Bartolomé de las Casas

10 Key excerpts on "Bartolomé de las Casas"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Another Face of Empire

  Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism

  • Daniel Castro, Walter D. Mignolo, Irene Silverblatt, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Walter D. Mignolo, Irene Silverblatt, Sonia Saldívar-Hull(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  ≤π Aside from his claims for legislative reform, the single most important contribution of Bartolomé de las Casas to the history of Indoamerica was to provide an ongoing record of the events associated with the first half-century of Spanish domination. He, unlike most of his contemporaries, seems to have internalized the horror of the conquest and resolved to bear witness for posterity. If Columbus, through a daring and momentous act, lessened the geographic and cultural distances between two worlds, it fell to Las Casas, a man driven by profound Christian beliefs and untamed hu-manism, to attempt to bridge the informational gap created by the forced incorporation of America into the Spanish empire. Working from the medi-eval perspective that the Spanish occupation of the Indies had ‘‘destroyed’’ them, Las Casas dedicated the best and most productive years of his life to attempting to ‘‘restore’’ them to a new grandeur under the aegis of Spain. Another frequently overlooked fact about Las Casas’s history, as a fighter for the rights of the American Indian, is that his most effective praxis was carried out in the context of the Spanish court, not in American territory. It was at court where he uninhibitedly played out his complex role as the ‘‘universal protector of all the Indians of America’’ ( protector universal de todos los indios de América ), a title he had received from Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros during the latter’s tenure as regent of Spain. From early on the friar understood that the best alternative to influence the political landscape of the time was to remain at courtside as much as possible. It was there where he could be more visible, have direct access to the monarch, and be ostensibly more effective in his work. Despite all impressions to the contrary, his contact with the objects of his

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Just War Thinkers

  From Cicero to the 21st Century

  • Daniel R. Brunstetter, Cian O'Driscoll, Daniel R. Brunstetter, Cian O'Driscoll(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7 Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566)

  Daniel R. Brunstetter

     

  Introduction

  Bartolomé de las Casas's strident criticism of the Spanish conquistadors during the better part of the 16th century earned him a place in history as one of the first defenders of human rights. According to one modern scholar, las Casas “unleashed a broad range of arguments against the policies and conduct of his fellow Europeans and has thus earned a much deserved reputation as an important proponent of religious (and also cultural) toleration” (Nederman, 2000, pp.100–101). Once an active participant in the conquista, las Casas became the most vocal opponent of Spanish policy and conduct in the Americas. The ideas of the just war tradition held an important place in his struggle to protect the Indians from unjust violence.

  Las Casas's place in the tradition has, unfortunately, largely been neglected. Yet, he was, in many ways, the archetypal just war scholar. Steeped in the tradition and fluent in its minutiae, he engaged with pressing political issues of his day, using the authority of the tradition to argue against waging what he saw as unjust wars of conquest. This critical edge is a legacy which just war thinking today could benefit from engaging with more deeply.

  Contexts

  Bartolomé de las Casas's contribution to the just war tradition must be viewed against the backdrop of the Spanish conquest of indigenous populations in the New World. This bloody affair began less than a decade after Columbus's “discovery” of this previously unknown – to Europeans at least – continent. While the Spanish conquistadors, sometimes with the help of indigenous allies, spread across the American continents unloading steel and thunder during the first half of the 16th century, the intellectual milieu back in Spain was shrouded in a fog of uncertainty. Thus began a prolonged philosophical inquiry initiated by the Crown about whether these wars were just. This period of deep philosophical reflection – what scholars call the Affair of the Indies – began as early as 1504 when a meeting of theologians – a junta – was called for by King Ferdinand to discuss the matter of the Indians. The affair became polemical in the ensuing years as theologians disagreed on the nature of the Indians and the justness of the conquest. During a subsequent meeting in 1512, the Junta de Burgos, some theologians justified the conquest by claiming that unbelievers fell under the dominium of the Spanish because the Pope had spiritual and temporal power over the entire globe (an idea dating back to Innocent IV and Hostiensis) and by turning to the Aristotelian theory of natural slavery.1

