‘Inter caetera’ and ‘Eximiae devotionis’

Many of the papal policies affecting newly discovered peoples were issued in the form of bulls, which are normally the highest form of papal communication. A bull may be defined more simply as ‘an apostolic letter with a leaden seal’.Footnote ⁶ Other communications, such as Ineffabilis, were issued in the form of a Brief, a shorter and less elaborate letter often treating a specific issue, which could be sent to a king or to a limited group of people.Footnote ⁷ In order to understand the problems with Panzer's claim that Ineffabilis clarifies the voluntary nature of subjugation in the two bulls Inter caetera (3, 4 May 1493) and Eximiae devotionis (3 May 1493), it is necessary to review the content of these bulls.

Generally, these bulls were part of a larger papal effort to prevent Portugal and Spain from infringing on each other's territories, even though Vander Linden argues that the 1493 bulls are actually for the sole benefit of Spain.Footnote ⁸ In any case, many historians interpret those bulls to be another indication of how the pope thought that he administered God's ownership rights to the earth, and was now allocating parts of it to Spain and Portugal.Footnote ⁹ In Inter caetera (4 May), Alexander vi tells Spain that it can possess lands nearly unconditionally:

Despite the all-encompassing language of Inter caetera and Eximiae devotionis, Panzer claims that these bulls do not give away the newly-discovered lands or authorise Spain or Portugal to enslave their inhabitants in order to Christianise them. Instead, argues Panzer, the pope ‘is giving to Spain and Portugal the rights to bring Christianity to these lands on the presumption that the peoples of those lands freely choose the Kings of Spain and Portugal as their sovereigns'.Footnote ¹¹

But Panzer misreads the plain sense and Latin grammar of the bulls. In Inter caetera (4 May), the direct objects of the verbs ‘give, grant, and assign’ (‘donamus, concedimus et assignamus’) are ‘all islands and the mainlands’ (‘omnes insulas et terras’), and not ‘the right to bring Christianity to the lands’.Footnote ¹² In an oblique reference to Inter caetera, the infamous Requerimiento (1513), which was to be read to newly-encountered peoples, plainly understands that the pope ‘made a donation of these isles and Terra-firma of the Ocean sea to the aforementioned King and Queen … and their successors’.Footnote ¹³ In fact, within that complex Latin sentence of Inter caetera, the pope also does give all rights (‘cum plena, libera, et omnimoda potestate, auctoritate, et juridisdictione’) to the king, but there is nothing mentioned about giving rights to the natives.Footnote ¹⁴

The purpose of bringing Christianity to those lands is only one of a number of purposes. The pope is well aware, and explicitly mentions, the discovery of gold and other precious commodities as another of the purposes of such expeditions. So, Inter caetera does not just grant these kings the right to bring Christianity to these lands. The pope allows the king of Castile to permit or forbid anyone ‘to go there for the purpose of trade or any other reason’.Footnote ¹⁵

There is no thought of the will or consent of those conquered. The grants are given ‘forever’ before any native necessarily has heard of these coming conquerors, and so how is their consent of any concern at all? In fact, the only significant condition outlined in Inter caetera is that such lands be not already in the possession of a Christian king (at least before 1493).Footnote ¹⁶ Subjugation without consent and Christianisation are not necessarily viewed as mutually exclusive So the fact that kings are obligated to bring Christianity to newly encountered lands does not mean that they are required to act only with the consent of those subjugated.

‘Ineffabilis et Summi Patris’ (1497)

Given the apparent imperialistic nature of Inter caetera and Eximiae devotionis, Panzer argues that the real intention of these bulls is clarified in Ineffabilis, a letter sent by Alexander to Manuel i, king of Portugal (known also as Emmanuel, and as the ‘fortunate king’).Footnote ¹⁷ His reign witnessed the greatest accomplishments in world exploration undertaken by the Portuguese, including the voyage of Vasco da Gama to India and the establishment of colonies in India and Brazil.Footnote ¹⁸

The version of Ineffabilis quoted by Panzer is found in a collection of papal documents edited by Francisco Javier Hernaez, the renowned editor of many Vatican documents.Footnote ¹⁹ Panzer cites only parts of the letter to make his case for ‘voluntary subjection’. This interpretation of Ineffabilis had already been mentioned, albeit obliquely, by Pastor, who says:

Pastor provides no detailed exegesis to support his interpretation, nor the full text of the letter. Patrick Madrid also cites Ineffabilis to defend Pope Alexander, but he merely repeats what Panzer had said.Footnote ²¹ Otherwise, this document is routinely ignored, perhaps because it had not previously been translated fully into English and is not widely available.

