Renaissance History: Miguel Vazquez

Introduction

This article constitutes a second pioneer Renaissance man of my invention. You can find a list of examples of pioneer Renaissance men (all of whom are invented by myself, with the exception of four Italians) in this article. The next Renaissance man I cover is Miguel Vazquez of Spain.

Biography

Miguel Vazquez was a Spanish scholar and contemporary of the Italian Luciano Marrone, and by 1375 and after, became a man of many talents. Miguel was born in Valencia on May 20, 1343. In 1368 he sailed across the Mediterranean Sea and settled in Florence where he met Marrone and other early Renaissance figures in the area.

Miguel returned to Spain in 1375 a changed man and had imported the Renaissance into his country. Over the next couple of years, as the Renaissance was spreading throughout Spain and neighboring Portugal, he was taking up the trades of Marrone and also wrote about promoting an ideology borrowed from his Italian friend: religious toleration.

Miguel died in Valencia on July 27, 1418, at the age of 75.

Notes

• Although this life story of Miguel Vazquez is brief compared to the one about Luciano Marrone, I’ve just noted that he and Miguel were key promoters of religious toleration, which is important because it results in important changes in European history. Religious toleration has a major impact on Europe since Marrone first instigated it, first on the common people, and from there to the European ruling classes, aristocracies, and other people of upper classes. The ideology is adopted by the ruling classes to an extent, by the aristocracies to a greater extent, and especially to non-noble people of upper classes as well as to commoners.
• This process gets more recognition with the presence of eastern Slavic Jewish missionaries in the rest of Europe, obviously including Spain and Portugal; this is a result of the aftermath of the arrival of the Renaissance to Russia, which I’ll get to in another article.
• With religious toleration and Jewish missionary activity mainstream, around 15% of every European nationality/ethnicity outside the eastern Slavs converts to Judaism. (About 30% of eastern Slavs are already Jewish.)
• There are two other major results of these prior events. One is that the Spanish Inquisition is crippled since Spain’s Jews are immune to it. The other is that there is no attempt at all by the Spanish Armada to invade England. Both are caused by fears of war with Russia (30% Jewish). (All of Europe by 1492 is connected commercially and financially, as it has been since 1400 or before. A persecution of Jews in Spain would provoke outrage in Russia. Similarly, an outrage in Russia would be provoked if Roman Catholic Spain were to engage in religious warfare with Protestant England or any other non-Roman Catholic nation. Spain’s Jews would obviously not desire to make England a Roman Catholic country, and Russia’s Jews would want to defend those of Spain.)