Works of Bartolomé de las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas

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As a settler in the New World, he was galvanized by witnessing the brutal torture and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists. Las Casas was an enlightened advocate of the humanity and fair-treatment of the Amerindians, against much criticism and opposition. In the history of cultural destruction that the European colonization of the Americas represents, his was a humane and compassionate voice to which too few of his time paid heed. In one of his last works before his death, De thesauris in Peru, he vigorously defended the rights of the natives of Peru against the native slavery imposed by the early Spanish Conquest.

The work also questions the right of property Spain had in taking the treasures derived from the ransom to free Atahualpa the Inca leader , as well as those valuables found and taken from the burial sites of the indigenous population. Dedicated to King Philip II of Spain , Las Casas explained that he supported the acts of barbarism when he first arrived in the New World, but that he soon became convinced that the horrendous acts would eventually lead to the collapse of Spain itself in an act of Divine retribution.

According to Las Casas, it was the responsibility of the Spanish to convert the Indians, who would then be loyal subjects of Spain, rather than to kill them. To avoid the burden of slavery on them, Las Casas proposed that Africans be brought to America instead, though he later changed his mind about this when he saw the effects of slavery on Africans. Largely due to his efforts, the New Laws were adopted in to protect the Indians in colonies.

Las Casas also wrote the monumental Historia de las Indias as the editor of Christopher Columbus 's published journal. Las Casas worked there in adverse conditions for the following months, being constantly harassed by the Spanish pearl fishers of Cubagua island who traded slaves for alcohol with the natives. Early in Las Casas left the settlement to complain to the authorities. The rumours even included him among the dead. The tragic outcome of Las Casas's great mainland adventure made him turn his life in a new direction.

Devastated, Las Casas reacted by entering the Dominican monastery of Santa Cruz in Santo Domingo as a novice in and finally taking holy vows as a Dominican friar in He oversaw the construction of a monastery in Puerto Plata on the north coast of Hispaniola, subsequently serving as prior of the convent. In he began working on his History of the Indies in order to report many of the experiences he had witnessed at first hand in the conquest and colonization of New Spain. In he wrote a letter to Garcia Manrique , Count of Osorno , protesting again the mistreatment of the Indians and advocating a return to his original reform plan of In a complaint was sent by the encomenderos of Hispaniola that Las Casas was again accusing them of mortal sins from the pulpit.

His party made it as far as Panama , but had to turn back to Nicaragua due to adverse weather. Lingering for a while in the Dominican convent of Granada , he got into conflict with Rodrigo de Contreras , Governor of Nicaragua, when Las Casas vehemently opposed slaving expeditions by the Governor.

Early life and efforts at reform

Also in , before venturing into Tuzulutlan, Las Casas went to Oaxaca , Mexico , to participate in a series of discussions and debates among the bishops of the Dominican and Franciscan orders. The two orders had very different approaches to the conversion of the Indians. The Franciscans used a method of mass conversion, sometimes baptizing many thousands of Indians in a day. This method was championed by prominent Franciscans such as Toribio de Benavente , known as "Motolinia", and Las Casas made many enemies among the Franciscans for arguing that conversions made without adequate understanding were invalid.

Las Casas wrote a treatise called " De unico vocationis modo " On the Only Way of Conversion based on the missionary principles he had used in Guatemala. Motolinia would later be a fierce critic of Las Casas, accusing him of being all talk and no action when it came to converting the Indians. Las Casas returned to Guatemala in wanting to employ his new method of conversion based on two principles: It was important for Las Casas that this method be tested without meddling from secular colonists, so he chose a territory in the heart of Guatemala where there were no previous colonies and where the natives were considered fierce and war-like.

Because of the fact that the land had not been possible to conquer by military means, the governor of Guatemala, Alonso de Maldonado , agreed to sign a contract promising that if the venture was successful he would not establish any new encomiendas in the area. Las Casas's strategy was to teach Christian songs to merchant Indian Christians who then ventured into the area.

Bartolomé de las Casas - Wikipedia

These congregated a group of Christian Indians in the location of what is now the town of Rabinal. In Spain, Las Casas started securing official support for the Guatemalan mission, and he managed to get a royal decree forbidding secular intrusion into the Verapaces for the following five years. He also informed the Theologians of Salamanca , led by Francisco de Vitoria , of the mass baptism practiced by the Franciscans, resulting in a dictum condemning the practice as sacrilegious. But apart from the clerical business, Las Casas had also traveled to Spain for his own purpose: He wrote a letter asking for permission to stay in Spain a little longer in order to argue for the Emperor that conversion and colonization were best achieved by peaceful means.

