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

The Spanish wars against the Moors, no less than the Crusades against the Moslems in the Holy Land, enlisted under the Christian standard the chivalry of Europe, and during the victorious campaign of the King, St. Ferdinand, knights from France, Germany, Italy, and Flanders swelled the ranks of the Spanish forces in Andalusia. Amongst these foreign noblemen were two French gentlemen called Casaus, who claimed descent from Guillen, Viscount of Limoges, one of whom was killed during the siege of Seville.

The city was taken in 1252, and the surviving Casaus shared in the apportionment of its spoils, and founded there a family, whose descendants were destined to become numerous and illustrious. The name Casaus assumed with time the more Spanish form of Casas, though it continued to be spelled in both ways for several centuries, and Bartholomew de [pg 2] Las Casas himself used both spellings indifferently, especially during the earlier years of his life.

This family ranked among the nobility of Seville and mention is found of the confirmation by Alfonso XI. of Guillen de Las Casas in the office of regidor of the city in 1318. This same Guillen became Alcalde Mayor of Seville, and when he died his body was buried in one of the chapels of the cathedral. His son, Alfonso, is stated in the chronicles of Don Juan II. (1409) to have been appointed by the Infante, Don Fernando, to the lieutenancy of Castillo de Priego, "because he was a valiant man who could hold it well." The names of Guillen and Bartolomé are of frequent recurrence in the annals of the family, whose members constantly occupied the honourable offices of judge, alcalde mayor, and captain, using the title of Don and intermarrying with the most illustrious families of Andalusia.

According to indications equivalent to proofs in the absence of any positive record, from such respectable forebears descended Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was born in Seville, in 1474. He himself speaks of Seville as his native city, and the popular tradition, which fixes the ancient suburb of Triana as his birthplace, was recognised in 1859 by the municipality of Seville assigning the name of Calle del Procurador to one of the streets of Triana, in honour of the Bishop, whose proudest title was Protector (or Procurador) General of the Indians.

In his voluminous writings, which teem with [pg 3] information about the men and events of his times, the references to his own family history are infrequent and imperfect, so that from his own records of his life, very little is to be gleaned concerning it. His father's name is variously given by different writers as Alonso, Antonio, and Francisco, while he himself states1 that he was named Pedro, thus contradicting all his biographers from Remesal, who was the first, down to Don Antonio Fabié, whose admirable Vida y Escritos, published in 1879, was the last important contribution on this interesting subject. Zu?iga, in his Discurso de Ortices, assumed that Alonso de las Casas and Beatriz Maraver y Cegarra of Triana were the parents of Fray Bartholomew, but in the Anales de Sevilla, a later work, Francisco is given as the father's name. Neither Llorente nor Gutierrez, who has followed him, gives any authority for his affirmation that the father's name was Antonio, while Quintana and Fabié accept Remesal2 and name the father Francisco.

The genealogy of the family furnished me by the dean of the Royal College of Heralds in Madrid shows the descent of Fray Bartholomew through his frather, named Francisco, from Alonso de Las Casas, "Se?or de Gomez Carde?a, Veinticuatro de Seville, la Villa de Priego" in 1409, and his wife, Maria Fernandez Marmolejo. The children of this couple were Guillen, Isabel, Juan, Pedro, and Francisco, who is described in the genealogy as the father of Bartholomew. Pedro, whom Fray Bartholomew mentions as his father, is described as Dean of Seville, in which case his ecclesiastical state would exclude matrimony and legitimate issue.

Fabié affirms that in several passages of his writings Fray Bartholomew confirms the assertion of those authors who have designated his father as Francisco, but he does not indicate the whereabouts of these passages nor have I, in my unaided researches, succeeded in finding them. The descendants of the original founder of the family had multiplied and, by the close of the fifteenth century, were divided into many prolific branches, hence the difficulty of identifying the unimportant father of an extraordinarily important son is not wonderful. Las Casas himself may be reasonably assumed to have known his own father's name and we must conclude, in view of his assertion, that all other authorities, including the Royal College of Heralds, are wrong, and that not Francisco, but a Pedro de Las Casas, who was not however Dean of Seville, was the immediate progenitor of the illustrious Bishop of Chiapa.