The Latin text of Ineffabilis reveals that Panzer has mistranslated, misunderstood and/or misrepresented that document at crucial points. First, Panzer omits the introductory portion of the letter, which states:

Clearly, the letter includes the right of conquest as one of the permitted tools of evangelisation. The phrase, ‘barbaricae nationes deprimi’ (‘the conquest of barbarian nations’), is similar to that found in Inter caetera (‘ac barbare nationes deprimantur et at fidem ipsam reducantur’), which Davenport translates as ‘that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself’.Footnote ²² This section alone should place in doubt any interpretation of the letter as advocating the consent of indigenous peoples as a condition of submission.

Second, Panzer mistranslates as ‘Gregory’ the name of the Portuguese cardinal mentioned in the letter. The Latin text actually gives his name as Georgium (Jorge/George), who is none other than Jorge da Costa (1406–1508), and who is also known as Jorge Alpendrinha. Da Costa was the cardinal protector of Portugal who resided in Rome from his creation as cardinal of Lisbon in 1476 and until his death in 1508.Footnote ²³

But the more important misunderstanding comes in the passage that Panzer introduces and quotes from:

Panzer's footnote gives the Latin that he is translating as follows: ‘si forsan contingeret aliquas Civitates, castra, terras, et loca seu Dominia Infidelium ditioni tuae subjici, seu tributum solvere, et te in eorum Dominum cognoscere velle’.Footnote ²⁵

Thus, according to Panzer, we should read what follows the Latin conjunction si, ‘if’, restrictively, as conditions imposed by Alexander upon Manuel. For Panzer, these conditions include principally that the natives submit willingly to Portugal's rule. However, Panzer has misunderstood the fact that the pope is not granting anything conditionally at this point. The fuller translation of this passage is:

In contrast to Panzer's representation, at this point in Ineffabilis Alexander vi is not making a declaration of any grant, conditionally or unconditionally. Rather, the pope here is actually quoting or paraphrasing Manuel's request (‘that you [Manuel] … desire’/ ‘quod tu … desideras’) to be granted newly discovered lands if those lands choose to be subjected to him.Footnote ²⁶ The Latin pronoun ‘tu’ (you) and corresponding verb (‘desire’/ ‘desideras’) are completely omitted by Panzer in his quotation.

Pastor does briefly attempt to explain the lack of such a supposed restriction in a previous bull as follows: ‘If this formula is wanting in the document of 1493, it is merely because it was understood as included in the title itself.’Footnote ²⁷ But Pastor provides no additional evidence that such a restrictive formula was ‘understood as included in the title itself’. Furthermore, if it had been understood in such a manner, then it leaves unexplained why Alexander felt the need to include a conditional clause in Ineffabilis that appears in none of the previous Alexandrine bulls.

If anything, Ineffabilis follows a tradition found in previous papal grants to previous Portuguese kings who saw their incursions into Africa as a type of crusades. As the historian A. C. de C. M. Saunders notes, Manuel's own tutor, Diogo Lopes Rebelo, was an important political theorist who championed the king's right to ‘attack states ruled by unbelievers whenever he pleased’.Footnote ²⁸ Indeed, Lopes was simply following a recognised legal tradition found already in Dum Diversas (18 June 1452), wherein Pope Nicholas v allowed Alfonso (1438–77) ‘to conquer and reduce to perpetual slavery “all Saracens and pagans [i.e. blacks] and other infidels and enemies of Christ” in West Africa’.Footnote ²⁹ The pope's authorisation is premised on the claim that God has given him power over all kingdoms and peoples, as is indicated by the allusion (‘testante Propheta, licet imeriti constituti’) to Jeremiah i.10 in the preamble of Ineffabilis.Footnote ³⁰

Another problem is that Panzer attempts to use Ineffabilis to explain how the king of Spain should have (or would have) understood the previous bulls. Panzer remarks: ‘Thus it is quite clear that Alexander vi's intention was not simply to give other people's lands, but rather to give Spain and Portugal the authority of the Church to bring the Catholic faith and their own countries’ civil authority to those people who are freely willing to accept them.’Footnote ³¹