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative

  • Rolena Adorno(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  chapter 3 Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Polemicist and Author fray Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) occupies a prominent place in this inquiry, not only because his writings were read by others, but also because he was a reader, reading. His high-decibel, high-impact image, the legacy of which we know through his writings (as he remarked, more than two thousand folios in the course of his half-century-long public life), is not that of someone sitting quietly and reading. Even the famous engraving by Tomás López Enguídanos, which shows him in a contemplative pose, pictures him poised to write (fig. 13). ∞ Yet Las Casas sat and read, mightily. For our purposes, his most pertinent readings were, for his Historia de las Indias, those of Portuguese maritime history and the four expeditions of Christopher Columbus; for the Apologética historia sumaria, they were the reports of the Indies experience of others, such as Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación, or Naufragios (1542), the account of his sojourn in La Florida in 1527–1536. ≤ Las Casas studied the work of Gomes Eanes de Zurara, the historian of Prince Henry the Navi-gator of Portugal, and also that of João de Barros, and he relied a great deal on the documentary trove of writings by and about Columbus. Las Casas gave Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación a high-profile role in the work that was aimed at demonstrating the creation of civil order and the readiness for religious conversion by the native inhabitants of the Americas, a topic that must have impressed its urgency upon Las Casas after his debates before FIGURE 13. Portrait engraving of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, by Tomás López En-guídanos, Retratos de los españoles ilustres. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1791, portrait no. 82. Reprinted from Pérez Fernández, Inventario documentado, 4. Bartolomé de las Casas 63 a royally appointed commission in Valladolid in 1550–1551.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Salamanca School

  • Andre Azevedo Alves, Jose Moreira(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Somewhat ironically, although he was undoubtedly heavily influenced by the doctrines of the School he was not himself a scholar, or at least not one that could be considered in the same league as Vitoria, Soto, Covarrubias, Molina or Suárez. 1 Trained as a lawyer, Las Casas was essentially an activist and a polemist but the combination of those personal features with some of the main Salamancan contributions on individual rights and international law proved to be extremely powerful and assured him long-lasting fame, particularly in debates over slavery, serfdom and colonization. That Las Casas' style was more that of a polemist than of a traditional scholar can be amply confirmed by analysing one of his major works: In Defense of the Indians. 2 But although Las Casas is undeniably the most famous activist involved in these controversies, in order to understand the origins of the intense polemics about the New World it is necessary to go back to a sermon by another Dominican friar. A revolutionary sermon in Hispaniola In 1511, at the island of Hispaniola (in the Antilles), a Dominican named Antonio de Montesinos delivered a thundering sermon that put into serious question the accepted methods employed by Spaniards to deal with native Americans and eventually ended up shaking the very foundations upon which the mightiest empire of the World was colonizing the recently discovered territories in America. An account of the Montesinos sermon is described by Bartolomé de las Casas (1971, pp. 80–81) in the following terms: Father Fray Antonio de Montesinos ascended the pulpit and took as the text and foundation of his sermon, which he carried written out and signed by the other friars: 'I am the voice of one crying in the desert.'... 'I have ascended here to cause you to know those sins, I who am the voice of Christ in the desert of this island. Therefore it is "tting that you listen to this voice, not with careless attention, but with all your heart and senses

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Sixteenth-Century Mission (Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology)

  Explorations in Protestant and Roman Catholic Theology and Practice

  • Robert L. Gallagher, Edward L. Smither(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Lexham Press

    (Publisher)

  The name of the city appears to encapsulate “strange bedfellows”: is this combining the names of the (inadvertently) xenocidal Columbus with the abolitionist Las Casas? Perhaps we might be better served emulating the recent efforts in the United States to turn Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples Day. But the “San Cristóbal” (St. Christopher) in question is not Christopher Columbus as many suspect, but rather a third-century saint, famous for being the patron saint of travelers. But the “de las Casas” in the name is indeed referencing Bartolomé de las Casas, the subject of this chapter.

