Alexander VI
The pope who in 1493, his first year, issued the bull Inter caetera granting the lands found by Columbus to the crown of Castile and charging it with the conversion of their peoples.
Inter caetera is dated at St Peter’s on 4 May 1493, in the first year of Alexander’s pontificate. In it he speaks as holder of “the vicarship of Jesus Christ” and, by that authority, gives the kings of Castile and León the islands and mainlands found and to be found beyond a line in the Atlantic, on condition that no Christian prince already possessed them, and orders them to send men to teach the inhabitants the Catholic faith (Alexander VI, Inter Caetera (4 May 1493)).
The Holy See said in 2023 that such bulls were written in a particular historical period and linked to political questions, and that they were never regarded as expressions of the Catholic faith (Holy See, Joint Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery (2023) §§5–6). See Christianity Crosses the Atlantic.
In the timeline
- 1493, firm dateChristianity Crosses the Atlantic
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI grants the lands Columbus has found to the crown of Castile and charges it to convert their peoples. A second fleet carries priests to Hispaniola, where mass is said in January 1494 and a friar, Ramón Pané, records the first baptisms.