Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda
The Spanish scholar and royal chronicler who argued, against Las Casas at Valladolid in 1550, that the wars of conquest in the Americas were just.
The tract that Bartolomé de Las Casas printed in 1552 calls Sepúlveda a doctor and the emperor’s chronicler, and says that he contended that the conquests of the Indies were lawful (Las Casas, Disputation with Sepúlveda title page). Its introduction, written by his opponent, reports that he had composed a dialogue in elegant Latin with two chief conclusions, that the wars the Spaniards had made on the Indians were just and that the Indians were bound to submit to the rule of the Spaniards as the less understanding to the more prudent, and that the Council of the Indies had refused him leave to print it (Las Casas, Disputation with Sepúlveda argument (opening summary)). 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.