the date usually used to signify the farthest Moorish advance, was securely Christian. Only in , if we are to believe the standard accounts, did theVisigothic King Recarred declare himself and Spain to be Catholic rather than Arian, settling the issue of Christian disunity at least in ideological terms. A Christian Spain, in which the Church was securely bound to politics and developing Spanish nationalism , continued to be a work in progress during the years leading up to . Still, it is perhaps useful to see the Reconquest as a sort of civil war in which religion played a major role. However, Christian forces often fought each other on the peninsula before . Isabel’s own succession to the crown of Castile in  was heavily contested by other Christian hopefuls. It would also be a mistake to see the peninsula at the beginning of the Reconquest as entirely Muslim to the south, with Christians only in the far north. Christians, known as Mozarabs, lived in all parts of the Muslim-held territory; Muslim slaves were brought north, and Muslims continued to reside in reconquered regions. And all regions contained Jews. Relationships between the three groups were often strained and sometimes violent, and in ordering Jews expelled, Isabel brought to culmination a process long under way. Muslim expulsion shortly thereafter was also the result of a long process . The differences between these populations were framed in religious terms often associated with the Virgin. What would be Spain was being defined through religion, both institutional and popular, along with territorial and...

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