The Role Of Religion In Medieval Spain
Pluralism has come to act as a force in many countries and territories all over the world today. Everywhere you look there are vast amounts of religions that are coexisting at once in a given space. In medieval Spain the Umayyad’s existed with faiths that sprung from Jewish, Christian and Arabic backgrounds as well as many smaller faiths and focused on religion as a life path. In ancient Rome, the empire was focused on religion as knowledge and only had a religion that would contribute to the overall knowledge that Rome required. If a religion worked against this principle then the Romans would eradicate it from the empire. This was the way the Umayyad Empire in medieval Spain thought of religion, as coexisting, instead of how the Romans did,
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Each faith present in medieval Spain spoke their own language and wrote in a specific text that was only for religious purposes. However, when Arabic was introduced to Cordoba and Latin was slowly fused out of the equation, many people began to learn and use the new language. “They have forgotten their own language,” Alvarus plaintively remarks, because the Christians of Cordoba, like the Jews of Cordoba, had found in Arabic–not in Islam—something that clearly satisfied needs that the language of their own religion, Latin, has failed to meet.” Arabic gave the people of Cordoba a common language that was not restricted to just religious texts. It was made into a romance language, one used on the street to recite songs or write poems or “all of the things men need to say and write and read that not only lie outside faith but may even contradict it.” Slowly the faiths that once differed Islam were being transformed and mixed within the same textual language. As Latin was becoming less acknowledged Christian texts, religious gospels and people began to recite everything in Arabic and translate their manuscripts into the language of Islam. The mixing that took place with this transfer of language allowed people to speak the same language and interact with more people in the empire, even though they were of different faith based
Each faith present in medieval Spain spoke their own language and wrote in a specific text that was only for religious purposes. However, when Arabic was introduced to Cordoba and Latin was slowly fused out of the equation, many people began to learn and use the new language. “They have forgotten their own language,” Alvarus plaintively remarks, because the Christians of Cordoba, like the Jews of Cordoba, had found in Arabic–not in Islam—something that clearly satisfied needs that the language of their own religion, Latin, has failed to meet.” Arabic gave the people of Cordoba a common language that was not restricted to just religious texts. It was made into a romance language, one used on the street to recite songs or write poems or “all of the things men need to say and write and read that not only lie outside faith but may even contradict it.” Slowly the faiths that once differed Islam were being transformed and mixed within the same textual language. As Latin was becoming less acknowledged Christian texts, religious gospels and people began to recite everything in Arabic and translate their manuscripts into the language of Islam. The mixing that took place with this transfer of language allowed people to speak the same language and interact with more people in the empire, even though they were of different faith based