Religion in Spain - History

History

Spain, it has been observed, is a nation-state born out of religious struggle mainly between Catholicism and Islam, but also against Judaism (and, to a lesser extent, Protestantism). Most of the Iberian Peninsula was first Christianized while still part of the Roman Empire. As Rome declined, Germanic tribes invaded most of the lands of the former empire. In the years following 410 Spain was taken over by the Visigoths who had been converted to Arian Christianity around 360. The Visigothic Kingdom established their capital in Toledo, their kingdom reaching its high point during the reign of Leovigild. Visigothic rule led to a brief expansion of Arianism in Spain, however the native population remained staunchly Catholic. In 587, Reccared, the Visigothic king at Toledo, was converted to Catholicism and launched a movement to unify doctrine. The Council of Lerida in 546 constrained the clergy and extended the power of law over them under the blessings of Rome.

By 711 an Arab raiding party led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete. Tariq's commander, Musa bin Nusair landed with substantial reinforcements, and by 718 the Muslims dominated most of the peninsula, establishing Islamic rule that ended in 1492. During this period the number of Muslims increased greatly, though the majority of population remained Christian. While under the status of dhimmis the Christian and Jewish subjects had to pay higher taxes than Muslims and they were forbidden from holding positions of power over Muslims. The era of Muslim rule before 1055 is generally considered a "Golden Age" for the Jews as Jewish intellectual and spiritual life flourished in Spain. Only in the northern fringes of the peninsula did Christians remain under Christian rule. Here was established the great pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela.

In the Middle Ages, Spain saw a slow Christian re-conquest of Muslim territories. When, in 1147, the Almohads took control of Muslim Andalusian territories, they reversed the earlier tolerant attitude and treated Christians harshly. Faced with the choice of death, conversion, or emigration, many Jews and Christians left. Christianity provided the cultural and religious cement that helped bind together those who rose up against the Moors and sought to drive them out. Christianity and the Catholic Church helped shape the re-establishment of European rule over Iberia.

After centuries of the Reconquista, in which Christian Spaniards fought to drive out the Muslims, the Spanish Inquisition against Muslims and Jews was established by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to complete the religious purification of the Iberian Peninsula. In the centuries that followed Spain saw itself as the bulwark of Catholicism and doctrinal purity. Spain carried Catholicism to the New World and the Philippines, but the Spanish kings insisted on independence from papal "interference", bishops in their domains were forbidden to report to the Pope except through the Spanish crown. In the 18th century Spanish rulers drew further from the papacy, banishing the Jesuits from their empire in 1767. The Inquisition was finally abolished only in the 1830s, but even after that, religious freedom was denied in practice, if not in theory.

Catholicism became the state religion in 1851, when the Spanish government signed a Concordat with the Holy See that committed Madrid to pay the salaries of the clergy and to subsidize other expenses of the Roman Catholic Church as a compensation for the seizure of church property in the Desamortización de Mendizábal. This pact was renounced in 1931, when the secular constitution of the Second Spanish Republic imposed a series of anticlerical measures that threatened the Church's hegemony in Spain, provoking the Church's support for the Francisco Franco uprising five years later. In the ensuing Civil War, about 7,000 priests were killed by Communists and Anarchists in Republican areas.