  As is typical of some Mexican cities, the latter part of the city name was added later, such as Oaxaca which later became Oaxaca de Juarez, named after the beloved Mexican President Benito Juarez who hailed from that city. When San Cristóbal became San Cristóbal de las Casas in 1848, it was cementing the legacy of a man who, in his later years, became an icon of Latin America, and ended his career as the Catholic bishop of Chiapas. But he was not originally from Mexico; he came there from Spain by way of Peru.

  During his eighty-two years on earth, Las Casas’s contributions are inestimable. This paper will address his abolition of Indian slavery and his evangelistic methods, thus the title: “defender of the Indians, defender of the Word.” It will argue that he was a proto-Reformer, by virtue of his Dominican leanings as well as his holistic ministry. In fact, in many ways he might even be viewed as a proto-evangelical as he was characterized by (admittedly anachronistically) both the Bebbington Quadrilateral (biblicism, conversionism, activism, crucicentrism)3 and the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (Scripture, reason, tradition, experience).

  EXPERIENCE: Bartolomé de las Casas’S EARLY LIFE

  Bartolomé de las Casas was born November 11, 1484, and died on July 18, 1566. His birthplace, Seville, Spain, was famous for being the gateway to the Americas: the location of the Archivas de las Indias (the repository of all documents pertaining to the “discovery of the New World”), and Christopher Columbus’s tomb. So the irony—as complicated as mestizaje (mixing ancestries)—still remains, that there is still a link between this “Defender of the Indians”4 (Las Casas) and the “pillager” or “rapist” of the Americas (Columbus). In fact, as a nine-year-old boy, Las Casas was initially inspired by Columbus when the latter returned from his first voyage to the Americas in 1493, bringing back native Taínos from Hispaniola (today, the island which is occupied by the two modern nations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Las Casas’s own father, Pedro, joined Columbus on his second journey to the New World and brought back a Taíno servant for his son. So, the fascination and indoctrination of the Western hemisphere beckoned Las Casas from a young age. He would soon join his father on the westward journey himself, landing in Hispaniola in 1503 on the expedition of thirty ships commanded by Nicolás de Ovando, who would become Spanish governor of the Indies and cruelly subjugate the natives by developing the encomienda system. Included on this expedition was Francisco Pizarro, who would be Cortés’s counterpart in South America, conquering the Incas the same way Cortés conquered the Aztecs. Las Casas’s personal role models were people like Columbus, Ovando, and Pizarro, so it was no surprise he was molded in their vein. In fact, he ended up even editing Columbus’s diary of his four journeys to the Indies.5 He quickly established himself as an encomendero (both in Hispaniola and later Cuba) upon arrival in the Western hemisphere in 1502, even while being the first Spanish priest ordained into the secular priesthood in the Americas in 1507, not experiencing any internal conflict within himself about his dual roles.6

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Western Expansion and Indigenous Peoples

  The Heritage of Las Casas

  • Elias Sevilla-Casas(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Notes on Las Casas Ideological and Political Practice ELIAS SEVILLA-CASAS It should not be considered unusual to celebrate the five hundredth birth-day of Bartolome de Las Casas, the Doctor of the Americas and Defensor of the Indians, in a congress of anthropologists. Although he is not even mentioned in the conventional histories of anthropology, the contribu-tions of the Bishop of Chiapas to the discipline have been noted explicitly by outstanding scholars. The historian Hanke has a monograph (1949) partially dedicated to this subject. Sanderlin (1971), in his presentation of Las Casas' doctrines, refers to him as an anthropologist. The above authors indicate that his contributions to the discipline are important not only in the area of first-hand ethnographic descriptions (particularly the Historia de Indias) but in the realm of theoretical-ideological discussion (particularly the Apologetica Historia). Perez de Tudela has called Las Casas' anthropology the anthropology of hope because the ultimate goal of his theoretical and descriptive efforts was to insist on the potential of these Indian peoples for being equally as HUMAN as their Spanish conquerors and colonizers (Perez de Tudela 1957,1: cxvii). The Mexican anthropologist Comas has shown how the doctrine and activities of the Spanish Dominican form the basis of the modern Movimiento Indigenista (Comas 1953, 1971; see Friede 1971). I do not want to repeat the above points but rather to analyze the work of Las Casas from a different perspective. Such a perspective is symbol-ically defined by the two titles that history has given to Las Casas, the DEFENSOR of the Indians and the DOCTOR of the Americas. I will set this analysis in the light of two concerns that presently have extraordinary relevance for anthropologists: (1) the dehumanizing social relations existing between the still expanding Western civilization and

