Well, I'm very excited that you've joined us for the course because it's more than just about studying history, it's about experiencing it more tangibly through manuscripts. And specifically, what we'll do is a couple of things. One, we'll study the medieval history of Toledo and understand how it moved from being a Desa Gothic then to Islamic and finally a Christian city, at least in terms of political control. But all through these eras though, roughly from ancient times up until into the middle ages in 1492, really Toledo was a multicultural and multireligious city. It had a mixture of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and those mixtures of people created a very dynamic environment. So, we will study how the city transitioned over time and tend to focus our attention to the latter middle ages under Christian rule during the late 1300s and early 1400s. Now, why is this important? Well, primarily because we know that into the middle ages is coming to a close, that we're moving into the early modern period. And what really that is about is the arrival of new identities, new ways of thinking about how people form themselves, about new ways that people were going to approach to religion, and in specifically we know in Spain how there was this desire for a type of cultural and religious purity. It also just the beginning of a new world, and a new time. The first piece will be to really understand really what is the later middle ages like in Toledo, and how a community started to break down. So, this is the second piece of the course we'll really look into, is like what was the nature of inter-religious life? It's really between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In this case, we understand that Christians were controlling the city and controlled most of Iberia, but how did Castea and Leone, the kingdom of Castea and Leone really kind of dictate the life of the city as it moved on into the future. There are a couple things we'll notice. Certainly, the anti Jewish violence that was predominant during the late 1300s. The anti Jewish riots in the 1390s specifically, then we will move into the 1400s and start to consider how there was, to some extent a resurgence of Convivencia or coexistence and how there was this interest in continue to develop a community they could collaborate together. Obviously with tensions though. Then as we move into the 1450s, a new interest by Christians to really say, who's really Christian? and who is not Christian? This was particularly important because of many conversions by Jews and Muslims to Christianity. Some forced and some voluntarily. So, this brought new questions about, what does it means to be Christian? Is it an act of faith? Is it something that's inside your bloodlines? Is it something else that is intangible? But we know is there. In the least in Spain we know it's about blood purity or Limpieza de sangre. And that sense that once you had come from the ancestry that was Jewish or Muslim or Christian, that ancient lineage really permiated your being, that regardless of your faith, the way you worship, the way you view the world, that your biological bloodlines dictated your identity. This is very unusual, this is in some ways the beginning of the early modern period in Europe and the greater western civilization because we see these chosen biology arriving. So, we know this finally ends in the late 1400s with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Izabel Ferdinand and then also the Spanish inquisition which targeted Christians that have reverted back to their former phase whether that was Judaism or Christianity, I'm sorry, Judaism or Islam, but also new versions of Christianity, like Protestantism and how that was dangerous to Catholicism. As we move into the 1500s, really just a new world as Spain becomes increasingly Catholic, increasingly still in character and really sets aside its past. So, we really do that first piece. The second piece that we really focus on is we want to make new discoveries and as a researcher, first and foremost, although I'm really trained towards teaching as well and after working on almost 50 archives across Spain and Europe and the Americas, what I understand is that inside the manuscripts that we find in cathedrals, in municipalities and private archives are stories of lives, lives of individuals, where they lived, who they married, what they purchased on a daily basis, what they worried about. Inside these manuscripts we can find all kinds of new details that really we don't talk about, things we think are these big civilizational conflicts, it's Christianity versus other religion, or it's political elites versus the commoners. In this respect, when we can get down to this granular level at the manuscripts we can see the day to day interactions. That's where I need your help, where we can work together to learn this craft of paleography or it just really means learning how to read manuscripts but to interpret the in writing on the manuscripts and we can make new discoveries. So, you'll be learning some very essential paleographic skills and learning how to read manuscripts. Now, if you have Spanish, this is great you'll understand more than you're seeing, but if you only speak English or read English, that's okay. We share enough of that across all of these languages and you'll learn how to interpret the handwriting so that we can collect new data at the end of the course where I will present you manuscripts that have not been really thoroughly investigated from multiple institutions, and we'll work as a team. You'll do individual work initially to transcribe documents and to read them and take notes, but then we'll move online and together, we'll collaborate to figure out, okay, what is in this manuscripts? Do we find out, "Oh it looks like a person is a noble that lives in this house here." "Oh but it's interesting." It's a Jewish novel and it shows you like think about that, that there are leads at all levels, there are leads that are Jewish, Muslim, and Christian in this times or that we see that individuals when they turn to wanting to get the best craftsmanship, they turn to mostly carpenters because they are the best at what they do and that's who you want to work on your cathedral, you want to work on your chapels because they produce the best work. So, that's what's inside of the manuscripts and that's why I'm so excited that you're here because we can work in this way, we can study the history together and appreciate it. Two, we can learn the kind of craft at paleography and you can help us the researchers who don't have a lot of funding to investigate these things, and finally we can make new discoveries. So, welcome to the course and thanks so much for your time.