The scarcity of positive information concerning his immediate family is equalled by the paucity of trustworthy details of the first twenty-eight years of Fray Bartholomew's life. He completed his studies and obtained the degree of licentiate in law at the University of Salamanca, the most celebrated in Spain, and which ranked high amongst the great seats of learning in Europe at that time. Jurisprudence was divided into the branches of Roman law as interpreted by the school of Bologna, and of canon law, the principles of which were interwoven with the common practice, whose severer tendencies they somewhat tempered. The precepts of Aristotle as interpreted by scholastics formed the basis of philosophical studies, and the Thomistic doctrine was taught by professors of the Dominican Order.

It has been judiciously observed that in that age of growing absolutism, both spiritual and temporal, only a skilful Thomistic scholar could have discerned the limits to the legitimate exercise of the royal authority which Las Casas so clearly perceived and so boldly defined in the very presence of the autocratic sovereigns of Spain.

Grammar, ethics, physics, and the branches of learning necessary to complete the education of a young man of his social position and mental capacity, were doubtless embraced in his course of study. His use of the Latin tongue was fluent, though his style has been criticised as cumbersome and wanting in elegance; certainly his writings abound in diffuse generalities, a multiplicity of repetitions, and a vast array of citations from Scripture and the classics which render his unexpurgated manuscripts wearisome enough to modern readers. He shared the defects of most of his contemporaries in this respect and followed the fashion common in his times. The training he received in the Spanish schools and the University, and which he [pg 6] afterwards perfected-as will be seen-by the studies he resumed after his profession in the Dominican Order, rendered formidable as an advocate one whom nature had endowed with a rare gift of eloquence, a passionate temperament, and a robust physical constitution which seems to have been immune to the ills and fatigues that assail less favoured mortals. Gines de Sepulveda, whose forensic encounter with Las Casas was one of the academic events of the sixteenth century, described his adversary in a letter to a friend as "most subtle, most vigilant, and most fluent, compared with whom Homer's Ulysses was inert and stammering."

The father of Las Casas accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to America and acquired profitable interests in the island of Hispaniola. He returned to Spain in 1496, bringing with him an Indian lad whom he sent as a present to his son, who was then a student at Salamanca.

Bartholomew's ownership of this Indian boy was brief, owing to Queen Isabella's intense displeasure when she learned that Columbus had brought, and permitted to be brought back Indians, as slaves. Nothing sufficed to appease the Queen's indignation that the Admiral should thus dispose of her new subjects without her leave and authority, and a royal order was published from Granada, where the court then was, commanding, under pain of death, that all those who had brought Indians to Spain as slaves should send them back to America. When Francisco de Bobadilla was sent in 1500 to Hispaniola to supersede Columbus as Governor, all [pg 7] these Indians returned with him and Las Casas himself states, "Mine was of the number."

Thus strangely is the future apostle of freedom first introduced to our notice in the guise of a slave-holder, constrained by a royal edict to surrender his human property.

Upon his return from Salamanca to Seville Las Casas found himself, through his father's relations with Columbus, in daily intercourse with the men whose voyages and discoveries were thrilling Europe. Amongst these navigators was his uncle Francisco de Pe?ulosa, and it was but natural that his eager temperament should catch the adventurous fever which prevailed throughout Spain and notably in Andalusia. Salucchi, in his Latin treatise on Hebrew coins, says that Las Casas accompanied his father on the second voyage of Columbus in 1493 and brought back the Indian slave himself. Llorente, who has been followed by several modern writers, asserts that his first voyage to America was made with Columbus on his third expedition. He deduces this conclusion from a statement at the close of the Thirty Propositions which Las Casas addressed to the Royal India Council in 1547 and from a sentence in the First Motive of his Ninth Remedy which he presented to the Emperor in 1542. The first of these passages reads "Thus, most illustrious Sirs, have I thought since forty-nine years, during which I have witnessed evil-doings in America and since thirty-four years that I have studied law." The passage merely refers to Columbus having [pg 8] permitted certain Spaniards who had rendered important services during his voyage to bring back each an Indian and concludes, "And I obtained one."

