Moorish Spain has a rather occult modernity.
IRL, there was a Hermetic Reformation in the early 1500s: Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and a few others that come to mind. It didn't go anywhere really big in Europe, for the perfectly valid reason that Europe at the time was having a much bigger shakeup in the form of the Protestant Reformation. Seville, however, isn't going to have that kind of shakeup. I don't see any new madhhab arising from its Malikism (although maybe a few tariqas from its late Sufism?) Everything about the flow of history points to the fact that the world-shaking events of the 1500s are simply going to reinforce their attitudes of (Maliki, Moorish) Islam as universal empire.
In that context, seizing on Bruno and della Mirandola would be a way to shake things up, emphasizing that Moorish Islam is a very different beast from the Turkish juggernaut that dominates the rest of Islamic Eurasia - and letting them enter modernity as the weird uncle of Europe rather than having modernity happen to them.
The problem is historiography.
Things don't just happen. In most universes, people assume that the way things happened for them are the only way it could have. They also perceive this as part of a continuity of progression from the past, especially with something (like Hermeticism) that draws its authority from its antiquity. Andalusada is going to write its own history, and given Moorish Hermeticism, they're going to wonder "Where was the occultism that Moorish Hermeticism came from in the past?"
I have an idea. It involves the Black Death.
Monday, April 30, 2012
The Guerillas of Toleto
The survival of Moorish Spain (in the form of Seville) effectively stalls the southern expansion of the Roman Rite. Under various iterations of Moorish rule, the Mozarabic liturgy survives long past the point where it died out IRL.
It also means that the struggle within the Spanish Church over which Rite to use is more pronounced, and much more politicized, because the major players - Aragon and Catalonia - are extremely tied to the Roman Rite. Their efforts to push south (and not purely military ones; witness the Gonzalans) are going to be resented, and perceived as imperialism, by the Christians living under Moorish rule.
This most frequently comes to a head in the Primate of Spain: Toleto, a city (like Batallos) on the edge of both the Christian and Moorish worlds, and (unlike Batallos) one that changes hands at least twice during the Middle Ages. [details?] In Milan, attempts to suppress the Ambrosian Rite led to repeated riots. Attempts to do the same in Toledo are going to lead to what are called, in hindsight, the guerillas: the little wars.
It also means that the struggle within the Spanish Church over which Rite to use is more pronounced, and much more politicized, because the major players - Aragon and Catalonia - are extremely tied to the Roman Rite. Their efforts to push south (and not purely military ones; witness the Gonzalans) are going to be resented, and perceived as imperialism, by the Christians living under Moorish rule.
This most frequently comes to a head in the Primate of Spain: Toleto, a city (like Batallos) on the edge of both the Christian and Moorish worlds, and (unlike Batallos) one that changes hands at least twice during the Middle Ages. [details?] In Milan, attempts to suppress the Ambrosian Rite led to repeated riots. Attempts to do the same in Toledo are going to lead to what are called, in hindsight, the guerillas: the little wars.
Introducing Saint Gonzalo of Lerida
After any big divergence, a region has a 100-year grace period to produce the same notable people, with the creative license increasing the further I get from that divergence.
Iberia's grace period runs out in 1181, which is problematic because that's before a bumper crop of its most significant figures are even born. Some can be handwaved a bit (the ibn Rushd family was well-entrenched and had produced brilliant minds for generations by that point, so Averroes might be salvageable), but some of them can't be - like Saint Dominic, for instance, without whom Western history to come gets very alien fast.
Fortunately for me, though, if you can't use the original, you can always use an Expy. All you need to do is adjust the superstructure to account for the changed base (yes, I know, but it works), and you can work around it interestingly. And if you choose the point you start at, you can even use the Expy to highlight the little changes in the world.
So now I'm going to introduce his replacement: St. Gonzalo of Lerida.
Iberia's grace period runs out in 1181, which is problematic because that's before a bumper crop of its most significant figures are even born. Some can be handwaved a bit (the ibn Rushd family was well-entrenched and had produced brilliant minds for generations by that point, so Averroes might be salvageable), but some of them can't be - like Saint Dominic, for instance, without whom Western history to come gets very alien fast.
Fortunately for me, though, if you can't use the original, you can always use an Expy. All you need to do is adjust the superstructure to account for the changed base (yes, I know, but it works), and you can work around it interestingly. And if you choose the point you start at, you can even use the Expy to highlight the little changes in the world.
So now I'm going to introduce his replacement: St. Gonzalo of Lerida.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Oliver Farrell
Andalusada has its *Luther, in the form of Johan Georg Günther. If only life was that simple. IRL, though, didn't have just one Protestantism: it had at least two.
*Protestantism does best in the liminal spaces of the Holy Roman Empire. The biggest of them is the Monastic State of the Teutonic Order, which Günther turns into Prussia in a way that winds up aborting the unification of Germany. But it's not the only liminal space of the HRE; another is the intersection of the Alps where Germany, Italy, and France run into each other. At the time, it was variously Lyons, Provence, Savoy, and the Eidgenossenschaft. We call it "Switzerland."
IRL, the other (and much more dominant) Protestantism was started there by Huldrych Zwingli. (Two of them, actually, because Zwingli also personally spun off the Anabaptists.) Herein, it begins in what I suspect is now part of France. And the guy who begins it is at once legendary, historic, and mythical.
His name is Oliver Farrell.
*Protestantism does best in the liminal spaces of the Holy Roman Empire. The biggest of them is the Monastic State of the Teutonic Order, which Günther turns into Prussia in a way that winds up aborting the unification of Germany. But it's not the only liminal space of the HRE; another is the intersection of the Alps where Germany, Italy, and France run into each other. At the time, it was variously Lyons, Provence, Savoy, and the Eidgenossenschaft. We call it "Switzerland."
IRL, the other (and much more dominant) Protestantism was started there by Huldrych Zwingli. (Two of them, actually, because Zwingli also personally spun off the Anabaptists.) Herein, it begins in what I suspect is now part of France. And the guy who begins it is at once legendary, historic, and mythical.
His name is Oliver Farrell.
Introducing Johan Georg Günther
By the time the Protestant Reformation should be rolling around, I've got my hands full and my ass handed to me.
Because by that point, the cumulative issues that have been set in motion by things have basically ensured that nobody recognizable's gonna be born. Even more seriously, even if the same analogues rise at about the same time, the ideas are gonna be different too, setting off which-came-first-the-base-or-the-superstructure arguments that ripple across the continuity.
For clarity's sake, I'm going to introduce one of those analogous figures now. His name is Johan Georg Günther, and he's the Antiluther.
Because by that point, the cumulative issues that have been set in motion by things have basically ensured that nobody recognizable's gonna be born. Even more seriously, even if the same analogues rise at about the same time, the ideas are gonna be different too, setting off which-came-first-the-base-or-the-superstructure arguments that ripple across the continuity.
For clarity's sake, I'm going to introduce one of those analogous figures now. His name is Johan Georg Günther, and he's the Antiluther.
Introducing Saint Sakura
A classic trope of yuri manga is that (Japan being blissfully ignorant of the ways of Christendom) our lesbian couple usually meets at a Catholic girls' school. This school is traditionally named after Saint Engrish, something feminine-sounding that's not actually from any Indo-European language.
Never is it a Japanese name.
I'm going to stand that on its head. Meet Saint Sakura.
Never is it a Japanese name.
I'm going to stand that on its head. Meet Saint Sakura.
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