[MUSIC] Welcome to Week 4, so, this class will be paternally entering as we down into a specific moment in Spanish history. Although this is, we're trying to cover a Medieval Europe as I'm a Spanish specialist, I wanted to share bits and pieces of what we've learned along the way, so this connection to scholasticism, this connection to warfare and coexistence in cities, but within this case study at really looking at Spain. So, this week we'll look at King Alfonso the Wise or the Learned, who ruled during the 13th century from the city of Toledo. Toledo is just south of Madrid today, and it really is an ancient city. And by that, I mean it was there during Roman times and beforehand. So, Alfonso is really interesting, because he lived in a period and time when right doing this century when things are starting to come back to life. In the 13th century, when intellectualism is being brought to life, that the economies are doing better, that there is more political stability inside of Castilian, Northern Spain. But in this context, what we can appreciate about Alfonso was that he was very intrigued with good governance, and he devoted a significant amount of time, in the same way that we see Charlemagne and his development of the Carolingian Renaissance, as we saw previously. Alfonso's projectedly well known for his contributions to legal systems. And specifically, a legal code known as Las Siete Partidas, literally mean The Seven-Part Legal Code. And it's so important in many ways. The elements of it still exist inside of modern law that you can might find in Texas, and even in Louisiana and in the United States. So, why is this legal code important? Well, primarily for two reasons, one is during the Reconquista, and during this Reconquis, Christian communities are moving further South, and they're encountering new populations that they've never had to govern in insignificant numbers. So, large numbers are Muslims, and also, larger collections of Jewish communities, and this poses a new challenge. These kind of different cultures. How are we going to co-exist? How are we going to govern ourselves? So, in the same way we that saw in Islamic Spain, and other regions of the world where you have religions minorities, and then religious majorities, how did they interact with each other? Well, here, Christians, at least initially in Southern Spain, were a population minority governing over a majority that was of a different religion. Whether that was a combination of Judaism and Islam, two different religions. So [FOREIGN] that's one thing that's pretty interesting, and that is, it dictates how Jews and Muslim should be treated, how they should dressed, how they should interact with Christians that they're allowed to have conjugal relations with other religions. And what might be the penalties for violating these kind of boundaries? So, that's particularly intriguing. It's also, though, it's much more than that. And I just wanted to highlight two pieces you will see this week, beautifully illuminated manuscript from [FOREIGN] from the 15th century on the course, and I invite you to enjoy its beauty. But more importantly, is its content, and just to kind of, again, kind of introduce its concepts. And these types of legal concepts are developing all across Europe in this time period, because of scholasticism, and this interest in learning. But for instance, the first part of the law that Alfonso creates deals with cannon law. So, this is religious law. Two deals with purage law. So, this is about law relating to nobles in relationship to other nobles. Third part relates to procedural law and administrations of justice. So, you can start to see, wow, it's very particular what it wants to look at. Part four deals with civil law, so this would be marriage and human relations. This is a lot where we'll see these issues of how different communities will interact with each other. Five deals of commercial law, very important, because as the economy grows, more interaction conflicts, we have to resolve this things. And then we have six deals with a state law, so, you can see it looks like modern legal assessment. And finally, the seventh section deals with criminal law. And it's a quite an extensive illegal system, so you can go ahead and look at a couple elements of that in terms of religious coexistence. And I think it's important to share of those, because these are some of the most challenging times for us, I think, in that ways. How we appreciate difference, since I want to highlight those. The other piece that we'll see this week relates to the development of universities. So, last week, we saw how classicism was pushing along the development of universities in Italy and in France, but we see the simultaneous one inside of Spain. So Alphonso, his legal system, this seven part law, also deals with the creation of the first universities in Spain, and specifically the University of Salamanca, and it's an incredible institution. And it establishes the basic guidelines about what will be taught, how individuals will be educated there, what are the requirements for professors. So, you'll see a bit of that as well. I think the last important piece to kind of appreciate about this is really this element of where is this intellectual development occurring? And often, I think in our modern world today, in this 21st century, we have this appreciation for, [INAUDIBLE] shows a split between church and state. And it's kind of an embedded principle of modern secular politics. Certainly in the United States, how we separate religion from state. Well, in this period in the Middle Ages, and really, very much all the way up to modern period, and before we really have the age of revolutions, the French revolution in the 18th century. Really, these two are never separated. And so, the development of sciences and technology and revival of this pagan thought, Greek thought is actually done within the context of cathedrals. And they are done by religious leaders. So, it tells you something, I think, intriguing about the period which is, there is sufficient open mindedness inside a church institution to allow for, and to explore other ideas that might not be fully explainable by Godly phenomena. And so, this obviously will get more and more important as we move further towards the Renaissance and the 1400s, and certainly by the 1500s and 1600s, when you have individuals like Galileo in Italy, who is discovering and proposing, and remembering Copernicus and saying, wait a second. Maybe the Earth is not the center of the Universe, or not the center of our Solar System. And his observations of Jupiter and seeing its moons suggest something different. But, at least up until that period, there was this constant ebb and flow of discovery and testing those limits. So, I think it's a particular accomplishment of the European age, of the Middle Ages, is how it was able to balance. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully, this investigation of things that we're just not sure about. Okay, enjoy this class, and we will see you soon.
