Bartolomé de Las Casas
The Spanish Dominican who pleaded at court and in print against the conquest and enslavement of the peoples of the Americas. His Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies was printed in 1552.
At the end of his Short Account Las Casas names himself a friar of St Dominic who goes about the court of Spain trying, as he puts it, to drive hell out of the Indies. He says that he finished the work at Valencia on 8 December 1542, while the killing and oppression were at their height (Las Casas, Short Account pp. 411–412), and he added in 1546 that the settlers had resisted the laws the emperor made to stop them (Las Casas, Short Account pp. 413–414).
The title page of the tract he printed in 1552 calls him the former bishop of Chiapa in New Spain and records his dispute at Valladolid with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, in which he maintained that the conquests had been tyrannical and unjust (Las Casas, Disputation with Sepúlveda title page). His History of the Indies preserves the account of the sermon of Antonio de Montesinos (Las Casas, History of the Indies 3.3–4). See Rome Declares the Peoples of the Americas Free.
In the timeline
- 2 June 1537, firm dateRome Declares the Peoples of the Americas Free
In the bull Sublimis Deus Pope Paul III declares that the peoples of the Americas are truly human, capable of the Christian faith, and not to be enslaved or deprived of their property. Las Casas and the Crown’s own laws show that enslavement went on.