But, even if true, this would not necessarily be understood by the king of Spain because Ineffabilis was addressed only to the king of Portugal. Despite the existence of a similar document (Ineffabilis of 1495) sent to the Spanish monarchs, there is no mention of a joint letter to the king of Spain in 1497.Footnote ³² In fact, the text of Ineffabilis of 1495 was even more explicit in allowing the Spanish monarchs to subject to servitude any territories that they might conquer in Africa without any clause analogous (‘si forsan contingeret … velle’) to that in the Ineffabilis sent to Manuel.Footnote ³³ Therefore, it seems that in Ineffabilis of 1497 Alexander is answering a more specific and new question posed by Manuel.

The geopolitical context

If Ineffabilis has an explicit mention of conquest, why would Manuel wonder if he can accept dominion over people who voluntarily submit to him in the first place? Would it not be understood that he could? To answer these questions, it is necessary to recall the procedures by which legal enslavement could be justified in medieval law. Las siete partidas (The seven parts), the Spanish legal code of Alfonso x of Castile (el Sabio) (1252–84), specifies at least three ways in which a person can be legally enslaved: ‘The first is the capture in time of war of those who are enemies of the faith; the second is to be born of a slave woman; the third is when someone who is free allows himself to be sold.’Footnote ³⁴ These conditions were well-recognised in medieval law.Footnote ³⁵

A more important reason why Manuel is wondering if he can accept dominion over people who ‘voluntarily’ submit to his rule is the bitter conflicts that ensued when indigenous people become caught between the claims of Spain and Portugal. Some natives might have opted for Portuguese rule, and others for Castilian. A few decades prior to 1497, Portugal had even helped the natives fight off the Castilians who also claimed the Canary Islands.Footnote ³⁶ That conflict was adjudicated in the Treaty of Alcaçovas (1479), wherein Portugal ceded ownership to Castile, but nothing is said about the native inhabitants having determined that choice.Footnote ³⁷

Territorial disputes continued to be a problem in the 1480s and 1490s. By Panzer's own admission, Alexander is attempting to clarify Inter caetera (3, 4 May 1493), among other bulls. Yet Inter caetera is greatly concerned with Portugal and Spain not infringing on each other's territories. Inter caetera (4 May) draws a line one hundred leagues west of any of the Azores or Cape Verde Islands, and grants territory found west of that line to Castile.Footnote ³⁸ However, note again the exception issued by the pope to Castile:

Indeed, the only significant condition for possession outlined in Inter caetera, Eximiae devotionis and Ineffabilis is that any new lands encountered be not already in the actual possession of a Christian king.

This sort of situation was particularly vexing because the world is round, and it was only a matter of time before Spanish sailors heading westward encountered lands that Portugal considered to be in ‘the East’. Dudum siquidem, a bull issued by Pope Alexander vi on 26 September 1493, saw the problem:

Since it was in the ‘east’, India might be in Portugal's territory, but Dudum siquidem awards it to Spain. However Dudum siquidem did not settle the matter, and the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which attempted new lines of demarcation, still left many uncertainties.

It is in Tordesillas that we find new clues for Manuel's inquiry. Tordesillas recognised that each sovereign might try to lobby the pope surreptitiously to change or modify these grants without telling the other sovereign. So, the Treaty of Tordesillas attempts to prevent such manoeuvres as follows:

From this statement it is clear that the kings of Spain or Portugal might still be free to solicit bulls pertaining to this treaty. The parties should not, however, attempt any underhanded manoeuvres to change or be released from the provisions of Tordesillas. Yet, it is precisely the underhanded manoeuvre described in Tordesillas that Manuel may be attempting to impose upon Alexander vi in Ineffabilis.

There was room for manoeuvre via at least three loopholes. First, it was not until 24 January 1506 that Tordesillas was ratified by Pope Julius ii in his bull Ea quae.Footnote ⁴³ Until such confirmation took place, both parties lobbied the pope to settle issues of demarcation. Second, and as Vander Linden notes with reference to the bull Dudum siquidem (26 Sept. 1493), ‘[t]he position of India is … not clearly defined in the papal document’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Third, Dudum siquidem also explicitly reaffirmed actual possession as a condition of ownership, as opposed to possession on the basis of dispositions in prior papal bulls.Footnote ⁴⁵ In other words, unless a king had those lands in actual possession, any ownership based on prior lines of demarcation could still be disputed and moot.

