Bartolomé de las Casas is alive and well today, if not in body, most certainly in spirit. He wears, as usual among his many students and admirers over the past five hundred years, many hats.

Years ago the U.S. historian Lewis Hanke wrote a pathbreaking study of Las Casas, whom he labeled a pioneer in “social justice.” My own colleague David Lantigua and I, in Bartolomé de las Casas and the Defense of Amerindian Rights, labeled him a political philosopher, canon lawyer, and reformer both within and outside the church.

When approached by the publishers for a book on the “iconic” Las Casas, I wondered “which one?” And I quickly deferred to the dictionary for an official meaning of a word which has become popular among scholars today.

Iconic. What exactly does iconic mean? Our handy dandy Merriam Webster's states that it is of, or relating to, or having the characteristics of an icon, widely recognized and well-established, and/or widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence. The first definition for an icon is a person or thing widely admired, especially for having great influence or significance in a particular sphere.

Was Bartolomé de las Casas iconic? He fits the bill in virtually all instances of iconic, or, to state it simply, is one of the best recognized of all Spaniards in the conquest of the New World, and, secondarily but no less important, widely admired today for what he did with respect to justice, truth, the Christian faith, and equality of all people, to name just a few areas, in the Spanish conquest. And, to be fair here, he was also reviled as a defender of pagans and such a severe critic of his own Spanish nation as to be a traitor to his country.