PeaceDocs | Bibliography | The Americas 1500–1800
CHAPTER 10: Missionary Peacemaking, 1500-1800.
Peace and Justice in the Americas
Introduction
739. Cespedes, Guillermo. Latin America: The Early Years. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.
A structuralist history of institutions, economy, and society, pays attention to intellectual and religious currents. Pages 81-99, “The Quest for Utopia,” summarize the career of Antonio de Montesinos and his efforts to fight Spanish exploitation of native Americans.
740. Davenport, Frances G., ed. European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648. 4 vols. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1917-1937; reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1967, 1: 56-78.
For the text of Summus pontifex and Inter caetera, which arbitrated colonial rivalries in the New World and set precedents for later papal calls for peace and justice in Latin America. Davenport prints both Latin texts and English translations of documents.
741. Gibson, Charles. Spain in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
For a general, balanced introduction to the events, cultures, and institutions of the Spanish conquest and colonization. Of particular use here are Gibson’s discussions of the encomienda system, of the establishment of missions by Cardinal Ximénez, and the influence of Erasmian humanism on their spirit and methods. Gibson briefly notes the careers of several of the best known defenders of the Americans, including Bartolomé de Las Casas (764-781), Juan de Zumárraga, and Vasco de Quiroga, and discusses the effects of More’s Utopia on their thought and action. Well indexed, with an annotated bibliography useful for earlier work.
742. Keen, Benjamin. “Recent Writings on the Spanish Conquest,” Latin American Research Review 20, 2 (1985): 161-71.
Reviews scholarship in the field to the mid-1980s. This includes work of the revisionist school, seeking to correct exaggerations in the Black Legend; anthropological and ethnological studies of native American cultures, including native use of the Spanish legal system to protect their rights; the history of colonial society; military history, once more in vogue; and studies examining the effects of colonial society on modern Latin America.
743. Kirkpatrick, Frederick A. The Spanish Conquistadors. 2nd ed. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967.
For a political and military history.
744. Lockhart, James, and Stuart B. Schwartz. Early Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
For socio-economic history, with little attention to cultural and intellectual trends. A fine annotated bibliography.
745. Parry, J.H. The Establishment of the European Hegemony. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
For general background of European exploration and expansionism.
746. —. “The New World, 1521-1580.” New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 2: The Reformation, 1520–1559. G.R. Elton, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975, 562-90.
The Spanish both wittingly and unwittingly effected the genocide of the original peoples of Latin America. Disease, war crimes, and the rigors of forced labor under the encomienda system drastically reduced their numbers. The main check on this process of extermination and exploitation was the work of the Spanish missionaries. Trained in a radical evangelical Christianity and in the humanism of Erasmus’ circle, and aided by free access to the Spanish court, they launched a campaign to protect and to educate the native Americans and to fill the spiritual and material gap left by the destruction of their cultures. Zumárraga and Las Casas were among the most important of these missionaries. Their efforts resulted in the Council of the Indies’ applying strict new checks on the conquistadors and, eventually, in the New Laws and the Ordinances on Discoveries, which forbade even theoretically just wars against the Americans and became models for human rights in the New World.
747. —. ”The Spaniards in the New World, 1493-1521.” New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 1: The Renaissance, 1493–1520. Denys Hay, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975, 430-44.
Useful background for events and institutions. As early as Columbus’ voyages the Spanish were using the system of repartimiento. Although this later evolved into the encomienda system, both basically imported a medieval manorial form of economic serfdom: forced tributes and labor in exchange for conversion and “protection.” With the arrival of Montesinos and Las Casas to the New World, however, the struggle for peace and justice was under way.
748. Picón-Salas, Mariano. A Cultural History of Spanish America. Irving A. Leonard, trans. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1962.
This is cultural history in the broadest sense of the word: it includes religious, intellectual, and political trends and theories across a broad range of events and personalities. While not specifically a history of Liberation Theology or nonviolence, Picón-Salas’ account shows the fundamental influence of Las Casas, Montesinos and the New Laws in the struggle against the worst aspects of the Spanish conquest. The book uses extensive quotation from primary sources to illustrate points. The author fits the missionary role of nonviolent prophesy firmly within the tradition of Erasmus and Ximénez.