So the timing of Ineffabilis was of the utmost importance. Ineffabilis was issued on 1 June 1497, about a month before the launch of the momentous voyage of Vasco da Gama, on 9 July 1497, that reached India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Given the ambiguous status of India's demarcation, Manuel might have been eager to confirm his acquisitional potential in light of Da Gama's impending trip. Dudum siquidem, which emphasises the problems of vessels heading west infringing on lands in the east, indicates that the Iberian monarchs were proactive on such jurisdictional problems, and consulted the pope accordingly.

Charles de Witte, a renowned scholar of papal bulls, has argued that Ineffabilis pertains only to territorial claims in Africa, and has nothing to do with da Gama's voyage because the latter was meant to be a voyage of discovery and not of conquest. But Dudum siquidem attests that territorial concerns about India were already present in 1493. Even if da Gama's expeditions are exploratory, it is understood that such voyages of discovery eventually could lead to conquest. Such intentions were declared in a speech reportedly given by Manuel just prior to da Gama's voyage:

The fact that Manuel understood this connection between Ineffabilis and da Gama's explorations is also corroborated by a letter written by him to Jorge da Costa, the very same cardinal whom Panzer misidentified as ‘Gregory’. This letter, not mentioned by Panzer, is dated to 28 August 1499, or about a month before the return of da Gama to Portugal. In it, Manuel reports on the progress of da Gama's voyage, and makes a probable reference to Ineffabilis as follows:

Manuel is here assuming that ‘little or nothing else seems needed’ for him to claim ‘dominion of all we have discovered’. There is no hint that the consent of the natives is needed.

Manuel's mention of ‘renewed approval’ is important because Tordesillas has yet to be fully approved by the pope. Ravenstein's editorial note to that letter states:

Ravenstein is actually quoting a Portuguese archival abstract of Ineffabilis that does not deem the right of conquest to be extraordinary, nor does it consider voluntary subjection to be worthy of mention.Footnote ⁴⁹

De Witte is correct that unresolved territorial disputes over Africa also explain Alexander's efforts to placate Manuel in Ineffabilis. A similarly titled bull was issued to the Spanish monarchs in 1495, which awarded them any lands that they conquered in Africa.Footnote ⁵⁰ The Portuguese protested, and the very definition of Africa was in dispute. Preparations had begun in 1496 for a Spanish expedition to North Africa, where the conquest of the kingdom of Fez was a primary object. In September of 1497 the deserted town of Melilla was seized by the duke of Medina Sidonia, and a Castilian base was established in North Africa for the first time.

Perhaps even prior to his accession, Manuel had been negotiating for more assurances from the pope about his rights to African territories.Footnote ⁵¹ He received two crusading bulls, Redemptor noster and Cogimus jubente on 13 September 1496, which, according to de Witte, should be read with Ineffabilis as a coherent whole (‘un bloc homogène’).Footnote ⁵²

In these bulls, Alexander acknowledges that Manuel had been actively seeking to mount a crusade ‘against the infidels in Africa’ (‘adversus infideles Affrice’).Footnote ⁵³ In Cogimus jubente, he granted Manuel the church tithe in Portugal in order to finance a crusade in North Africa for a period of two years.Footnote ⁵⁴ These bulls also demonstrate that Manuel had conquest, not some sort of voluntary submission programme, on his mind.

Within Portugal itself, other justifications for enslaving non-Christians were part of the broader justifications that one sees in the rest of the Christian world of the time. Gomes Eanes de Zurara, the earliest chronicler of Portuguese expeditions into Africa, had already applied the infamous curse of Ham to black Africans.Footnote ⁵⁵ Zurara used it to argue that ‘this race should be subject to all other races of the world’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Conquest for the sake of saving the souls of the conquered was also justified by Zurara, and Pope Nicholas v confirmed such motives in Romanus Pontifex.Footnote ⁵⁷ Fernão da Oliveira (1507–c. 1581), the Portuguese political theorist who did argue against attacking and capturing infidels solely on the basis of their infidelity, was a lone voice.Footnote ⁵⁸

