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Prophet and Apostle: Bartolomé de las Casas and the spiritual conquest of America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
I: Defender of the Indians or Satan’s tool?
In his De procuranda indorum salute (1589) the Spanish Jesuit, José de Acosta, a former provincial of his order in Peru, lamented that nowadays the gospel and war were all too closely associated. He was at pains to reject proposals mooted by a fellow Jesuit that Spain should invade China so as to bring that great empire into the fold of the Catholic Church. Not that Acosta was a pacifist, since he defended the right of a Christian Prince to establish forts in heathen territory for the protection of trade and the preaching of the gospel. Moreover, in regions like Amazonia, inhabited by mere savages without any law, king or fixed abode, there was a positive duty to introduce some form of political order so that the natives could be taught the elements of civility and Christianity. Any resistance to this imposition of a protectorate could be justly quelled by force of arms, albeit applied with paternal firmness. As for the justice of the previous conquest of the relatively advanced kingdoms of the Incas and Aztecs, Acosta simply counselled a closure of debate, arguing that with no chance of restitution or restoration, any further discussion of the question merely served to provoke dissension between the spiritual and temporal authorities.
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- Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 José de Acosta, Obras (Biblioteca de autores espanoles, Madrid, 1954) pp. 392—410.
2 Roberto Levillier, Francisco de Toledo (Madrid, 1935) pp. 198—205, 276—295.
3 See the ‘tratado de doce dudas’ in Bartolomé de las Casas, Obras escogidas (Biblioteca de autores espanoles, 5 vols., Madrid, 1957). V. 485—534; for the attack on Las Casas see the text of ‘Anónimo de Yucay (1571)’ ed. Josyane Chinese in Historia y Cultura 4 (Lima, 1970) pp. 105—52.
4 Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (3 vols., Mexico, 1951) III, 92—100.
5 Ibid., II, 264.
6 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias (Biblioteca de autores espanoles, 5 vols., Madrid, 1959) on Indians I, 31, 67—8, 112, 124; on tortures etc. III, 235.
7 The text of these laws can be found in L.B. Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain, (Berkeley, 1966) pp. 32—35.
8 These memorials are printed in Las Casas, Obras escogidas, V, 6—39.
9 For the Cumaná episode see Las Casas, Historia, III, 368—86; Oviedo, Historia general II, 194—99; and Marcel Bataillon, Estudios sobre Bartolomé de las Casas (Barcelona, 1976) pp. 45—179.
10 Oviedo, Historia general, IV, 97, 259—63.
11 Jerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica Indiana, (Mexico, 1971) pp. 210—11.
12 On the mendicant mission see Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley, 1966) and George Kubler, Mexican Architecture in the Sixteenth Century (2 vols., New Haven, 1948).
13 See also Silvio Zavala, Sir Thomas More in New Spain. A Utopian Adventure of the Renaissance (London, 1935).
14 Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica, pp. 222, 250.
15 On Sahagún see Munro S. Edmonson (ed.) Sixteenth Century Mexico. The Work of Sahagún (Albuquerque, 1974).
16 See Ricard, Spiritual Conquest pp, 269—72; and N.M. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule (Princeton, 1984) pp. 286—318.
17 Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Late Middle Ages. A Study of Joachimism (Oxford, 1969).
18 Toribio de Motolinia, Historia de los indios de Nueva Espana in Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Coleción de documentos (2 vols., Mexico, 1971) I, 177, 274—76, 194; on Motolinia see George Baudot, Utopie et Histoire au Mexique (Toulouse, 1976).
19 Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica, pp. 174—7, 513—24, 556—63; on Mendieta see John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkely, 1970).
20 Las Casas, Obras escogidas V, 43—55; the citation from St. Augustine occurs on p. 50.
21 Ibid., V, 60—66.
22 See André Saint-Lu, La Vera Paz: esprit évangelique et colonisation (Paris, 1968) pp. 68—114; Bataillon, estudios pp. 181—244.
23 H.R. Wagner, The Life and Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (Albuquerque, 1967) pp. 98—104; Oviedo, Historia general pp. 367—384.
24 Las Casas, Del único modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera religión (Mexico, 1975) for Christ as liberator see p. 157; for war p. 345; for conquerors pp. 375, 390, 402.
25 Las Casas, Obras escogidas V, 126—33.
26 Las Casas, Brevíssima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, reprinted in his Tratados (2 vols., Mexico, 1965) I, 3—173.
27 Wagner, Las Casas, pp. 107—70; Las Casas, Obras escogidas, V, 213—33.
28 Las Casas, De regia potestate (Madrid, 1969) pp. 175—226.
29 See St. Augustine, The City of God (Penguin edition, London, 1967) p. 139.
30 The best survey of sixteenth century political thought is Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols., Cambridge, 1978). Note that the Spanish humanist, Juan Luis Vives, repeatedly cited St Augustine in his condemnation of contemporary warfare in his Concordia y discordia (Mexico, 1940) pp. 105, 159.
31 The letter is translated in James Lockhart and Enrique Otte (ed.) Letters and People of the Spanish Indies (Cambridge, 1976) pp. 218—47.
32 The will is printed in Las Casas, Obras escogidas, V, 539—40; see also J.H. Hexter, The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation (London, 1973) pp. 179—203.