Among the most important peacemakers he discusses are Juan de Zumárraga, Pedro de Gante and the other Franciscans of the first generation: Toribio de Benavente, called Motolinía, Bernardino de Sahagun, and Vasco de Quiroga. Picón-Salas traces the influence of these missionaries into the seventeenth century, discusses the Utopian dreams of the Jesuits in Paraguay and analyzes the decline of the church and of its influence in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite this decline, Picón-Salas’ evidence shows that there remained a strong tradition of Latin American peacemaking. The popular imagination was stirred by the adventures of the “Saints of Action,” missionaries who braved all dangers in the continent’s wilds and in the North American west to spread the Gospel.
Under the influence of humanism and the Enlightenment, new critics of the Spanish conquest emerged who revived the European debate over the enslavement of the native Americans and pressed for the recognition of universal human rights. Such writers as José de Acosta, Diego de Avendano, Felipé de Jesus, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Luis Bocaños, Pedro Claver, Francisco Solano, Francisco Falcon, Polo de Ondegardo, Francisco Xavier Clavijero, Andres Cano, Andreas de Guevera y Basoazabal, Pedro José Marquez, and Francisco Xavier Alegre all condemned Latin American racism, the caste system, educational deprivation and discrimination. They also encouraged the defense and preservation of pre-Columbian cultures, languages, and civilizations as the equals of European forms. In all these activities they not only helped prepare for revolution and independence but also continued the tradition of liberation in Latin America.
While Picón-Salas concentrates on the elite’s point of view, his work is a treasure-house of personalities and movements that provide essential background for any analysis of nonviolence in Latin America.
749. Simpson, Lesley Byrd. The Encomienda in New Spain. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1966; reprint 1982.
Also available online through ACLS Humanities E-Book.
This is the best introduction to the history, nature, and effects of this Spanish form of colonial exploitation. Simpson provides a chronological account of the system that includes the efforts of Las Casas and other missionary peacemakers to end or reform it. He appends his text with many of the most important documents.
750. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. Richard Howard, trans. New York: Harper & Row, 1984.
This is a new rehashing of familiar accounts of the Spanish atrocities in the New World accompanied by a somewhat over-stylish, new-literary, critical approach to events and personalities. Todorov’s slant is to examine European culture’s encounter with the “other” as both physical and phenomenological reality. A careful reading will reveal very little original that has not been discussed by historians of the period.
The Religious Roots of Liberation
751. Attwater, Donald. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
While the age is known chiefly for its conquistadors and colonial empire-builders, it also produced many dedicated to nonviolent conversion and liberation of non-Europeans. Among those recognized with sainthood by the Catholic church are Luis Bertrand, Jean de Brébeuf, Jão de Britto, Pedro Claver, Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier, René Goupil and Jean Lalande, Isaac Jogues, Gabriel Lelement, the martyrs of Japan, and Francis Xavier.
752. Bataillon, Marcel. Erasme et l’Espagne. Paris: Droz, 1937.
Traces Erasmus’ influence on the Spanish humanists, discusses translations of his works, and follows his persecution and condemnation by Spanish ecclesiastics of the Counter Reformation. Useful for tracing his influence through the humanists and the court of Cardinal Ximénez to the missionary orders, including the Franciscans and Dominicans whom the crown sent out to evangelize and protect the native Americans.
753. —. ”Évangelisme et millénarisme au Nouveau Monde,” in Courants réligieux et Humanisme a la fin du xve et au début de xvie siècle. Paris: Centre de Recherches de l’Institut d’Études Hispaniques, 1965.
Not seen.
754. Cragg, Gerald. The Church and the Age of Reason 1648-1789. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.
Catholic influence in missionary activity during the period was, on the whole, shallow and precarious. Except for the Jesuits in Paraguay, Catholic missions tended to stagnate.
755. Dussel, Enrique. A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation 1492-1979. 3rd. ed. Alan Neely, trans. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981.
The best historical account for Catholic peacemaking in Latin America, and one of the best ever written for peacemaking anywhere. But Dussel’s book is more than this. It is a theology of liberation written through history, with careful attention to historical fact and accuracy, for only through the “praxis” of history can the church fully appreciate the meaning of liberation.
The book’s four parts include a hermeneutical introduction on the theology of domination and liberation; Latin American culture, and relations between church and culture; Christendom in the West Indies from 1492 to 1808, which covers both chronological narrative and thematic analysis of evangelization; the neocolonial period from 1808 to 1962 examined from historical, structuralist-institutional, social, cultural, and theological viewpoints; and finally a survey of the church and Latin American liberation from 1962 to 1979, including a description of recent events: the national security state, violence, bourgeois elites and the masses, the church’s evolution in councils and in praxis, and the theological significance of these events.
