Bartolomé de las Casas, Judge Alonso de Zorita, and the Franciscans: A Collaborative Effort for the Spiritual Conquest of the Borderlands

1981 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph H. Vigil
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Franciscan Order ◽  
Spiritual Conquest

These brief remarks on the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, Licenciate Alonso de Zorita, and the Franciscan Order in sixteenth-century Mexico should not be interpreted as characteristic of either the century or the colonial period as a whole. Church and state generally complemented each other, but the origins “of the longenduring conflict between clerical and anticlerical forces” in Mexico and the Borderlands “reach into earliest colonial times.” An example is the jurisdictional dispute between Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna and Viceroy Diego Carrillo de Mendoza y Pimental in the 1620s. Another is the long and bitter conflict between Franciscan missionaries and Spanish governors in seventeenth-century New Mexico. Nevertheless, cooperation between representatives of Church and State in New Spain is apparent even before the arrival of the saintly “Twelve Apostles” headed by Fray Martín de Valencia in 1524.

Alonso de Zorita: Early and Last Years

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-513
Author(s):  
Ralph H. Vigil
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
New World ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
The Masses

Alonso De Zorita’s career as a Spanish judge in the Indies in the years 1548–1556, though not as well known as the career of Bartolomé de las Casas and other pro-Indian reformers, merits serious study. The arrival of Zorita and his subsequent actions as an administrator and legist represent one example of the serious efforts of the Crown in the 1540’s to impose royal control over a quasi-feudal class of conquerors and pobladores which had from the early sixteenth century entrenched itself in the New World. Moreover, Zorita was not only a jurist who attempted to implement the New Laws of 1542–43, but an inspired humanitarian who took an active interest in the native civilizations of the New World and questioned the relations that had evolved and created “a Hispano-Indian society characterized by the domination of the masses by a small privileged minority…” His ardent defense of the Indians against the charge that they were “barbarians” included a relativist line of argument that anticipated Michel de Montaigne’s celebrated comment that “everyone calls barbarian what is not his own usage.” In addition, his inquiries into native history, land tenure and inheritance laws may be considered “in effect exercises in applied anthropology, capable of yielding a vast amount of information about native customs and society” and is an example of what Europe saw or failed to see in the sixteenth century when confronted with a strange new world.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on the Nature of the American Indians

1975 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Fernández-Santamaria
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Composite Nature ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda ◽  
Rule Out

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda epitomizes in many ways, both personally and intellectually, the cosmopolitanism of Spanish political thought in the sixteenth century. Educated in Italy, disciple of Pomponazzi, translator of Aristotle, chronicler of the Emperor and mentor of his son Philip, Sepúlveda is best known—and often misunderstood as the defender of the more unsavory aspects of the Spanish conquest and colonization in America—for his bitter controversy with Bartolomé de las Casas. To that debate Sepúlveda brought a humanist's training and outlook anchored in his devotion to Aristotle, but strongly tempered by his attachment to Saint Augustine. It is the purpose of this paper to examine Sepúlveda's ideas on the nature of the American natives, particularly the question of whether the Indians are natural slaves. Considerations of space, of course, rule out the possibility of undertaking here a detailed scrutiny of the foundations upon which those ideas rest. It can be said, however, that they are typically Renaissance views, a blend of traditions characteristic of the composite nature of the age's intellectual milieu.

scholarly journals Bartolome de Las Casas and the Tradition of Medieval Law

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Steady Flow ◽  
New World ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Medieval Law

As a defender of the Indians and an opponent of the methods used by the Spanish conquistadors, Bartolomé de Las Casas was as controversial a figure in the sixteenth century as he has been in the last four hundred years of historiography. Las Casas' fight to preserve the freedom of the Indians has gained for him not only devoted admirers, but also angry detractors.1Las Casas was not the only Spaniard who defended the Indians, but his efforts are the best known. He labored for fifty years before death finally halted the steady flow of polemics from his pen. However, he was not just a sheltered academician like Vitoria, but he actively championed the rights of the Indians by working and living among them in the New World.

The Destruction of the San Sabá Apache Mission: A Discussion of the Casualties

2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan M. Romero de Terreros
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Northern Boundary ◽  
Arms Trade ◽  
Peaceful Settlement ◽  
Central Texas ◽  
Franciscan Order

The Lipan Apache mission on the banks of the San Sabá River was located on the northern boundary of Coahuila, New Spain, in the center of today’s state of Texas. On March 16, 1758, Norteño tribes, allied with the Comanches, attacked and destroyed the mission, demonstrating their hostility to what they saw as the Spaniards’ unjust support of their traditional enemy, the Apaches. The destruction of the mission contributed to the failure of the most far-reaching attempt by the Spanish Crown and the Franciscan Order to settle the Apaches in Texas. The Spanish believed that the mission was the only means to ensure a peaceful settlement of central Texas native tribes and simultaneously to check French illegal arms trade in the northern borderlands. Once the Lipan Apaches were pacified, the reasoning went, definitive settlement of all the Norteño tribes and their allies would follow. These settlements of pacified tribes would also provide the much-desired direct link between Spanish settlements in Texas and those of New Mexico.

