The Sovereign Voice ITNJ Commemorative Issue | Page 94

and spiritual authority to Christian colonial powers Alfonso and his successors... Therefore let no one
as a perpetual monopoly to brutally and violently infringe or with rash boldness contravene this our
conquer any non-Christian lands, thereby facilitating declaration, constitution, gift, grant, appropriation,
colonization throughout the world. Excerpts from decree, supplication, exhortation, injunction,
Romanus Pontifex to King Alfonso: inhibition, mandate, and will. But if anyone should
presume to do so, be it known to him that he will
“... We (therefore) weighing all and singular the incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed
premises with due meditation, and noting that apostles Peter and Paul....” 4
since we had formerly by other letters of ours
granted among other things free and ample faculty They sanctioned and endorsed worldwide enslavement,
to the aforesaid King Alfonso – to invade, search slaughter, and theft wherever no other Christian
out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens nation had already laid their claim to land. To reiterate
and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of simply, the discovery principle from these bulls meant
Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, that the Vatican controlled the world. It decreed that
dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, man was able to control another. Basic, decent human
and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever rights were subject to the beliefs of Holy Roman
held and possessed by them and to reduce their Church.
persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and
appropriate to himself and his successors the When engaged in the multi-faceted studies of the
kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, ‘discovery doctrine’ one thing is for sure: the
dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert subject’s scope is vast. Ramifications of these Papal
them to his and their use and profit – by having Bulls (and others) have indeed changed the course
secured the said faculty, the said King Alfonso, or, of world history, affecting untold amounts of people
by his authority, the aforesaid infante, justly and – especially indigenous societies – with devastating
lawfully has acquired and possessed, and doth impact on their culture and the wellbeing of our entire
possess, these islands, lands, harbors, and seas, and earth. Quite frankly, there is such a broad historical
they do of right belong and pertain to the said King narrative that this article is only able to scratch the
4Romanus Pontifex, as published in European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies to 1648, Frances
Gardiner Davenport, editor, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917, Washington, D.C., at pp. 20-26. Original Latin text is in the same
volume, at pp.13-20.
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