Dussel’s work is often difficult for the nontheologian, all the more so since Liberation Theology depends so much on drawing its data from the living world of Catholic practice and application to real social and political conditions. The reader is thus often faced with interpretive schematizations of the events narrated that compel reevaluation of accepted methods of viewing Latin America and its history. Nonetheless, the result is well worth the effort. Dussel’s historical processes are dialogues between world views that have not yet ended, not Marxist dialectical confrontations between classes or economic systems that must end in the victory of one or the other. His analysis of pre-Columbian cultures pinpoints the truly devastating effect of the Spanish conquest and lays the groundwork for understanding all further European efforts either to conquer or convert and protect the native Americans. He also reminds the reader of the limitations of the Spanish culture that came to dominate the region: its authoritarianism, its feudal concepts of land, work, and personal relations; and the cultural shock inflicted on the native Americans by Spanish technology, society, and theological universe.
Along with Dussel’s analyses comes a continuous narrative of Catholic efforts at liberation from the time of Antonio de Montesinos through the career of Bartolomé de Las Casas (764-781), the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians, the New Laws and the New Law bishops, reform church councils that attempted to redress the atrocities of the conquistadors and emphasize the Christian nature of the conversion process. Dussel claims that Las Casas and these other clerics are the true fountainhead of Liberation Theology: their efforts to protect the native Americans and to restore to them their human dignity is based directly on the Gospels and the Old Testament books of liberation and prophetic protest.
Dussel’s major theme for the neocolonial period is the struggle between the church and the colonial aristocracy over the survival of the feudal patronato, the system under which the native Americans had been subjected to a feudal serfdom worse than slavery. In this light Dussel cites the efforts of the Jesuits and the other missionary orders. Despite the decadence of the Bourbon period (1700–1808) and its legacy of deserted missions, accommodation, and an ensuing anticlericalism, Dussel stresses that an active lay spirituality survived and made new strides in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While this was not always in keeping with strict Tridentine orthodoxy, it did lay the groundwork for the activist approach of Latin America’s peoples and gave rise to Liberation Theology as understood today.
756. —. History and Theology of Liberation: A Latin American Perspective. John Drury, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1976.
Essentially a distillation of much of his History of the Church. See 755.
757. Hanke, Lewis. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949; reprint Southern Methodist University Press, 2002.
Two factors inherent in the Spanish colonial system helped establish a basis for the struggle for peace and justice in the New World. Spanish legal formality thoroughly saturated every aspect of Spanish European and colonial life far beyond the legal fiction of the requerimiento used as a pretext for aggressive wars of conquest. A widespread freedom of speech was also encouraged by the Spanish monarchy, within the bounds of religious orthodoxy, and open discussion and movement of news from America was a vital aspect of Spanish policy.
There were, therefore, elements of Spanish culture that worked in favor of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the other missionary peacemakers in the New World. From Montesinos on a series of denunciations of Spanish colonial leadership was not only voiced heroically in America, but also faithfully transmitted and reported to the Spanish court. This made possible the commissions of inquiry that followed up charges made in the letters and writings of the missionary peacemakers. The open and often heated debates that these reports produced resulted in the Laws of Burgos, the New Laws, the appointment of the New Law bishops to implement royal reform decrees, and the termination of many of the most onerous of the Spanish colonial oppressions.
Hanke details the workings of an entire “Indian lobby” at the Hapsburg court that did much to persuade Charles V, and Philip II later, to check the greed and brutality of the colonial aristocracy. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this combination of legalism and free speech was the Valladolid debate between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550/51 over the basic human rights and nature of the Americans. The debate decided in Las Casas’ favor and resulted in the Royal Council’s openly questioning the justice of wars against the native Americans and, ironically, the banning of Sepúlveda’s views in Spain. A basic work in the area.
758. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. History of the Expansion of Christianity. 7 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1937-1945. Vol. 3: Three Centuries of Advances, A.D. 1500-A.D. 1800. New York: Harper & Row, 1939.
This remains a useful work on missionary activities in the early modern period. This volume surveys the general movement of missionary activity and details the lives of many of the most important missionaries and peacemakers in the Americas and what is now the Third World. These include Bartolomé de Las Casas (764-781), the Jesuits and the Flemish Franciscans in Mexico and California, Luis Cancer de Barbastro in Florida, Alfonso Sandoval and Pedro Claver in Colombia, Francis Xavier in the Orient, Robert de Nobili in India, and Diego de Herrera and Domingo de Salazar in the Philippines. Very useful reference material.
