[WorkerBee28474]

You pretend like it was a bunch of villages living in happy harmony until the Catholics arrived. You're lying. It was part of the post-Roman empire, then it got conquered by Muslims, then it got re-conquered by Catholics. Hence, reconquista.

[netdevnet]

Off-topic but why do people keep referring to Catholic Christians as Catholics as opposed to just Christians? I noticed that a lot in anglo-saxon spheres. It seems to function as an othering technique. I wonder if you are aware of you doing it. Other groups don't seem to get that kind of categorisation (just look at this thread)

[Tainnor]

Saying "catholics" instead of "Christians" is about the same as saying "Visigoths" instead of "Germanic tribes". I don't know why you would resist more precision. In the context of the times, it stands in opposition to e.g. "Eastern orthodox" (after the Great schism) or "Aryan".

[netdevnet]

I understand that it is a more precise term but my point is why does that additional precision matters in this particular context? All that is relevant is that a big external force came to unify a bunch of tribes. Christian seems good enough. On the other hand, why stop at "Visigoths"? You could list the actual sub-groups too. You can do the same with "Catholics" too.

But we don't because additional precision is not always necessary and in a context of several sub-groups, you would seem to emphasise a difference between them (by referring to the sub-group name) rather than their common name (Christians).

It's just something that I notice a lot in anglo-saxon (see non-Catholics) contexts and almost never outside the anglosphere.

[WorkerBee28474]

> Off-topic but why do people keep referring to Catholic Christians as Catholics as opposed to just Christians

Mostly because it's a way to communicate such that the listener knows who you're talking about. Another example is calling Mormons 'Mormon' instead of Christian.

If you say 'Christian' people will think of what is likely in that geographic area the most common type of Christian, probably some form of protestant. If you say 'Catholic' the listener knows that you're talking about the group of people who follow the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. If you say 'Mormon', they'll also know who you mean.

It's also possible to subdivide the group referred to above as 'Christian' - you can use 'Baptist', 'Pentecostal', etc. Those are also names that aren't "Christian" for groups of Christians.

[netdevnet]

But why does it matter in a general context? It's like me referring to a group of people by the colour of their shoes or the material of the coats that they wear. It seems oddly segregational.

"Probably some kind protestant" surely, it would be Catholic as that's the largest denomination.

But my point is why you need to specify what kind of Christians are you talking about? Or why would you assume that you are talking about a subset of Christians only? Imagine talking about the weather in the western world in terms of city neighbourhoods. Sure, it helps knowing what specific area you are talking about but it seems oddly meticulous. I don't know if this is an anglo-saxon thing as I have seen Brits and North Americans talking in this way. But I haven't seen anyone from Germany, Italy or Spain talking in this way.

I suspect it might be a thing that people raised in non-Catholic countries say because in my experience, Catholics will see all Christians as Christians and not with some othering kind of word (see us-vs-them group dynamics in psychology). That othering emphasises the differences (often used by people that seek to distance themselves from them all despite the commonalities) while using the same word highlights the commonalities (often used by people that embraces them all despite the differences) I notice this non-Catholic pattern of us-vs-them othering in the context of Catalonia and Taiwan too so I suspect it might be an us-vs-them group dynamics thing.

[shsbdksn]

To emphasis that we, like the Orthodox, Copts, Syriacs, etc. have apostolic succession while the protestants do not.

[netdevnet]

Surely you can just say something like apostolic Christians or something but I find it odd that for individuals whose core belief is a figure called Christ that they wouldn't use the original term "Christian" to refer to themselves and instead keep breaking away from each and using new words for their group every time they don't agree with each other

[dumah]

Some Protestants hold that Catholicism is not a sect of Christianity due to a number of beliefs, such as the different requirements for salvation.

I don’t know how common this belief is in the US but I personally have encountered a number of people that believe this.

[netdevnet]

Interesting, I have never heard of that. Which is funny because Catholicism is far older than Protestantism

[WorkerBee28474]

They were one and the same until some people protested against the Catholic church telling people they could buy their way into Heaven - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses

[shsbdksn]

The sale of indulgences didn't work quite like that. The Catholic Church, like the Orthodox, has free confession which is the stairway to heaven.

The sale of indulgences was a charitable donation done to mitigate the penalties of Purgatory.

Abuses were committed, but the telling of the protestants is quite fantastic. It was not, for example, a get-of-Hell sale

[juunpp]

I don't pretend or lie. Historians put the start of Spain as a unified nation with the Catholic monarchs. Spain did not exist as a nation prior to then. Hence, nothing to conquer "back", just a succession of empires and smaller kingdoms and a melting of cultures consolidating into the birth of the nation that it is today.

