In 1449, a Toledo edict made racial discrimination legal. According to historians like David Brion Davis, the Spanish categorization and treatment of Jews “provided the final seedbed for Christian Negrophobic racism,” and “gave rise to a more general concern over ‘purity of blood’—limpieza de sangre in Spanish—and thus to an early conception of biological race.”
Between one-third and one-half of the Spanish Jews, who comprised the largest community in Europe at that time, were compelled to convert to Christianity under threat of torture through brutal methods devised by the church. Those who refused faced public execution, typically by hanging or burning, resulting in the largest mass conversion in modern history.
Certain "conversos" achieved great success and wealth, akin to Othello, which led to significant animosity towards these "New Christians". In a time of political turmoil in 15th century Castile, conversos, who backed the monarchs, were targeted as scapegoats due to the rulers' weaknesses. In various cities, conflicts erupted between "Old Christians" and "New Christians". New Christian converts of Muslim descent were called moriscos. Unlike Jewish conversos, moriscos faced expulsion orders even after embracing Catholicism.
Some Moriscos fled to places like Ireland and Scotland. Niger Val Dubh (Niger the Black) lived and reigned over certain black divisions in Scotland, and some histories state that a people known as ‘the sons of the blacks’ succeeded him.A curious aspect of the early history of Scotland concerns various stories around King Kenneth. King Kenneth was also known as ‘Kenneth the Niger’ or Kenneth Dubh, a surname which means ‘the black man’.
Throughout history, many seafaring warriors from North Africa traveled through Iberia into Europe, integrating into various cultures and holding positions of power. Kenneth III reigned as the King of Scotland from 997 to 1005. He was the son of King Dubh (Dub mac Mail Choluim – 962-967), the fourth cousin of the preceding monarch Constantine III, and the first cousin of his successor Malcolm II. Kenneth was the final Scottish monarch to ascend the throne under the tanistry system, where the succession alternated between two family lines and the incumbent king designated his heir from the other lineage. This setup resulted in ongoing conflicts between the ruling families and was eventually discontinued. Kenneth and his son Giric met their demise in the battle of Monzievaird, Tayside in 1005.
His first cousin Malcolm took over the throne and put an end to the tanistry system by eliminating all of Kenneth's male descendants. Nonetheless, Kenneth's granddaughter Gruoch, through his daughter Boite, survived. Boite's first spouse, Gillacomgain, fathered a son named Lulach. Gruoch later married King Macbeth I of Scotland (subsequently known as Lady Macbeth). Following Macbeth's death, her son from her first marriage, Kenneth III's great grandson, ascended to the throne as King Lulach of Scotland. According to this account, Kenneth's lineage continues to run through the royal families of Scotland.
The aboriginal Britons (England, Wales ,Scotland) were described by Tacitus, ancient Roman as swarthy, short and curly haired. Jacobite ideology originated with James VI and I, who in 1603 became the first monarch to rule all three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. A political ideology advocating the restoration of the Catholic House of Stuart to the British throne. When James II of England chose exile after the November 1688 Glorious Revolution, the Parliament of England ruled he had "abandoned" the English throne, which was given to his Protestant daughter Mary II of England, and her husband William III.
The House of Stewart commenced its reign as the royal family of Scotland in 1371 when Robert II ascended to the throne, who was the namesake, grandson, and a stark contrast to the renowned Robert Bruce. Also known as Robert the Bruce (Scottish Gaelic: Raibeart am Brusach), he reigned as King of Scots from 1306 until his passing in 1329. Robert the Bruce was the eighth in line from a Norman knight named Robert de Bruce, who took the name after a Norman castle called Bruis or Brix. The original Robert de Bruce arrived in England alongside William the Conqueror, who was also known as William the Bastard, the initial Norman ruler of England.
The Revolution established the concept of a covenant between the monarch and the people, whereby breaching it could lead to the removal of the monarch. A central belief of Jacobitism was that kings were chosen by God, rendering the government after 1688 as unlawful. Nonetheless, Jacobitism also served as a channel for public dissatisfaction, embodying a blend of conflicting ideologies, some of which were not supported by the Stuarts. The dispute between Prince Charles and Scottish Jacobites regarding the Acts of Union in 1707 and the divine right significantly weakened the 1745 uprising.
Charles Edward Stuart believed that the British throne rightfully belonged to him and he intended to launch an invasion with his Jacobite supporters to overthrow the Hanoverian King George II, whom he considered an illegitimate ruler. Born in Rome in 1720, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria Stuart was determined to restore his father to the thrones of Scotland, England, and Ireland. However, he grew increasingly disheartened and resentful due to the lack of support and what he perceived as betrayal from his father and younger brother, Henry Benedict. Despite his efforts to distance the Stuarts from Catholicism to gain support in England, Henry's decision to convert to Catholicism, with their father's approval, deeply wounded Charles. In a bid to garner more support, Charles even converted to Anglicanism during a secret visit to London in 1750, cutting off all communication with his father thereafter.
Jacobite propagandists argued, similarly to Joseph de Maistre's criticism of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, that a strong monarchy was the most stable form of government. At the simplest level, the Jacobite rising of 1745 was the last in a series of contests between the House of Hanover and the House of Stuart to decide who should be king of the three kingdoms. When the Stuarts gained power a period called Stuart Iconoclasm occurred of whitewashing the images of the royal line. The Protestant Reformation involved a massive effort to reform images to reflect an Anglo Saxon heritage/personage in all historic figures.
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