759. Muldoon, James. “A Fifteenth-Century Application of the Canonistic Theory of the Just War.” In Kuttner, Stephan, ed. Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law. Vatican City: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, 1976, 467-82.
For a brief introduction to the legal issues involved in the conquest and colonization. Focuses on the debate arising over the Christian conquest of the Canary Islands and the rights of colonial powers to wage any kind of war, just or unjust, against peoples who were hitherto free and whose conquest could not be seen as a defensive war. Reviews theories that claimed that Christians had a natural right of dominion over “heathens.”
760. —. ”Papal Responsibility for the Infidel. Another Look at Alexander VI’s Inter caetera,” Catholic Historical Review 64 (1978): 168-84.
The bull Inter caetera was not so much a treaty designed to divide up the world between colonial powers as a statement of future Christian-infidel relations. Here the papacy intervened to protect and to convert the infidel whom war was bringing under Christian dominion. The bull ultimately resulted from Eugenius IV’s intervention in the Canary Islands to stop further expansion and to implement measures for the spiritual and material education of the islanders. Alexander VI’s use of this precedent in Inter caetera may not have hindered the brutal Spanish conquest, but it did provide a legal precedent for the protests of Las Casas and his colleagues that the Spanish court had to heed.
761. —. Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World 1250-1550. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979, 8-24.
Reviews Las Casas’ attack on the legal fiction of the requerimiento that underpinned the entire Spanish conquest as a just war.
762. Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964, 140-449.
Traces the early modern missions of the Catholic church, among others, from Nicholas IV's Romanus pontifex in 1454, through the bulls of demarcation of Alexander VI, and the activities of the missionary orders in the New and Third Worlds. Surveys the lives of Francis Xavier and the Japan missionaries and martyrs and traces the progress of the Jesuit and Ursuline missions in Canada. Neill sets the Latin American missions in the context of Spanish genocide, the encomienda system, and the missionary peacemakers who campaigned to stop them. These include Antonio de Montesinos, Bartolomé de Las Casas, and Bishop Zumárraga of Mexico. Neill also traces the reaction against the creation of an indigenous clergy under Gregory XIII and in a series of councils in the New World through the sixteenth century.
By the time of Francesco Ingoli's tenure over the Propaganda, however, the church had again begun to move away from the political domination of the colonial powers and to insist on peaceful persuasion as the chief means of conversion. Later chapters provide useful background material for Catholic missions into the twentieth century. The researcher needs to remember that these missions were, almost without exception, nonviolent attempts to spread Christianity and to protect non-Europeans from the exploitation of their colonial masters. At times, especially on pages 140-240, his account seems to rely heavily on Latourette. See 758.
763. Verlinden, Charles. “La ‘Requerimiento’ et la ‘paix coloniale’ dans l’empire espagnol d’Amerique.” Recueils de la Société Jean Bodin 15 (1961):397-414.
Not seen.
Bartolomé de Las Casas
764. Biermann, Benno M. “Bartolomé de Las Casas and Verapaz.” See 767, 443-84.
Traces Las Casas’ attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of peaceful conversion in an area in modern Guatemala’s Tuzutlan that had repulsed all Spanish attempts at violent conquest so thoroughly that it was called Tierra del Guerra (Land of War). Ignoring the advice of conquistadors that he would be slaughtered, Las Casas entered the jungles in 1537. After winning over the tribal chiefs through trading missions, his company was able to preach the Gospels unprotected by the military. By 1544 his success had earned him royal support and colonial hatred for his Tierra del Vera Paz (Land of True Peace).
765. Fernandez, Manuel Gimenez. “Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas: A Biographical Sketch.” See 767, 67-125.
A useful survey of his life and the main issues and events that shaped it, with careful attention to chronology. Fernandez reminds us of Las Casas’ connection with Adrian of Utrecht, Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros, and others of Erasmus’ circle at the Spanish court. He thus sets Las Casas’ work for peace and justice in the New World within the context of Spanish court politics and the rivalries of the various religious orders conducting missions in America. The article also discusses papal efforts to defend native Americans.
