Sublimis Deus

The bull is short. It argues from the command to teach all nations that every people is capable of faith, blames the “enemy of the human race” for the claim that the Indians of the west and south may be used like brute animals, and declares that they and all peoples discovered in future keep their liberty and the ownership of their goods even while they remain outside the faith. Anything done to the contrary is to be null. They are to be brought to the faith by preaching and by the example of a good life.

It is the pope’s own act and is cited for its words. The Latin dating clause reads quarto nonas Iunii, the fourth day before the nones of June, which is 2 June 1537. MacNutt’s translation renders this “the fourth of June”, and the web page that reproduces his translation dates it 29 May. The bull states a principle and attaches no penalty. What followed in the Indies has to be learned from other sources.