LAS CASAS. PEDRO DE LA RENTERIA
The company of four Dominican monks under their Prior, Pedro de Cordoba,
had been increased until their community numbered twelve or fifteen men,
the severity of whose rule had been much augmented in the New World in
order to maintain the just proportion between their penitential lives and
the hard conditions of the colony in which they lived. Their observation
of what was happening around them and of the injustice and cruelty daily
practised on the natives in defiance of the wishes of the Spanish
sovereigns, forced upon them the duty of protesting against such violation
of all laws, human and divine. They had received into their community, as
a lay-brother, a man who, two years before, had murdered his Indian wife
and had afterwards fled to the forests where he lived as best he could.
The information furnished by this repentant criminal still further
amplified the insight of the monks into the treatment meted out to the
Indians and quickened their determination to attempt to stay the
iniquities of their countrymen.
The first man to raise his voice publicly in America against slavery and
all forms of oppression of the Indians was Fray Antonio de Montesinos, who
preached to the colonists of Santo Domingo a discourse, of which
unfortunately no full report now exists. The monks had made a point of
inviting the Viceroy, the Treasurer, Passamonte, and all the officials to
be present in church on the Sunday fixed for the sermon, and it was known
throughout the colony that a matter of particular importance was to be the
subject of the discourse, though no one suspected its nature. The text
chosen was from St. John: “I am the voice of one crying in the
wilderness,” and the friar, who was blessed with the dual gifts of
eloquence and moral courage, drove his arguments and admonitions home with
such force that, though he was heard to the close without interruption,
the principal persons of the colony held a meeting after church and
decided that the preaching of such revolutionary doctrines must be
silenced. They repaired to the monastery to make their protest, and to
demand that Fray Antonio should retract or modify his words the following
Sunday. The Prior received the angry deputation and, after listening to
their demands, informed them that the discourse preached by Fray Antonio
represented the sentiments of the entire Dominican community and had been
pronounced with his full approbation. The colonists became only the more
enraged at this answer and declared that, unless the preacher retracted,
the monks should pack their goods and return to Spain, to which the prior
with quiet irony replied: “Of a truth, gentlemen, that will give us little
trouble”; which indeed was the fact, for Las Casas says that all they
possessed of books, vestments, and clothing would have gone into two
trunks. The most that the Prior would concede was that the subject should
be treated again on the following Sunday.
Fray Antonio once more ascended the pulpit and before the assembled colony
announced his text: “Repetam scientiam meam a principio et operatorem meum
probabo justum” (Job xxxvi. 3). Not only did he repeat the sense of what
he had already said, but he elaborated still more forcibly his theme, and
ended by announcing that the sacraments of the Church would henceforth be
refused to all who persisted in the evil courses he denounced, and defying
his hearers to complain of him in Spain.
Amongst the men on whose startled ears these denunciations fell, were
hidalgos of high birth, reduced by reckless courses to expatriate
themselves in search of fortunes with which to return and resume their
extravagances in Spain; contemptuous of all forms of labour, they passed
their enforced exile in gambling, dicing, and debauchery in the company of
their Indian mistresses, chosen among the native beauties. They
alternately courted the favour of the Viceroy or intrigued against him as
seemed most profitable to their interests; they displayed few of the
virtues and most of the vices common to their class in Spain. Others
belonged in the unfailing and numerous category of adventurers, ever ready
to play a new stake in a new country; they constituted an equally reckless
but more resourceful element in the colony, though their contribution to
the moral tone of the community was likewise insignificant. Columbus had
sought and obtained an authorisation to deport from Spain criminals under
sentence of either partial or perpetual banishment, while other
delinquents had had their sentences remitted on condition that they would
emigrate to the Indies. So dissolute was the general tone of the colonies
and so depraved the habits of many of the colonists that Columbus could,
with sincerity, exclaim, “I vow that numbers of men have gone to the
Indies who did not deserve water from God or man.”
Las Casas, who loved sinners as much as he loathed sin, observed this
motley population with a more tolerant eye and affirmed that even amongst
those who had lost their ears, he still found sufficiently honest men; it
was not difficult to lose one’s ears in those days. The voice of Fray
Antonio cried indeed in a moral wilderness! But however far these men had
strayed from the true spirit of their religion, they had no intention of
foregoing the ministrations of the church, and they clung tenaciously to
the outward observance of forms and ceremonies as an offset against their
lax conformity to its moral precepts.