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Origins of Global Humanitarianism

  Religion, Empires, and Advocacy

  • Peter Stamatov(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Vigil, “Bartolomé de las Casas, Judge Alonso de Zorita, and the Franciscans: A Collaborative Effort for the Spiritual Conquest of the Borderlands,” The Americas 38, no. 1 (1981); Alida C. Metcalf, Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005); Stafford Poole, “The Last Years of Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras, 1586–1591,” Americas 47, no. 1 (1990); Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, “Vieira e os conflitos com os Colonos do Pará e Maranhão,” Luso-Brazilian Review 40, no. 1 (2003); Mauricio Beuchot, “Fray Juan Ramírez, O.P., y sus escritos en contra de la esclavitud de los Indios (1595),” in Dominicos en Mesoamérica: 500 años (Mexico City, Mexico: Provincia Santiago de México, 1992); Stafford Poole, Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Pro-Indigenist Advocacy 65 leaders. The Dominicans Domingo de Salazar and Miguel de Benavides from the Philippines engaged in a remarkable attempt to give voice to otherwise voiceless imperial subjects when they wrestled from Philip II an important concession: that the legitimacy of Spanish authority be discussed in a series of public meetings of indigenous communities in 1599. The underlying pattern remained the same, however. In all these cases, the struggle was centered on attacking the intertwined issues that Las Casas had identified earlier: morally unjustified violence against non-Europeans and exploitative economic and political institutions. In all of them, religious actors were locked in a conflict with rival imperial networks. And in all of them, indigenist actors engaged in heavy political advocacy taking on the Spanish and Portuguese courts, as well as the Papal Curia in Rome.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Territories of History

  Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America

  • Sarah H. Beckjord(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  Pérez de Tudela Bueso, in “Significado histórico” (xlvi), points to the “perfil casi angelical” of Las Casas’s representation of indigenous peoples, as well as his tendency to extend the characteristics of the Antillean peoples as representa- tive of all indigenous groups in the New World. 48. Pérez de Tudela Bueso, “Significado histórico,” cx; Knight, “On the Poetry of History,” 285. On the utopian cast of Las Casas’s work, see Arias, Retórica, historia, polémica, 59–84; Pastor, Jardín, 219–62; and Rabasa, “Historiografía colonial.” 49. See, for example, Hanke, Bartolomé de las Casas: Pensador, 100–101, and Huerga, Vida y obras, in Obras completas, 1:327–31. Pérez de Tudela Bueso studies the more nuanced treatment in the Apolo- gética in his preliminary study to his edition of that work. See also Avalle-Arce, “Hipérboles,” and Arias, Retórica, historia y polémica, chap. 5. vision and voice: las casas d 107 native Americans. Indeed, Las Casas prefaces his rather brief descriptions of Amerindian religious beliefs and customs with well over two hundred pages on the “superstitious,” “abominable,” and “bestial” practices of ancient Mediterranean and European peoples. Of particular interest to him is the figure of the soothsayer or adivino, whom in many Old World pre-Christian societies was revered as a divinity and whose “arte de ago- rería y de adevinar” (“art of soothsaying and divination”) corresponds, in his view, to “el salir de seso y furor” (“being out of one’s mind, and in a fury”) of a demonic power. 50 In commenting on the figure of the soothsayer in ancient Greek reli- gion, Las Casas highlights the deity Apollo, whom he characterizes as “un astutísimo y malvado demonio” (“an exceedingly astute and evil demon”). Apollo, he writes, declaraba más las cosas y agritaba más voces diciendo las cosas por venir .

