The 1531 Project

Whilst I'm catching up on my reading, I am now finishing up Tom Holland's Dominion. Holland takes the dyothelete, Carolingian, Catholic approach in its first movements; moving to a Protestant direction when that kicks in AD ~1500. Dominion has bearing on the postHuntingdon debates on American (and Western) identity.

Here is V-DARE looking, from the outside, on Ahmari. (And on David French, but forget that guy.) Ahmari argues for a Hispano-Catholic founding of the Americas. It would be impolite to call Ahmari a Columbianist; he would look to de las Casas, to the missionary Church, and to Charles V Habsburg. Ahmari's axial year is AD 1531, when Our Lady appeared before Juan Diego.

V-DARE is, itself, named after the 1587 plantation, specifically the Dare family's natal-tourism. Virginia herself likely grew up to marry an indigene, presumably a Croatoan neighbour. V-DARE tends not to dwell upon that sequel.

Holland argues that the (US-)American project, following on the English-dissenter New England roots, is integral to Western Europe's long reckoning with Rhineland Catholicism, going back to the late 700s AD. And Counter-Reformed Catholicism survived outside the Germanic nations - actually, even inside them. Between these lines there was always permeability: critics of slavery and of Indian relocations were fully able to learn Spanish and to translate de las Casas.

This permeability, likewise, made it easy for Catholics in the Atlantic seaboard - starting with Maryland (before there was Mason/Dixon, there was the Chesapeake) - to argue for their equality (at least) with other Americans. What were "American" arguments, but the same Catholic arguments of Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa?

UPDATE 8/25: V-DARE's antecedent. Anti-Papist paranoia has deep roots in American WASPy communitarianism.