To be thus placed between the ban of excommunication and the renunciation
of their illegally held slaves, was an intolerable prospect. Appeal or
protest to the Prior being useless, they despatched complaint to the King
and chose for the bearer of it a Franciscan friar, Alonso de Espinal, who
was instructed to unite his efforts to those of two other agents, who had
already been sent to obtain an extension of the encomienda privileges.
The Dominicans sent as their representative to contest the case, the
offending preacher himself, some generous sympathisers having been found
in the colony to furnish the money for the expenses of his journey.
The advocate for the colonists found all doors open to him and his way
made easy, for there were not a few of the courtiers and other great
personages in Spain who derived large profits from the abusive traffic in
the Indies, but the Dominican was friendless and met with obstacles on
every hand which barred his access to the King. He managed after some
exercise of patience to outwit the gentlemen in attendance, and, forcing
his way into the King’s presence, begged to be heard. Upon receiving the
royal permission to speak, the monk unfolded such a tale that the King sat
stupefied with horror at his ghastly recital. “Did your Highness order
such deeds to be done?” asked the monk. “No, by God, never on my life,”
replied the King. The immediate result of King Ferdinand’s aroused
conscience was, that a commission was formed to inquire into the case and
to take information on which to base a report to his Majesty. The sense
of this report was that the Indians were freemen, but must be instructed
in the Christian religion; that they might be made to labour, but not in
such wise as to hinder their conversion nor in excess of their strength;
that they should have houses and be allowed sufficient time to cultivate
their own lands; that they should be kept in touch with the Christians and
that they should be paid wages for their work, which might be in clothing
and furnishings rather than in money.
While the discussions inside the commission were going on, the agents of
the colonists were active in presenting their side of the case. Fray
Antonio was likewise losing no time, and was astonishingly successful in
that he won over the very Franciscan whom the colonists had sent to plead
their cause, and converted him into his staunch ally and supporter.
The outcome of this controversy was the code of laws promulgated at Burgos
on Dec. 27, 1512, and known as the Laws of Burgos. They were afterwards
considerably added to by another commission, in which the Prior, Pedro de
Cordoba, who had come to Spain and seen the King, sat, and their
provisions, had they been conscientiously carried out in the sense their
framers designed, would have considerably ameliorated the condition of the
Indians. They constitute the first public recognition of the rights of
the Indians and an attempt, at least, to amend their wrongs.
Three years elapsed between the date of Fray Antonio’s first courageous
plea on behalf of the Indians and the entrance of Las Casas upon the
active apostolate in their favour, to which the of his long life was
devoted. There being no other priest at hand, Las Casas was invited to
say mass and preach at Baracoa on the feast of Pentecost in 1514, and in
searching the Scriptures for a suitable text he happened upon the
following verses in the thirty-fourth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, which
arrested his attention and started the train of reasoning destined to
produce great results.
“He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is
ridiculous, and the gifts of unjust men are not accepted. The most High
is not pleased with the offerings of the wicked; neither is He pacified
for sin by the multitude of sacrifices.”
“Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor doeth as one that
killeth the son before his father’s eyes.”
“The bread of the needy is their life; he that defraudeth him thereof is a
man of blood.”
“He that taketh away his neighbour’s living, slayeth him; and he that
defraudeth the labourer of his hire is a bloodshedder.”
The perusal of these simply worded texts, replete with terrible
significance, quickened the conscience of Las Casas more powerfully than
the spectacle of actual enormities happening daily for years under his
very eyes, though doubtless the influence of these many occurrences was
cumulative and had led him, gradually and unconsciously, up to the state
when but a touch was necessary to strip the last disguise from the heinous
abuses practised in the colony. Until then he had been zealous in
protecting the Indians against massacre and pillage, but to the injustice
of the servitude imposed upon them, he was insensible, and he recounts
humbly enough that he had himself once been refused the sacraments by a
Dominican friar in Hispaniola—possibly the redoubtable Montesinos
himself—because he was a slave-holder. He sustained a discussion on the
subject with the obdurate monk, whom he describes as a worthy and learned
man, but to little purpose, and the Dominican wound up by telling him that
“the truth has ever had many enemies, and falsehood many defenders.” Las
Casas, though somewhat impressed by what had passed between them, took no
heed of the admonition to release his Indians, and sought absolution from
a more lenient confessor.