According to François Soyer, the absence of any explicit reference to Africa or any specific territory in Ineffabilis serves to avoid a direct conflict with promises that Alexander had made to the Spanish monarchs, especially in Ineffabilis of 1495, which awarded parts of Africa to Spain.Footnote ⁵⁹ Soyer argues that such ambiguity was a normal part of papal diplomacy, especially as Alexander tried to prevent an all-out war between Portugal and Spain.Footnote ⁶⁰ However, Alexander also wrote a Brief to Manuel (23 August 1499) that recognised that the latter intended to use military force to spread the faith in Africa.Footnote ⁶¹ Therefore, the lack of reference to Africa in Ineffabilis may indicate that Alexander was speaking more broadly about lines of demarcation, whether in Africa, India, or elsewhere.

Given this geopolitical context, Ineffabilis suggests that Manuel simply uses a clever ploy for circumventing the lines of demarcation that might award territories to Spain whether they were in Africa or in any discoveries that might be made by da Gama. Indeed, what Panzer leaves out is that ‘voluntary’ subjection is a euphemism. Voluntary subjection constituted another legal ‘title’ for slavery. Francisco de Vitoria (1492–1546), the influential Spanish moral theologian praised by Panzer himself for helping to bring more rights to the Indians, remarks:Footnote ⁶²

However, Vitoria saw through the pure subterfuge that such ‘voluntary’ submission entailed:

Vitoria's position is certainly not that of Alexander vi, who apparently decided to follow the tradition of allowing enslavement by using this sort of ‘just title’. As Luis Rivera notes, ‘[y]ou find in Vitoria, a reinterpretation, not a refusal, of the Alexandrian bulls’.Footnote ⁶⁵

Indeed, differing interpretations of Alexandrine bulls began not long after they were issued. Zavala observed that two streams of interpretation existed in the sixteenth century: (1) Those who thought that Alexander granted to specific nations only the right to preach Christianity to the natives; (2) Those who thought that Alexander granted absolute possession by virtue of discovery.Footnote ⁶⁶ Panzer does not even acknowledge that differing interpretations existed at that time.

Panzer, for example, overlooks the understanding of Juan Ginés de Sepulveda, who advocated the enslavement of Indians, remarking that ‘Alexander, in imitation of [Pope] Adrian, exhorted the rulers of Spain to attack barbarians, subject them to their dominion, and protect the way for proselytising sermons.’Footnote ⁶⁷ Sepulveda understood that subjection had logically to precede evangelisation because Indians could flee or resist before they could even hear the Word. Indeed, Sepulveda may be reading the sequence of the directives in Inter caetera quite literally: ‘ac barbare nationes deprimantur et at fidem ipsam reducantur’. As Sepulveda phrases it ‘How can [apostles] be sent if the barbarians were not previously subjugated?’Footnote ⁶⁸ Sepulveda's understanding of the sequence is confirmed in Ineffabilis:

In other words, Ineffabilis also seems to understand that acquisition and conquest precedes any effort to Christianise these lands. Sepulveda, of course, did not understand that this subjection needed to be ‘voluntary’.

Panzer does cite a text attributed to Bartolomé de Las Casas, the nemesis of Sepulveda, that supposedly ‘tells how the Bull Inter caetera of Alexander vi was understood’.Footnote ⁶⁹ But even a closer inspection of the text that Panzer cites from Las Casas does not seem so definitive. This text reads:

But Panzer has omitted a part of the text that casts doubt on that interpretation, and so it bears quoting in its entirety:

Las Casas's use of ‘segun paresce’ (‘as it appears’) does not sound so confident in his interpretation of those documents. And Las Casas may have been right not to be so confident if we examine a document from 1513 that was the outcome of some of the jurists' discussions. This document, the Requerimiento, which discusses what ‘free’ meant, was to be read to newly-discovered peoples.Footnote ⁷²

Later denounced by Las Casas, the Requerimiento begins by explaining that God thought that St Peter ‘should be Lord Superior of all the men in the world, that all should obey him, and that he should be the head of the whole human race’.Footnote ⁷³ The document seemingly asks permission for subjection as follows:

However, it soon becomes apparent that to leave the indigenous people ‘free’ means only so long as they are willing to subject themselves and become Christians. The next part of the Requerimiento explains what happens if they do not ‘freely’ subject themselves:

So, ‘freedom’ does not really mean that you are truly free to refuse subjection, but rather that you are free to delay giving an answer, but not long enough to try the patience of the Spaniards.