766. Friede, Juan. “Las Casas and Indigenism in the Sixteenth Century.” See 767, 127-234.
Friede summarizes much of his theory that the actions of Las Casas and other defenders of the native Americans stemmed as much from economic self-interest as from any morality. Las Casas’ efforts grew out of the need to organize the new colonies both politically and economically and to protect the work force put at the friars’ disposal by their “reforms.”
767. Friede, Juan and Benjamin Keen, eds. Bartolomé de Las Casas in History. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971.
An excellent collection of essays by prominent scholars of the Spanish conquest and early colonial period. Includes 764 to 766, 774, and 779.
768. Hanke, Lewis. All Mankind Is One. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.
Studies the debate between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, a theologian and opponent of Erasmus, held in the presence of the royal Spanish court at the palace at Valladolid in 1550/51. The debate centered on Sepúlveda’s adherence to the Aristotelian view that all barbarians, i.e. non-Europeans, were naturally inferior and thus just objects for conquest and enslavement, being less truly human than civilized peoples. Las Casas’ arguments for the God-given equality of all peoples and of the injustice of the Spanish conquest won the day and resulted in important reforms of the colonial administration. This book is of fundamental importance for the study of Las Casas and peacemaking in the colonial era. A full and excellent bibliography.
769. —. Aristotle and the American Indians. London: Hollis & Carter, 1959.
Focuses on the Valladolid debate of 1550/51 between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. Hanke traces the sources of Sepúlveda’s theory and contrasts them to the words and actions of many Catholic missionaries in the New World, such as Juan de Zumárraga and Motolinía, whose strong condemnations of Spanish exploitation implicitly bore a rebuttal of Aristotle’s theory. See also 765.
770. —. Bartolomé de Las Casas. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1951.
This is still the best single volume available for an introduction to Las Casas. Hanke divides his study into three parts: Las Casas’ struggle for justice during the Spanish conquest; his achievement as a political theorist and historian, analyzing his writings and their impact; and Las Casas as an anthropologist, that is, his attempts to understand the culture of the native Americans and to translate the message of Christianity into a form they could accept and adopt.
771. —. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Bookman, Scholar and Propagandist. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952.
On his work as a historian and apologist for the native Americans.
772. —. ”More Heat and Some Light on the Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America,” Hispanic American Historical Review 44 (1964): 293-340.
Hanke notes that the Spanish conquest is already the most highly debated topic in Latin American history. Here he answers objections of Friede’s “Indigenista” theory (766) and those of Ramon Menendez Pidal that Las Casas was a paranoiac, grossly exaggerating the abuses against native peoples and inflating his own role as their embattled defender.
773. —., Hanke, Lewis, ed. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949; reprint Southern Methodist University Press, 2002.
774. Keen, Benjamin. “Approaches to Las Casas, 1535-1970.” See 767, 3-63.
On historiography. Las Casas himself was a major source of the “Black Legend” of Spanish atrocity and injustice in the New World. His accounts made vivid reading and effective propaganda against the Catholic Monarchy when used by Protestant reformers and later Dutch rebels and English competitors. At the same time these external attacks helped reduce Las Casas’ popularity in Spain, as he began to be seen as a turncoat. In the Enlightenment, however, he again became a hero of humanity against the forces of violence and injustice. In revolutionary Europe sentiment for him was so strong that a movement was launched to have him canonized, while he became the nemesis of conservatives and reactionaries. Keen sums up American opinion and then warns that there is a real danger of a “White Legend” growing up around Las Casas and his associates that over-stresses their efforts for peace and justice and leads us to ignore the grim reality behind the “Black Legend.”
775. Las Casas, Bartolomé de. Apologetic History. Lewis Hanke, trans. and ed. All The Peoples of the World Are Men. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1970.
Hanke’s title refers to the debate within Spain as to whether the native Americans were even human beings. He traces Las Casas’ evolving notions of universal kinship and human rights, first in defense of the native Americans and, later, in defense of the freedom of black slaves. Hanke concludes that Las Casas’ message is in exactly the same spirit as that of John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris.
776. —. The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account. Herma Buffault, trans. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
Here is the chief source of the “Black Legend,” the history of Spanish genocide in the New World. While historians may question Las Casas’ statistics of the number of native Americans actually killed by the Spanish, his record of war, massacre, atrocity, abuses of basic human rights, torture, and enslavement are more vivid than anything until the Holocaust. The book caused a sensation and immediate royal investigations into the conduct of their colonial empire in the New World. It has been used as a weapon against the Spanish and Catholic treatment of native Americans ever since. Las Casas’ goal was quite different, however: to awaken the consciences of his compatriots to the grim reality behind their new-found wealth and empire.