[hn_throwaway_99]

You're making this weird semantic distinction that is irrelevant. Nobody is arguing that Spain was a single, completely unified polity before the Islamic conquests. But it was controlled by the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of Spain, and then it was conquered by the Islamic Umayyads, so the reconquista was to bring it back under Christian rule.

[juunpp]

The semantic distinction is relevant because Reconquista, with the capital R and everything, is an ideological, propagandistic narrative by the Spanish (central government) originating in the 20th century.

[lolinder]

This is begging the question.

You're arguing that nothing was reconquered and the term is pure propaganda because the state didn't exist pre-Muslim conquest. Now you're using your conclusion (the term is pure propaganda) to explain why the lack of a pre-Islam state is relevant. You're arguing in circles.

You have yet to provide any evidence that the term originated as early modern propaganda, you've just asserted that it must have on the grounds that the state didn't exist before (which as OP says is unconvincing reasoning).

If you were saying that it was 15th century propaganda I'd have a much easier time swallowing it, but you're trying to insist it's a modern construct and that's a tough sell. We're talking about a time period overlapping with literal crusades. It's not a stretch to think that the Christian kingdoms (yes, plural) saw themselves as reclaiming the peninsula for Christendom.

[juunpp]

I did provide the evidence, but it was in a different sub-thread:

https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/20191208/47205574...

[lolinder]

From the Google translate of that article:

> The concept was born from the chroniclers of the Christian kingdoms “when they recovered what is called the neo-Gothic ideal ” by which “the kings of Asturias, then of León and then of Castile proclaimed themselves descendants and legitimate heirs of the Gothic kings,”

> ...

> the idea of Reconquista “was a myth that only began to take shape from the 11th century as part of the program of royal legitimacy promoted by the clergy of Burgundy in support of the claim of the dynasty of Castile and León to have sovereignty over the entire Peninsula.”

So it's medieval propaganda, not early modern propaganda. That I can buy.

I'm not particularly interested in whether the word Reconquista is used by these people if even these historians agree that they saw themselves through that lens. Whether they had a correct understanding of the history behind the Muslim presence is a separate question from whether they believed they were reconquering.

[amiga386]

You keep saying "20th century" when the term was first popularised in the 1840s, and one scholar has traced the term back to 1795. See De la Restauración a la Reconquista: la construcción de un mito nacional (Una revisión historiográfica. Siglos XVI-XIX) https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ELEM/article/viewFile/ELEM... (PDF)

> the first time that the term "reconquista" was used to refer to the fight against the Muslims was in the work of José Ortíz y Sanz entitled Compendio cronológico de la historia de España, published after 1795. The use of the term, however, did not spread until the 1840s thanks to two new editions of Ortiz's work and the publication of the Historia general by Modesto Lafuente.

So the term did not originate in the 20th century, but it was added to the dictionary in 1936.

16th-19th century historians would have used the term "restoration". The northern kingdoms prosecuting this supposed restoration were keen to claim their legitimacy as a continuation of the entire Visigoth Kingdom, and made it their business to recapture it... even if they never held that territory.

[cryptonector]

If we're going to be pedantic, the capital-R Reconquista name for the process of the -uh- re-conquest of Spain was introduced in the 19th century. And it was used throughout Latin America in elementary schoolbooks at least in the 1980s. Franco might have wanted to do some propagandizing with the term, but it was mainly seen as a non-partisan propaganda because Catholicism was a unifying force in Hispanic cultures rather than a partisan and divisive one.

[pvaldes]

Let me guess. You are Catalonian, right?

[cryptonector]

La Vanguardia certainly is.

It seems like a bit of iconoclasm to deny the Reconquista because it helps (does it?) with the Catalan claim to independence. In LatAm people don't really care about any of Spain's internal politics, and the Reconquista is simply an accepted fact of history.

The capitalization of the word might be a propagandistic act, but it might also just be an application of modern style, or just recognition that the concept requires a bit more dignity, or something.

This entire sub-thread stinks of... anti-Spanish propaganda, heh.

[WorkerBee28474]

What was 'conquered back' was the Iberian Peninsula. Whether or not a particular state was there at the time doesn't matter, the land and people were conquered and reconquered.

[ywvcbk]

Well.. the people doing the “reconquering” viewed themselves as [Roman] Christians first and foremost, that was the core of their cultural and political identity.

Since they considered that territories were part of the Roman-Christian Empire in the past from their perspective they were certainly taking it back.

Spain being or not being a nation at the time seems entirely irrelevant..