Juan ginés de sepúlveda (1490?–1573) was the chaplain and official chronicler of Charles V and a tutor of Philip II. Democrates Secundus (1547) was written in answer to Bartolomé de Las Casas's great denunciation of Spanish atrocities in the New World, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542). It defended the right of the Spaniards to make war on the pagan and allegedly subhuman Native Americans; in passing, Sepúlveda derides any temptation to idealize their primitive existence. The work was condemned, and the royal license necessary for publication was denied. Sepúlveda engaged in a famous “debate” in Valladolid with Las Casas, though the antagonists never faced each other. Sepúlveda's work remained under condemnation, and at his death he was almost forgotten.

With the prudence, intelligence, magnanimity, temperance, humanity, and religion of these men [the conquistadors], now compare these less-than-men [homunculi], in whom you will scarce find any traces of humanity. They lack learning, have no use or knowledge of writing, and keep no historical records, other than a tenuous and vague memory of some events, recorded in pictographs. They have no written laws, but only certain barbarous institutions and customs. As to virtues, if you look for temperance and mildness, what can be hoped from people who were immoderate in every form of intemperance and unspeakable lust, and of whom not a few fed on human flesh?