5 - Jews, Muslims, Pagans, and America

Summary

In 1492 Europeans added another category to the peoples and religions of which they were in varying degrees aware: they knew of Catholic Christians in Western Europe, Orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe, Jews in those lands that had not expelled them (as Spain did that year), Muslims in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. They had heard of Buddhists and followers of other Eastern faiths following thirteenth-century expeditions by missionaries and merchants to the Mongol court in the Far East. They knew of “pagans,” those who appeared to worship many gods, a few remnants of whom could still be found in remote corners of Northeastern Europe, though the pagan rulers of Lithuania had converted to Catholicism a century earlier. They added the pagan Canary Islanders to this list as the Canary archipelago was explored from the mid-fourteenth century onwards; Grand Canary fell to its Spanish conquerors in 1483, though the conquest of the islands was only completed in 1496, with the capitulation of Tenerife.