Christopher Columbus

From an engraving by P. Mercuri after a contemporary portrait

The deductions of both these learned writers would seem to require more positive corroboration. Not only are they destitute of confirmation, but in the second chapter of his Historia General, Las Casas gives the names of many persons who did accompany Columbus in 1493, describing several incidents connected with that expedition and concluding by saying that he heard all these things "from my father who returned [to America] with him, when he went to found settlements in Hispaniola." In the preface which he wrote in 1552 to accompany the publication of his history, Destruycion de las Indias, which had been composed ten years earlier, he speaks of his experience extending over more than fifty years, but in his Historia General, which is almost a diary of the first half of his life in America, the first voyage that he mentions is that of Don Nicholas de Ovando in 1502. Las Casas was most careful in describing every particular of the events in which he had a part and he nowhere mentions that he accompanied Columbus on any voyage, whereas he dwells at length upon the expedition of Ovando, and in the third chapter of the second book of the Historia General he affirms, "I heard this with my own ears for I went on that voyage with the Comendador de Lares [Ovando] to this island." The phrase is characteristic, for the positive note is rarely absent [pg 9] in the affirmations of Las Casas, nor is it admissible that his experiences on any voyage previous to that of Ovando should find no place in the exact and scrupulous narrative he has left us of his relations with America and his beloved Indians.

In consequence of the persistent and bitter complaints of Columbus against the second Governor of Hispaniola, whose appointment violated the rights secured to the Admiral and his successors by the capitulations of Granada, the catholic sovereign decided to recall Francisco de Bobadilla, whose administration gave cause for dissatisfaction in other respects, and to send Don Nicholas de Ovando to replace him. Ovando was at that time Comendador de Lares and was later raised to the supreme commandership of the Order of Calatrava. He is described as a most prudent man, worthy to govern any number of people, but not Indians; man in word and deed, an avowed enemy of avarice and covetousness; not wanting in humility, as shown in his habits of life, both public and private, though he maintained the dignity and authority of his position.3

The new Governor was endowed with full powers to judge the accusations against his predecessor and to dispose of the nettlesome questions which had provoked the Roldan rebellion.

The preparations for his departure were delayed by many causes; his fleet was the most considerable one that had thus far been organised to sail for America, being composed of thirty-two vessels on [pg 10] which were to sail some two thousand five hundred persons, many of whom were knights and noblemen. Twelve Franciscan friars under the direction of their leader, Fray Alonso del Espinal, formed part of the company.

It was this brilliant expedition that Fernando Cortes intended to join when he was prevented by injuries incurred while engaged in an amorous adventure which led him over garden walls into risky situations where he ended with broken bones, and was consequently left behind. The fleet sailed from San Lucar de Barrameda on February 13, 1502, which according to Las Casas was the first Sunday in lent of that year.4

The usual course, by way of the Canary Islands, was followed, but after eight days at sea, a violent tempest wrecked one ship, La Rabida, with one hundred and twenty people on board, and scattered the remainder; some vessels were obliged to throw most of their cargo overboard, but all, after many dangers, gradually found refuge in various ports of the neighbouring islands.

The wreckage of La Rabida, and that of some other vessels which had also foundered while carrying sugar from the islands, drifted back to the Spanish coast and gave rise to the rumour that the entire fleet was lost. This caused such a general sense of affliction that the sovereigns, on receipt of this false report, shut themselves up in the palace at Granada and mourned for eight days.

The vessels which had weathered the tempest [pg 11] united after some delay in the port of the island of Gomera, and being joined there by another, fitted out in the Canaries by people eager to go to America, the fleet was thus brought up to its original complement. The commander divided his squadron in to two sections, the first of which, composed of the fastest vessels, he kept under his command, while the second was placed under command of Antonio de Torres. Ovando's division reached Hispaniola on the fifteenth of April and the second squadron came safely to port some twelve days later. Thus did Bartholomew de Las Casas first land in the New World.

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