Bartolomé De Las Casas, Soldiers of Fortune, And
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HONOR AND CARITAS: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS, SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE, AND THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS Dissertation Submitted To The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in Theology By Damian Matthew Costello UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON Dayton, Ohio August 2013 HONOR AND CARITAS: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS, SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE, AND THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS Name: Costello, Damian Matthew APPROVED BY: ____________________________ Dr. William L. Portier, Ph.D. Committee Chair ____________________________ Dr. Sandra Yocum, Ph.D. Committee Member ____________________________ Dr. Kelly S. Johnson, Ph.D. Committee Member ____________________________ Dr. Anthony B. Smith, Ph.D. Committee Member _____________________________ Dr. Roberto S. Goizueta, Ph.D. Committee Member ii ABSTRACT HONOR AND CARITAS: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS, SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE, AND THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS Name: Costello, Damian Matthew University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. William L. Portier This dissertation - a postcolonial re-examination of Bartolomé de las Casas, the 16th century Spanish priest often called “The Protector of the Indians” - is a conversation between three primary components: a biography of Las Casas, an interdisciplinary history of the conquest of the Americas and early Latin America, and an analysis of the Spanish debate over the morality of Spanish colonialism. The work adds two new theses to the scholarship of Las Casas: a reassessment of the process of Spanish expansion and the nature of Las Casas’s opposition to it. The first thesis challenges the dominant paradigm of 16th century Spanish colonialism, which tends to explain conquest as the result of perceived religious and racial difference; that is, Spanish conquistadors turned to military force as a means of imposing Spanish civilization and Christianity on heathen Indians. In contrast, this work emphasizes the continuity of the conquest of the Americas with longstanding internal conflict over limited Iberian resources, particularly the century and a half crisis preceding iii 1492. Iberian warriors fought each other and the crown for control over feudal offices, tribute paying peasants, and prestigious titles. This civil conflict spilled over into the Americas as de-centralized entrepreneurial groups of Spaniards exercised similar military techniques for the same goals – economic and social power – with rather limited religious concerns. Theological rational and crusading zeal did not drive the conquest; rather, they are better seen as a gradual accretion to an already occurring process. Theological support for the conquest, exemplified by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, developed in response to the opposition of Las Casas and the Dominicans. The second thesis pertains to the opposition of Las Casas and the Dominicans. Traditionally, most commentators see opposition as a stage in intellectual history foreshadowing the coming modern idea of toleration, a perspective that is not entirely incorrect. This dissertation, however, argues that opposition should be seen primarily as an innovative reformulation of traditional Catholic theology. The Dominicans, a reformed order with an intense ascetical and liturgical life, opposed conquest on theological grounds – based on the supernatural virtue of caritas – and enforced it with ecclesial discipline. The thought and practices of Las Casas and the Dominicans stemmed from old world precedents of ecclesial opposition to internal aristocratic violence, exemplified by the Peace of God movement of the 11th century and St. Ignatius of Loyola of the 16th. Thus, opposition is best seen as an extension of traditional mendicant life and theological ferment into unprecedented terrain. In the end, this work has two intended conclusions. On the one hand, the conquest – often seen as an act of irrational barbarism – becomes more intelligible. The conquistadors, much like foreign predators released into an environment unaccustomed to iv their techniques of predation, devastate natives through what is their natural behavior. On the other, Las Casas and the Dominicans become more radical in their denial of what is a rather natural, if exceptionally tragic process of expansion. It is their quixotic faith that helped birth our ambivalence to conquest and servitude. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 PART I: CONQUESTS, OF NEW WORLDS AND OLD……………………………...11 CHAPTER 1: TO 1492…………………………………………………………..13 From Peasants to Lords…………………………………………………..13 Crisis 1350-1500…………………………………………………………30 Monarchy………………………………………………………………...39 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….48 CHAPTER 2: HISPANIOLAN REBELLIONS…………………………………50 Migration to the Caribbean………………………………………………50 Hispaniolan Crisis………………………………………………………..58 Revolt…………………………………………………………….