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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
Las Casas was a Churchman whose activities in the cause of humanity against the ruthless exploitation of the Indians by the Spanish colonial adventurers are well known and appreciated by many, and due credit has ever been rendered him by Protestant historians : but it is well to realise that he was not a brilliant and solitary exception. The Spanish Churchmen were ever famous for their uncompromising morality. Many of his own order—Pedro de Cordoba, Antonio Monterino and others whom we shall meet, as well as many of the Spanish clergy of every rank—made a no less determined stand for justice against immorality. In 1538 the Pope, Paul III, unequivocally stated the doctrine of the Church.
Nor were the secular authorities remiss. The Audience of the Indies, Charles V, and Philip II issued order after order and edict after edict against the enslavement of the natives, the theft of their property, and the outrages against their persons. Yet a terrible state of things existed. The trouble arose from the impossibility of controlling at that great distance greedy and cruel adventurers who, sure of the support of their fellows in the remote lands of New Spain, were able to a great extent to ignore all orders and ordinances on the matter. The clergy had more success; for they could and did wield the spiritual weapon of excommunication, and the Spanish adventurers, if in their hearts they did not agree with the humanity of the Church, did for the most part fear her censure.
1 Brief, Euntes docete omnes. The Indians are called veritable men capable of receiving the Faith and ready to do so. (Charles V praised for his edict in a separate letter to the Archbishop of Toledo.) Excommunication of those who enslave or rob the Indians. Sub excommunicationis latae sententiae poena, si secus fecerint, eo ipso incurrenda..
2 This tract was never printed, but the Apologia pro libro was printed in Rome, 1550, the same year in which the original De justis etc was forbidden to be published in Spain. Sepulveda's collected works may be read in the four volume edition, Joannis Ginesii Sepulvedae. Opera cum edita turn inedita accurante regia historiae academia. Matriti. Typographia regia de la Gazeta. 1780.
3 The whole disputation and a summary are in the Obras de D. F. Bartholomé de las Casa's, printed by Sebastian Trugillo at Seville, Sept. 12, 1552. Copy in Windsor Castle. In another section will be found the air sos y reglas para los confessores q oyeren confessiones de los Españoles que son o han sido en cargo los Indios..
4 The Spanish Inquisition had a scope widely outside mere matters of heresy. So far as any analogy can be at all true, it was more like a mixture of our Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, with vastly extended powers, and became an engine of the royal despotism. It never worked outside of the Spanish Empire, and the Holy See regarded its activities with considerable suspicion.