It also exempted the few surviving Indians of Hispaniola , Cuba , Puerto Rico and Jamaica from tribute and all requirements of personal service. However, the reforms were so unpopular back in the New World that riots broke out and threats were made against Las Casas's life.

Adviser to Charles V

The Viceroy of New Spain , himself an encomendero, decided not to implement the laws in his domain, and instead sent a party to Spain to argue against the laws on behalf of the encomenderos. He drafted a suggestion for an amendment arguing that the laws against slavery were formulated in such a way that it presupposed that violent conquest would still be carried out, and he encouraged once again beginning a phase of peaceful colonization by peasants instead of soldiers. Before Las Casas returned to Spain, he was also appointed as Bishop of Chiapas , a newly established diocese of which he took possession in upon his return to the New World.

In a pastoral letter issued on March 20, , Las Casas refused absolution to slave owners and encomenderos even on their death bed, unless all their slaves had been set free and their property returned to them. The New Laws were finally repealed on October 20, , and riots broke out against Las Casas, with shots being fired against him by angry colonists.

Las Casas, Bartolomé De (1474–1566)

Having been summoned to a meeting among the bishops of New Spain to be held in Mexico City on January 12, , he left his diocese, never to return. This resulted in a new resolution to be presented to viceroy Mendoza. Las Casas appointed a vicar for his diocese and set out for Europe in December , arriving in Lisbon in April and in Spain on November Las Casas returned to Spain, leaving behind many conflicts and unresolved issues. Arriving in Spain he was met by a barrage of accusations, many of them based on his Confesionario and its 12 rules, which many of his opponents found to be in essence a denial of the legitimacy of Spanish rule of its colonies, and hence a form of treason.

In the Crown decreed that all copies of Las Casas's Confesionario be burnt, and his Franciscan adversary, Motolinia obliged and sent back a report to Spain. Las Casas defended himself by writing two treatises on the "Just Title" — arguing that the only legality with which the Spaniards could claim titles over realms in the New World was through peaceful proselytizing. All warfare was illegal and unjust and only through the papal mandate of peacefully bringing Christianity to heathen peoples could "Just Titles" be acquired.

The judge, Fray Domingo de Soto , summarised the arguments. The judges then deliberated on the arguments presented for several months before coming to a verdict. This book, written a decade earlier and sent to the attention of then-prince Philip II of Spain , contained accounts of the abuses committed by some Spaniards against Native Americans during the early stages of colonization. In his old Franciscan adversary Toribio de Benavente Motolinia wrote a letter in which he described Las Casas as an ignorant, arrogant troublemaker.

Benavente described indignantly how Las Casas had once denied baptism to an aging Indian who had walked many leagues to receive it, only on the grounds that he did not believe that the man had received sufficient doctrinal instruction. This letter, which reinvoked the old conflict over the requirements for the sacrament of baptism between the two orders, was intended to bring Las Casas in disfavour.

However, it did not succeed. Having resigned the Bishopric of Chiapas, Las Casas spent the rest of his life working closely with the imperial court in matters relating to the Indies. In he rented a cell at the College of San Gregorio , where he lived with his assistant and friend Fray Rodrigo de Ladrada.

His influence at court was so great that some even considered that he had the final word in choosing the members of the Council of the Indies. One matter in which he invested much effort was the political situation of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The Emperor sent Pedro de la Gasca , a friend of Las Casas, to reinstate the rule of law, and he in turn defeated Pizarro. In order to restabilize the political situation the encomenderos started pushing not only for the repeal of the New Laws, but for turning the encomiendas into perpetual patrimony of the encomenderos — the worst possible outcome from Las Casas's point of view.

The encomenderos offered to buy the rights to the encomiendas from the crown, and Charles V was inclined to accept since his wars had left him in deep economic troubles. Las Casas worked hard to convince the king that it would be a bad economic decision, that it would return the viceroyalty to the brink of open rebellion, and could result in the crown losing the colony entirely.

The Emperor, probably because of the doubts caused by Las Casas's arguments, never took a final decision on the issue of the encomiendas.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

In , he finished his Historia General de las Indias and signed it over to the College of San Gregorio, stipulating that it could not be published until after forty years. In fact it was not published for years, finally being done so in He also had to repeatedly defend himself against accusations of treason: The text, written , starts by describing its purpose: Las Casas's first proposed remedy was a complete moratorium on the use of Indian labor in the Indies until such time as better regulations of it were set in place.

This was meant simply to halt the decimation of the Indian population and to give the surviving Indians time to reconstitute themselves. Las Casas feared that at the rate the exploitation was proceeding it would be too late to hinder their annihilation unless action were taken rapidly. The second was a change in the labor policy so that instead of a colonist owning the labor of specific Indians, he would have a right to man-hours, to be carried out by no specific persons.