………64 Crown Adaptation………………………………………………………..68 De Córdoba’s Rebellion………………………………………………….74 Ferdinand’s Response……………………………………………………83 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….88 CHAPTER 3: COLONIAL EXPANSION………………………………………90 Companies and Entradas………………………………………………..90 The Encomienda……………………………………………………..…106 Franciscans in Mexico……………………………………………….…119 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...126 PART II: THE CLAMOR OF THEOLOGIANS………………………………………128 CHAPTER 4: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS………………………………130 Awaking From a Dream………………………………………………..130 Dominican Formation in Caritas……………………………………….138 Enrique’s Revolt………………………………………………………..146 vi The Only Way…………………………………………………………..152 Into the Frontier………………………………………………………...158 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..160 CHAPTER 5: CONTEMPLATA ALIIS TRADERE……………………………161 Pope Paul III and the Indies……………………………………………161 Revocation and the New Laws..………………………………………..169 Return to the Indies…………………………………………………….175 Rebellion Against the New Laws………………………………………180 CHAPTER 6: “THE CLAMOR OF THEOLOGIANS”……………………….189 The Confesionario……………………………………………………...189 Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Natural Servitude……………………….199 Las Casas’s Response…………………………………………………..210 PART III: CONSOLIDATION…………………………………………………………214 CHAPTER 7: A QUESTION OF NOBILITIES……………………………….216 Charles V and the Cost of Honor and Reputation………………………216 Las Casas’s Final Years: The Politics of Charity………………………220 1568 Junta Magna and Historiography…………………………………226 Contemporary Historiography of Indian Aristocracy…………………..231 Royal Consolidation……………………………………………………237 CHAPTER 8: A QUESTION OF SLAVERY…………………………………243 Old World………………………………………………………………245 Initial New World………………………………………………………249 Hispaniola, Africa, and Sugar…………………………………………..255 Theology………………………………………………………………..264 Angola and Expansion of the Slave Trade……………………………..272 Intensification of the Components……………………………………...276 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...279 CHAPTER 9: EMPIRE………………………………………………………...281 Empire………………………………………………………………….281 Weakness……………………………………………………………….290 “The First Man in Our Times”…..……………………………………..298 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………..306 Conquest………………………………………………………………306 vii Conflict………………………………………………………………..309 Consolidation………………………………………………………….314 Final Thoughts………………………………………………………...317 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………….318 viii INTRODUCTION One of the most fascinating and tragic events of history is what is often called the “Conquest of the Americas.” It began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean. After devastating the island of Hispaniola, reducing its as many as three million inhabitants to a remnant numbering in the thousands, conquistadors spread throughout the Caribbean basin like ripples from a large stone dropped into the sea. Mexico fell in 1521, Peru in 1533, Chile beginning in 1541…the lists goes on as Spanish war parties reverberated throughout the Americas. In less than a century, tens of millions of Indians were dead and the rest served their new Spanish overlords or lived in marginal areas. African slaves worked early sugar plantations, foreshadowing the millions more to be brought across the Atlantic. Armadas laden with gold returned to Spain while an imperial web of Spanish language, culture, and Catholicism blanketed the Americas. For a long time this story was told with a certain European triumphalism. Some circles emphasized the religious difference. European Christians, with the help of God, defeated the pagan Indians and gave them the priceless gift of faith. Others focused on the supposed racial difference. Europeans, as the peak of the human evolutionary tree, brought civilization to culturally and racially inferior peoples. Whether providential, evolutionarily necessary, or a combination of both, the moral of the story was simple: Europeans were good and Indians were bad. 1 I, thankfully, am young enough not have learned that version of the story. I was in high school in 1992, the quincentennial of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, and was taught that intolerance - in this case a medieval Catholic form - caused the conquest. Crusading Spanish knights, fresh from the killing fields of the Reconquista and torture chambers of the Inquisition, unleashed European military technology and disease on the peoples of the Americas. Indians, though nobly and uniformly united in defense of their holistic cultures and ancestral lands, succumbed to the unrelenting Spanish war machine. In essence, the triumphant story was flipped on its head and made tragic: now Indians were good and Europeans bad. A number of years later in college I encountered the subject again.