777. —. History of the Indies. Andrée Collard, trans. and ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Las Casas was among the first generation of New World colonists, and his first-hand sources go back to the voyages of Columbus, which he also recalled. His work is thus a fundamental source for the period of discovery and conquest. More than this, however, it is Las Casas’ narrative of the struggle of the missionary peacemakers, including himself at center stage, for peace and justice in America. Much of what we know of this struggle comes from Las Casas, but his account seems reliable on most points. A good English edition.
778. —. In Defense of the Indians. Stafford Poole, C.M., trans. and ed. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.
Las Casas’ examination of native American culture, its importance and its dignity, and its right to be protected against the depredations of the Spanish conquerors.
779. Losada, Angel. “The Controversy between Sepúlveda and Las Casas in the Junta of Valladolid.” See 767, 279-307.
Among the issues debated were Sepúlveda’s contention that pacifism disappeared after the age of Constantine, that the just war was the only acceptable Christian response in this new age, and that Aristotle and the Hebrew Bible had stressed the difference between Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian. Traces Las Casas’ successful rebuttals. See also 768-769.
780. Pennington, Kenneth. “Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Tradition of Medieval Law,” Church History 39 (1970): 149-61.
Attempts to study Las Casas as a canonist and concludes that he actually may have agreed with Sepúlveda that the Spanish had just dominion over the New World.
781. Zavala, Silvio. “Nuevas datos sobre Bartolomé de las Casas, obispo de Chiapas,” Cuaderno Americano 43 (March-April 1984): 129-38.
On a manuscript in the Library of Congress in Washington containing a petition from the bishop to Charles V concerning ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Chiapas.
Individual Mission Areas
See also interactive map of Jesuit Reducciones.
782. Burrus, Ernest J. “Alonso de la Vera Cruz (†1584), Pioneer Defender of the American Indians,” Catholic Historical Review 70, 4 (Oct. 1984): 531-46.
De la Cruz was a lawyer at Salamanca and a friend of Vitoria who left Spain in 1536 to join the Augustinian mission in Mexico. He quickly became a strong defender of native American rights against the conquistadors, emphasizing their God-given human rights and allying with Las Casas to fight for justice. While de la Cruz was far more moderate in his defense than Las Casas, between 1562 and 1573 he was able to use his position at the Spanish court to protect the rights of both American and Philippine peoples.
783. Caraman, Philip. The Lost Paradise: The Jesuit Republic in South America. New York: Seabury, 1976.
A fascinating account of the Jesuit attempt in what is now modern Paraguay to save their native American converts from the depredations of conquistadors and slave traders. After failing at attempts at itinerant missions, they accepted a commission from Philip II to convert the Indians by nonviolent means, without exploitation. They proceeded to set up a colonial state, a series of reduciones complete with secular and religious institutions: church, schools, hospitals, courts, and — eventually — a strong military force that kept aggressors at bay in a series of bloody battles. They combined this with journeys to the colonial capitals to preach against the injustices of the Spanish regime or to liberate prisoners from Brazilian slave traders. Ultimately, however, the Jesuit experiment was a failure. Their paternalistic control provided the Americans with little skill in self-government or ability to resist colonial exploitation. In the end the reduciones melted away into the forests. This is fascinating adventure reading combined with sobering lessons in the nature of political and cultural liberation.
784. Deck, Allan F. Francisco Javier Alegre. A Study in Mexican Literary Criticism. Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1977.
Alegre was one of the expatriot Mexican Jesuits who carried on a running criticism of Latin American tyranny from the salons of Enlightenment Europe. His works helped build the foundations for the political liberation of the region. While Deck does not deal explicitly with Alegre’s criticisms of Spanish colonial rule and his enlightened Humanism, he does provide some biographical and intellectual background and a thorough and useful bibliography.
785. Geiger, Maynard, O.F.M. Franciscan Missionaries in Hispanic California 1769-1848: A Biographical Dictionary. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1969.
The Spanish missionaries in California were adventurous heroes committed to nonviolent conversion. Their lives gripped the popular imagination of New Spain and provided a counterbalance to the tales of the conquistadors. Geiger’s book provides a useful reference guide to the lives of many of these adventurers.