This required the establishment of self-governing Indian communities on the land of colonists — who would themselves organize to provide the labor for their patron.

Similar Books

The colonist would only have rights to a certain portion of the total labor, so that a part of the Indians were always resting and taking care of the sick. He proposed 12 other remedies, all having the specific aim of improving the situation for the Indians and limiting the powers that colonists were able to exercise over them.

The second part of the Memorial described suggestions for the social and political organization of Indian communities relative to colonial ones. Here, Las Casas argued, Indians could be better governed, better taught and indoctrinated in the Christian faith, and would be easier to protect from abuse than if they were in scattered settlements. Each town would have a royal hospital built with four wings in the shape of a cross, where up to sick Indians could be cared for at a time.

He described in detail social arrangements, distribution of work, how provisions would be divided and even how table manners were to be introduced. Regarding expenses, he argued that "this should not seem expensive or difficult, because after all, everything comes from them [the Indians] and they work for it and it is theirs. He showed that this arrangement could easily be maintained and gold still be extracted at a profit. One of the stated purposes for writing the account was Las Casas's fear of Spain coming under divine punishment and his concern for the souls of the native peoples.

The account was one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict the unfair treatment that the indigenous people endured during the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Greater Antilles , particularly the island of Hispaniola. Las Casas's point of view can be described as being heavily against some of the Spanish methods of colonization, which, as he described them, inflicted great losses on the indigenous occupants of the islands.

In addition, his critique towards the colonizers served to bring awareness to his audience on the true meaning of Christianity, to dismantle any misconceptions on evangelization. The book became an important element in the creation and propagation of the so-called Black Legend — the tradition of describing the Spanish empire as exceptionally morally corrupt and violent.

It was republished several times by groups that were critical of the Spanish realm for political or religious reasons. The first edition in translation was published in Dutch in , during the religious persecution of Dutch Protestants by the Spanish crown, followed by editions in French , English , and German — all countries where religious wars were raging. The book was banned by the Aragonese inquisition in The images described by Las Casas were later depicted by Theodore de Bry in copper plate engravings that helped expand the Black Legend against Spain.

The history is apologetic because it is written as a defense of the cultural level of the Indians, arguing throughout that indigenous peoples of the Americas were just as civilized as the Roman , Greek and Egyptian civilizations—and more civilized than some European civilizations.

Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings by MacNutt

It was in essence a comparative ethnography comparing practices and customs of European and American cultures and evaluating them according to whether they were good or bad, seen from a Christian viewpoint. And they equaled many nations of this world that are renowned and considered civilized, and they surpassed many others, and to none were they inferior. Among those they equaled were the Greeks and the Romans, and they surpassed them by many good and better customs.

They surpassed also the English and the French and some of the people of our own Spain; and they were incomparably superior to countless others, in having good customs and lacking many evil ones. The text justified theoretically following Aristotelian ideas of natural slavery the inferiority of Indians and their enslavement by the Spaniards. He claimed that the Indians had no ruler, and no laws, so any civilized man could legitimately appropriate them. The debate, which continued in , reached no firm conclusion; but the court seemed to agree with Las Casas, and demanded a better treatment for the Indians.

William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, That year, they successfully ended their campaign to conquer the Emirate of Granada in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. In October, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, and a year later, the Pope Alexander VI issued a Papal Bull that granted the Spanish crown sovereignty over all the lands inhabited by non-Christians that they might continue discovering in the Atlantic.

Historian Anthony Pagden states that the Hapsburg court had appointed itself as the guardian of universal Christendom. Then it was very important that the crown acted--or was seen to act--according to Christian ethico-political principles established by the consulted experts. As soon as the Spaniards discovered the New world and realized that is was inhabited by non-Christian people that they considered to be barbarians, they began to debate the use of military force to control the new land, and the conversion of the indigenous population.

To pay for his service, the Spanish crown granted a conquistador , soldier, or official a piece of land and number of Indians living in a particular area. The Indians acted as serfs and paid the e ncomendero tribute in gold, kind, or labor in exchange of protection and evangelization.

Many Spaniard missionaries sent to the New World, including Las Casas, noticed and denounced the brutal exploitation of Indians by encomenderos, and their lack of commitment in evangelization. In fact, the indigenous population of Hispaniola, the island where Columbus landed, reduced from , to 15, in two decades due to the war and forced labor.

This genocide called the attention of those theologians like Vitoria and Las Casas who were concerned with the morality of the conquest. Nonetheless, as Brian Tierney states:

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