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Thoughts on Bartolomé de las Casas OP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Ronald Cueto Ruiz
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Extract

‘He this evening again recommended to me to perambulate Spain. I said it would amuse him to get a letter from me dated at Salamancha. Johnson. “I love the University of Salamancha; for when the Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering America, the University of Salamancha gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful”. He spoke with great emotion, and with the generous warmth which dictated the lines in his “London”, against Spanish encroachment’.

Boswell never got round to explaining precisely why it would have been so amusing for the Doctor to receive the letter from Salamanca, and Johnson never explained exactly what he meant by the University of Salamanca. Still, I suppose, not many Spaniards are very bothered about Boswell and Johnson, but they can still get mighty hot and bothered about the discovery and conquest of America; and they are not particularly happy about Wasps telling them where they went wrong. With all the logic of passionate indignation—which, of course, tends to brush aside the mere facts of history and geography—many is the irate Spaniard who has triumphantly produced in the form of a supposedly unanswerable question, what he thinks is to be the coup de grâce of any discussion on the relative merits of different brands of European imperialism, viz.: Where are the Indians in Protestant North America and why are they so numerous in Ibero-America? (And, by the way, that’s another thing you’ve got to be very careful about; none of your Latin America; our prickly, patriotic Spaniard, when aroused, admits of no contribution from the Italians and French in the Southern Hemisphere!)

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Type
Research Article
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New Blackfriars , Volume 56 , Issue 664 , September 1975, pp. 399 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Boswell, James, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Ed. Fitzgerald, Percy, I (London, 1924), 279–280Google Scholar.

2 Fr Venancio Diego Carro OP produces the same argument in his long article, ‘Los postulados teológico‐jurídicos de Bartolomé de las Casa.s sus aciertos, sus oividos y sus fallos, ante Ios Maestros Francisco de Vitoria y Domingo de Soto’, in Estudios Lascasianos (Sevilla, 1966), 239. Actually, a much more sensible assessment was given in the sixteenth century by Juan López de Velasco, as has been noted by Maria del Carmen González Munoz in her preliminary study of his, Geografía v descriptión universal de las Indias, BAE (=Biblioteca Autores Espanoles), CCXLVIII (Madrid. 1971), xxiii.

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6 Although there would appear to be no documentary proof, M. Giménez Fernandez in Diccionario de historia eclesiástica de Espana, I (Madrid, 1972), 374Google Scholar, plumps for August, 1474.

7 Wagner, Henry Raup and Parish, Helen Rand, The Life and Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (Albuquerque, 1967), xxiv‐xxvGoogle Scholar.

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9 L. Hanke, Justice, vii.

10 Davidson, David M., ‘Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico 1519–1650’ in Maroon Societies, edited by Price, Richard (New York, 1973), 83Google Scholar.

11 Diccionario de historia eclesiâstica de Espana, I (Madrid, 1972)Google Scholar, 376 and II (Madrid, 1972), 971.

12 L. Hanke, Justice, 78–81.

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16 Wagner and Parish, op. cit., 195. With reference to the Brevísima Relatión de la Destruyción de las Indias, I had the good fortune to find that the University of Leeds' Library copy of Hanke's Justice happens to be the late Prof. E. Allison Peers' own personal copy, with his own marginal comments in pencil. I think it is worth recording that his comment on Hanke's assessment that: ‘No one today would defend the statistics Las Casas gave, but few would deny that there was considerable truth in his main charges’ (p. 89), is reduced to one heavily punctuated word: ‘What?!’

17 Parish explains this usage in the following manner: ‘Though the whole world says Las Casas, Wagner alone stubbornly said Casas’ (p. xviii), all of which is not strictly accurate because Prof. Giménez Fernández also uses the ‘Casas’ form, which Las Casas himself did.

18 Lewis Hanke, op. cit. (Philadelphia, 1949), as well as, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bookman, Scholar and Propagandist (Philadelphia, 1952)Google Scholar, later translated into execrable ‘Spanglish’ by the aptly named Antonio Hernández Travieso (travieso= naughty), under the title Bartolomé de las Casas. Pensador politico, historiador, antropólogo (Buenos Aires, 1968)Google Scholar, apparently, having previously appeared in Havana in 1949.

19 Fernández, Manuel Giménez, Bartolomé de las Casas, I: Delegado de Cisneros para la reformatión de las lndias, 1516–1517 (Sevilla, 1953)Google Scholar; and laterII: Capellán de S. M. Carlos I, Poblador de Cumaná, 1517–1523 (Sevilla, 1960)Google Scholar.

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22 Ramón Menéndez Pidal, op. cit., of which Parish says stingingly (p. xviii), in a footnote: ‘Menéndez Pidal suffers from the familiar madness that afflicts some patriotic Spaniards at the mere mention of Casas’ name. '

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25 Losada, Angel, Juan Ginés de Sepulveda (Madrid, 1949), 256Google Scholar. The late and lovable Don Americo Castro, I wish to deal with in a separate article.