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Infidels and Empires in a New World Order

  Early Modern Spanish Contributions to International Legal Thought

  • David M. Lantigua(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  . . What is more, there was never any justice on this island, and nothing was ever done by Spaniards to make amends for their native neighbors, its inhabitants. And wherever justice is lacking, the one who is oppressed and injured can pursue it himself. That is the maxim of the jurists, a dictum and teaching of natural reason. 153 The radical ramifications of Las Casas’s teaching against Sepu ´ lveda on the right to resist allegedly superior cultures at Valladolid had a real face in the person of Enriquillo, the legitimate native ruler on Espan ˜ ola even after Spanish subjugation. In the case of the Inca descendants of Huayna Capac (or Guaynacapac), the immediate predecessor to Atahualpa, Las Casas would defend the full restoration of native sovereignty and possessions in Peru. The ruler Titu Cusi Yupanqui, residing in the Andes mountains, was the grandson of Huayna Capac and legitimate heir to the Inca throne (see Figure 6.2). As was his brother Tupac Amaru, who eventually led a rebellion against Spanish authorities that ended with his capture and cruel execution in 1572. While these Inca successors were still alive, Las Casas directed his political proposal from Doce dudas to King Philip II. The Crown had the moral and legal obligation “under the penalty of eternal damnation, to restore those realms to King Titu Cusi, the successor or heir to Huayna Capac, and the other Inca lords, and to place in them all their authority and power.” 154 The dispossession of native sovereignty and jurisdiction, like theft, was an obstacle to salvation for Europeans. Even if the native Peruvians consented to Spanish universal sovereignty following the exclusive peaceful urgings of the religious, 153 Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, III, cap. 125. 154 Las Casas, Doce dudas, cap. 40, pp. 196–197. The Native Right of Resistance 299 figure 6.2 “Emperors of Peru.” (Source: Getty Images/Hulton Archive/Stringer) 300 Law of Nations, Native Occupation, and Solidarity

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Christianity and Missions, 1450–1800

  • J. S. Cummins(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Moreover, Las Casas had then proceeded to argue that the way in which the New World was brought under Spanish dominion was essentially unjust and contrary to the gospel. Indeed, towards the end of his life, he declared that the entire period of conquest and government between 1492 and 1562 was little more than a story of tyranny, and suggested that Peru should be restored to the Incas. As for Hernán Cortés, the great conqueror of Mexico, he should have been hung as a common murderer instead of being rewarded with a title of nobility. So acrimonious were Las Casas’ published comments on the conquerors that one close associate of Viceroy Toledo, possibly his Jesuit confessor, seriously suggested that with his usual astute skill Satan himself had used the good intentions of Las Casas for his own ends, seizing upon the denunciation of the conquest as a means of discrediting and undermining the entire Christian project in the New World. 3 To understand the impact of Las Casas on sixteenth century Spanish America, it is necessary to return to the start of his career as defender of the Indians. At the same time, it is advisable to view him in the context of fellow missionaries, since it offers us a Christian perspective on his life-long campaign. That Las Casas should have been detested by the conquerors is readily apparent; just why he also attracted the criticism of other religious is less well studied. II : Las Casas’ conversion If we accept the account provided by Las Casas in his History of the Indies, it was in 1514, which is to say at the age of thirty and some twelve years after his arrival in Hispaniola, that he experienced a crisis of conscience over the treatment of the Indians. For although he had the rare distinction of being the First priest to be ordained in the New World, as much as any other settler he lived off the proceeds of unpaid Indian labour, employed either in agriculture or in goldmining

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book