For many theologians of the time, true ‘freedom’ meant freedom of the soul, but not necessarily of the body. This idea was certainly expressed by Zurara, the Portuguese chronicler, when he remarked that ‘And yet the greater benefit was theirs, for though their bodies were now brought into some subjection, that was a small matter in comparison of their souls, which would now possess freedom for evermore.’Footnote ⁷⁶

Given such a view of ‘voluntary’ subjection, we can see that Manuel is, at least for the moment, successful in his ploy to use Tordesillas to his advantage: lines of demarcation can be disregarded if Manuel, ‘by chance’, finds lands that ‘willingly subject’ themselves to him. Once they give assent, they cannot switch their loyalties to the Spanish monarchs. The effort to prevent such a manoeuvre by a competing king is suggested in Ineffabilis itself:

In other words, Manuel now has papal assurance that, regardless of the lines of demarcation, whoever is able to gain any sort of ‘consent’ first can potentially own those lands perpetually.

The premise of Manuel's manoeuvre is corroborated even by Las Casas, in a discussion of the Church's right to persecute heretics. Las Casas reasons that heretics cannot change their mind once they have given their promise to the Church. He adds:

Thus, ‘voluntary’ subjection can be viewed as Manuel's clever device to retain control of those territories that another Christian king might try to wrest away from him by using the promised lines of demarcation, or where the choice of subjection was moot because of the ambiguous lines of demarcation. Once those newly-found lands had subjected themselves to Manuel, he could legally ensure that they could not change sides or be taken from him.Footnote ⁷⁸

Given such a context, the Latin conditional construction (‘si forsan … velle’) should not be understood restrictively (i.e. ‘only if [they were] to wish’), but simply as ‘if [they were] to wish’ to be subjected to Manuel. Indeed, there is nothing about the Latin grammar and syntax that requires a restrictive interpretation of the protasis. A good analogy is if Manuel had asked the pope: ‘May I enslave person X if he sells himself voluntarily to me?’ If the pope says ‘yes’, then the pope should not be construed to mean that a person can be enslaved ‘only if’ the person sells himself voluntarily because other titles of enslavement are still permitted (for example, capture in war, or birth from a slave woman).

Ineffabilis is not a manifesto for the freedom of indigenous people to accept Christian subjection. Panzer's reading contradicts the plain meaning of the language of Ineffabilis and Inter caetera, among other documents. First, nothing in the Latin grammar demands that the key conditional sentence be understood restrictively as ‘only if’. Panzer leaves unexplained why Ineffabilis, if meant to clarify Inter caetera and Eximiae devotionis, was not addressed to all Catholic monarchs who were affected by these bulls. More important, Panzer leaves unmentioned within Ineffabilis other references to conquest, and he leaves unexplained why Manuel would ask such a question given that it should be assumed that a king had a right to subject people who willingly subjected themselves. Voluntary subjection was already a title to justify enslavement.

Ineffabilis is better understood as a specific answer to Manuel, who wonders if, given ambiguous lines of global demarcation, he also can satisfy the requirement of actual possession by using the ‘title’ of voluntary election. Manuel's question was asked within the larger context of the many ways in which Iberian kings sought an advantage over each other in light of the uncertainties of the Treaty of Tordesillas and in light of the potential change in loyalties of newly-encountered peoples. Voluntary subjection was already an established mode of acquiring subjects, but it might need papal confirmation where lines of demarcation were moot or where people could be persuaded to change sides.

Manuel understood that whoever could gain voluntary submission first might have that subjection made permanent regardless of lines of demarcation. Such voluntary submission, however, did not negate his power to conquer those people if they did not voluntarily submit, as the Requerimiento amply shows. Any choice for newly-encountered native peoples existed only insofar as they could choose to remain subjected to Manuel rather than to another Christian king. Otherwise, Manuel is free to conquer them, with their consent or not. In any event, Ineffabilis became largely forgotten or unused, even by many opponents of slavery, precisely because it did not have the clarity or cogency that Panzer ascribes to it.