scholarly journals Between Thomism and Roman Civil Law: The Eclectic Concept of Liberty of Bartolomé De Las Casas and his Theoretical Defence of Native Americans during the Sixteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-292
Author(s):  
Manuel Méndez Alonzo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Law Texts

In this paper I present the theory of natural rights and liberty of Bartolomé de Las Casas. I hold that the theoretical foundation of Las Casas is found in juridical texts, only complemented by Thomist authorities. I show that the apparent inconsistencies were a means to make his discourse more effective against those who defended the enslavement of Native Americans. Finally, this eclecticism enabled Las Casas to create an original theory of civil power and liberty by using Canon law texts and terms.

scholarly journals Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ward
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
Human Liberation

This book delves into the inadequately explored, liberative side of Humanism during the late Renaissance. While some long-sixteenth-century thinking anticipates twentieth-century Liberation Theology, a broader description is simply "liberation thinking," which embraces its diverse, timeless, and sometimes nontheological aspects. Two moments frame the treatment of American colonialism’s physical and mental pathways and the liberative response to them, known as liberation thinking. These are St. Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s thousand-page Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, completed one hundred years later. These works and others by Erasmus and Bartolomé de las Casas trace the development of the idea of human liberation in the face of degrading chattel and encomienda slavery as well as the peonage that gave rise to the hacienda system in the Americas. Catholic humanists such as More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma developed arguments, theories, and even theology that attempted to deconstruct those subordinating structures.

The New Philology and the New History of Religion in New Spain

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Christensen
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Indigenous Language ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Yucatec Maya ◽  
Virgin Of Guadalupe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spiritual Conquest ◽  
Additional Point

The New Philology and its emphasis on the use of indigenous-language sources for ethnohistorical insights contributes greatly to the study of religion in New Spain. Previous studies primarily employed Spanish-language accounts and reports to understand evangelization efforts. Although providing important insights, histories based solely on Spanish sources are limited in their contributions. The New Philology, however, provides an additional point of view from which to study religion. Indigenous-language texts in Nahuatl (Aztec), Yucatec Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and other languages contain a wealth of information on how natives responded, negotiated, resisted, and participated in the spread of Catholicism. The contributions of the New Philology to the study of religion in New Spain, although many, are particularly evident in its re-evaluation of the spiritual conquest; the natives’ role in evangelization; the diversity of religious beliefs, practices, and experiences throughout the colonial period; and through its critical study of the legend surrounding the Virgin of Guadalupe.

White Legend Against Black: Nationalism and Enlightenment in a Spanish Context

1977 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Paul J. Hauben
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Four Books ◽  
The Subject

The appearance of no less than four books in English marked 1971 as a banner year for Black Legend studies, especially for their colonial side. As in the past discussion emphasized the sixteenth century, dominated by the commanding and controversial Dominican, Bartolomé de Las Casas on one hand, and the grim Indian demographic catastrophe on the other. This was no less so during the Enlightenment's passionate debates on the subject. Modern research gives greater credence to mortality rates suggested by Las Casas, but centers on the dire effects of disease as the main agent causing mass death. As this essay will suggest, eighteenth century discussants were somewhat betwixt and between concerning the American experience and the Hispanic impact. Clearly much of the ongoing appeal of Las Casas' interpretation of the Indians' calamity, which stressed the conquerors' brutality, comes from its foreshadowing of modern agonies over race relations and western treatment of other colonialized peoples.

Representing and Misrepresenting the History of Puritanism in Eighteenth-Century England

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 205-218
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Government

An Englishman living during the mid-eighteenth century would have known that his country had been, at least since the late sixteenth century, a decidedly and, for the long-foreseeable future, an unalterably Protestant nation. But what sort of Protestant nation? One that needed a legally estabhshed church? And, if so, what sort of church should that church as established by law be? Did it, for instance, necessarily require a certain kind of church government? In its relation to the English state, did the church need to be the senior, equal or junior partner? And what rights, if any, should those not conforming to the estabhshed church have? These were vexing questions, and the mid-seventeenth-century civil wars had mostly been an intra-Protestant fight over them. Yet neither those internecine religio-political wars nor the subsequent political revolution of the late seventeenth century had resolved definitively any of the fundamental questions about church and state raised originally by the sixteenth-century religious Reformations. Those who had lived through the Sacheverell crisis, the Bangorian controversy or the fiercely anti-clerical 1730s recognized this all too well: historians, alas, have not.

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