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27 Menéndez Pidal must be referring to the Bibliography, i.e., Lewis Hanke and Manuel Giménez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 1474–1566: Bibliografía crítica y cuerpo de materiales para el estudio de su vida, escritos, actuación y polémicas que suscitaron durante cuatro siglos (Santiago, Chile, 1954)Google Scholar.

28 Note 670 refers to the article in Escorial as ‘his opportunist essay’; note 964 is much more patronising or ruthless, according to taste, with phrases like, ‘even taking into account the absolving excuse of his enthusiasm, the enthusiasm of a neophyte’. But the hardest knock of this note for Don Ramón must have been the comparison or rather coupling with ‘Carbia and Anzoategui and other such writers, who have had recourse to such means to acquire a name for themselves in certain chauvinist circles’. See, Fernández, M. Giménez, op. cit. II (Sevilla, 1960), 208 and 273Google Scholar.

29 Venancio Diego Carro OP, op. cit., 237–238.

30 Sicroff, Albert A., Les controverses des statuts de ‘pureté de sang’ en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar, passim.

31 Ramón Menéndez Pidal, op. cit., 118.

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33 Pedro Borges Morán, op. cit, 183 and 188. The Carmelite historian, B. Velasco Bayon, in his preliminary study to P. Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, O. Carm., Compendio y description de las Indias Occidentales, BAE, CCXXXI (Madrid, 1969), x‐xii, says that it was the Royal Cédula of March 17, 1553, that entrusted the conversion and instruction of the Indians to the Orders of St Dominic, St Francis and St Augustine alone. That the other Orders were expressly excluded in 1560, in spite of Adrian VI's Omnimoda of 1522; only the Society of Jesus was allowed to join the ranks of the other three Mendicant Orders in 1560.

34 Lea, Henry Charles, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, IV (New York, 1907), 138Google Scholar.

35 Batailkm, M., Etudes sur Bartolomé de las Casas (Paris, 1965), 316Google Scholar, refers to San Gregorio as ‘the best nursery of spiritual Dominicans’!

36 Venancio Diego Carro OP, op. clt., passim.

37 Lewis Hanke, Justice, 17–18.

38 Ballesteros‐Gaibrois, M., ‘Fray Bernardino de Sahagún y su obra’, in Folia humanistica. III (1965), 43Google Scholar.

39 L. Hanke. Justice, 12, and the original Spanish text of the notary in the same author's, Bartolomé de las Casas (Buenos Aires, 1968), 15–16Google Scholar.

40 The best recent account of Vitoria's doctrine in English is to be found in Hamilton, Bernice, Political Thought in Sixteenth‐Century Spain (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar, who makes the point (p. 169), that ‘Vitoria's treatises on the Indians are, of course, a classical statement of the rights of backward peoples to be treated as men. His final summary of the duties of an imperial power is both so cogent and so far‐seeing that in this century we have seen colony after colony achieving independence before it could be put into practice’.

41 Venancio Diego Carro OP, op. cit., 115.

42 Ibid., 112–113.

43 The major Dominican school of thought, and the Jesuits–Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Las Casas, Acosta, Covarrubias, Vázquez de Menchaca, Domingo Bánez, Luis de Molina–were all against the universal temporal sovereignty of Pope or Emperor; whilst Palacios Rubios, Sepúlveda, Gregorio López de Bobadilla defended the Pope's claims. See Miguel Angel Ochoa Brun's preliminary study to Juan de Solórzano y Pereyra, Politico Indiana, BAE, CCLII (Madrid, 1972), Iii.

44 Venancio Diego Carro OP, op. cit., 117, says literally, that ‘fortunately for Las Casas, the theological‐juridical tradition on which he was raised was manifestly triumphant ‘. Carro's stress on Las Casas's debt to the Dominican Order is to be found on page 220, as well as the admission that this might take away some of the personal merit from Las Casas.

45 Camelo Sáenz de Santa María SJ, ‘Remesal, la Verapaz y Fray Bartolmé de las Casas’ in Estudios Lascasianos (Sevilla, 1966), 329–349Google Scholar, particularly, 344–348. However, not all our illusions are shattered. The Dominicans did use music. Sáenz de Santa María not only comments in his introductory study to Fray Antonio de Remesal OP, Historia general de las Indias Occidentales y particular de la gobernación de Chiapa y Guatemala, BAE, CLXXV (Madrid, 1964), 12, on Juan Cabezas Altamirano OP, Bishop of La Habana, and later of Guatemala, who had a negro orchestra in his service, but also wonders if they did not introduce the marimba into Guatemala.

46 Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, op. cit., 179–180.

47 Ph.–I Andre‐Vincent OP, ‘ľintuition fondamentale de Las Casas et la doctrine de Saint Thomas’, in Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 96 (1974), 944.

48 Ibid., 952.

49 David M. Davidson, op. cit., 83.

50 Butler's Lives of the Saints, III (London, 1956), 519–524Google Scholar.