786. Gutierrez, Lucio. “Domingo de Salazar, O.P., First Bishop of the Philippines (1512-1594): A Defender of the Rights of the Filipinos and the Spanish Contact,” Philippiana Sacra 20 (Jan.-April 1985): 62-79.
Not seen.
787. Kennedy, J.H. Jesuit and Savage in New France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
The Jesuit mission in Canada was a marriage of the order’s thorough grounding in Renaissance humanism and its members’ willingness to accommodate to the languages, customs, and culture of the Americans. Despite this intellectual preparation, however, the Canadian mission was still an act of martyrdom, both in the conditions imposed on these Europeans and in their physical deaths, which the Jesuits saw as an imitation of Christ. For the Jesuits the Americas offered them the opportunity to return to the first centuries of the church, to the poverty and suffering of the first age, among a people morally and intellectually equal to the Europeans but untouched by the centuries of religious decline.
788. McNaspy, C.J., S.J. Conquistador without Sword: The Life of Roque Gonzalez, S.J. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984.
On the most important founder of the Jesuit reduciones in Paraguay.
789. —. and Jose Maria Blanch, S.J. Lost Cities of Paraguay. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1982.
A history of the Jesuit reduciones of Paraguay.
790. Phelan, John Leddy. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, and London: Cambridge University Press, 1956; revised, 1970.
Focuses on the life and often contradictory thought of Geronimo de Mendietta, O.F.M. (1525-1604), a Spanish missionary in Mexico. Mendietta’s life is as interesting for his theories as for the missions that grew out of them. Through Mendietta’s own Historia eclesiatica indiana (Ecclesiastical History of the Indies) and his biography by Juan de Torquemada, O.F.M. it emerges that Mendietta saw the Spanish Empire as the universal millennial kingdom of the last days that would bring all the peoples of the world to Christianity. While much of his historical thought derived directly from the apocalyptic Joachimism of Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros and his Franciscan circle (547-559), Mendietta agreed with Sepúlveda and other just-war theorists in seeing war as a valid means of bringing this universal monarchy about. He saw the Spanish conquest in the light of the Old Testament wars of the Israelites and Cortes as a new Moses.
If the time of Cortes was the Golden Age of the New World, one of unspoiled purity that was close to the life of the primitive church, his own age was closer to the Apocalyptic time of troubles that preceded the coming of the New Jerusalem. His own Franciscan Order had pointed the way to the restoration of the primitive church, and the native Americans were the true children of this age in their poverty, simplicity, and humility. Yet the Franciscans had therefore to protect them from the moral pollution and greed of their European overlords. In order to guarantee their “evangelical liberty” the Franciscans would therefore have to reeducate the Indians to form their own commonwealth. Mendietta thus opposed any policy that would force the Hispanization of indigenous peoples and stressed that existing social and cultural structures that did not clash with Christianity must be retained.
While he was therefore very much a man of his times in accepting the role of force in the conquest of the New World, he looked forward to some aspects of Liberation Theology in stressing that the Hispanization of Latin America did not equal its Christianization, and that, in fact, it might be the very opposite. He thus, paradoxically, opposed all efforts to force them to conform to Spanish institutions, including the encomienda.
Phelan’s work is remarkable both for its early appreciation of the role of Joachimite prophesy in the religious thought of the time and in his discernment of a new form of theology of liberation at work in colonial Latin America.
791. Ricard, Robert. The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, An Essay on the Apostolate and Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain, 1523-1572. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966.
While the special emphasis of the mendicants — Franciscans, Dominicans, Hieronymites, and Augustinians — in converting the New World may have differed somewhat from order to order, their basic outlook was essentially the same: the creation of a safe refuge for both body and soul from exploitation and brutality, education to create a native elite, instruction in new trades and crafts, a religious education and liturgy that would build on the remnants of pre-Columbian practice and world view. The mendicants hoped that these methods, essentially those of nonviolent persuasion, would attract the native Americans to the Christian life with a deep-rooted appreciation for its truths.
792. Ronan, Charles E. Francisco Javier Clavijero, S.J. (1731-1787), Figure of the Mexican Enlightenment. Rome: Institutum Historicum; Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1977.
Clavijero was another of the Mexican emigré intellectuals who carried on a campaign against the political and cultural tyranny of late colonial Latin America. See 781. His Ancient History of Mexico picks up where Las Casas left off, combining a deep understanding of pre-Columbian civilization with criticism of the Spanish conquest. His ultimate goal was to show native American culture and individual status as the equal of the European and so press for full human rights in the New World.
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