Much time and many terrible experiences were required to germinate and
develop the seed the Dominicans had sown in his soul, but the day of
fruition came with the peaceful preparation of a discourse suitable for
the glorious feast of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, into whose
perpetual custody were committed the doctrines of Christ, to be infallibly
guarded. Instead of disbursing these spiritual treasures to the humble
Indians amongst whom he lived as a superior being, almost deified in their
simple minds, he had profited by their labours as selfishly as the most
godless layman in the island, without making an effort to gather them into
one fold, under one shepherd, which, as a Christian priest, should have
been his chief occupation. But if the awakening was slow, it was complete,
and Las Casas was not one to shrink from following his beliefs to their
logical conclusions; not only was his newly formed conviction that the
treatment accorded to the Indians was a flagrant violation of all justice,
and one that merited condemnation in this world and condign punishment in
the next, absolute, but the first consequence following from it, and which
seemed to him imperative, was that he should forthwith set the example to
his fellow-colonists of freeing his serfs; the second was the devotion of
all his powers to making others see the wickedness of the system by which
they profited, and the terrible moral responsibility they would incur by
persisting in it. He formed his determination to preach this crusade in
season and out and to henceforth use every weapon in defence of the
downtrodden natives.
Although he treated his own Indians kindly, and he well knew that if he
renounced his “encomienda” their condition would doubtless be worse under
the power of their new owner than before, Las Casas perceived how
impossible it would be to preach justice for the Indians while he himself
held them in bondage.
He went to the Governor, Diego Velasquez, and opened his mind fully on the
subject, declaring that as his conscience no longer permitted him to hold
his Indians in subjection, he had come to surrender them; and, admonishing
the Governor of his own grave responsibility, he announced that henceforth
his mission would be to preach this doctrine. He desired for the moment
that his resolution should not be made public until the return to Cuba of
his friend and partner, Renteria, who was at that time absent in Jamaica
buying pigs and farm seeds.
The Governor listened with amazement to this new and, to him, monstrous
doctrine and, out of friendly interest for Las Casas, and possibly
thinking that his present intentions might subside if the renunciation of
his property could be deferred, he counselled him to go slowly, saying,
“Look well, father, to what you are doing, lest you may repent, for before
God I would wish to see you rich and prosperous.” He urged him to take
fifteen days for careful consideration of the matter and to then return
and discuss his intentions. This did not suit the temper of Las Casas who
answered: “My lord, I am much honoured by your desire for my prosperity
and for all the other favours you do me; but consider, my lord, that the
fifteen days have passed, and should I repent of my intention I have
expressed to you and desire to hold the Indians, and should you, out of
the regard you bear me, wish me to keep them or to renew your grant to me,
may it please God to punish you severely, nor to pardon you this sin. I
only beg your lordship that all this shall remain secret and that you will
not grant the Indians to any one, until Renteria’s return, so that his
affairs may sustain no damage.”
The Governor reluctantly agreed and his respect for Las Casas being much
increased, he thenceforward forward consulted him in all that concerned
the welfare of the Indians.
On the feast of the Assumption, Las Casas preached a sermon on the
contemplative, as compared with the active life, in the course of which he
yielded to an impulse to make his intention publicly known. Turning
towards the Governor’s seat, he said: “My lord, I give you permission to
tell to all what we have privately agreed upon between us, and I avail
myself of the same to announce it to all here present.” He then launched
into a fervid discourse upon the blindness, the injustice, the tyranny and
cruelty that marked the colonists’ treatment of the Indians, declaring
that their salvation was to be despaired of unless they liberated their
slaves and treated the natives humanely. The assembly was moved to
mingled admiration and astonishment, for most of the colonists would as
soon have thought it a sin to work their beasts of burden as their
Indians, so deeply ingrained was their belief that the natives were
created to serve them. Some were stimulated to sentiments of compunction,
but not to the extent of imitating the preacher’s heroic example of
renouncing the source of his income in deference to his moral principles.
(27)
While Las Casas was passing through these experiences in Cuba, his friend
and partner, Renteria, was, by a singular coincidence, arriving at
analogous convictions concerning the Indians and pondering upon the
formation of some plan by which the diminishing remnant of them might be
rescued from servitude and converted to the Christian religion. During
lent of that year he made a retreat in a Franciscan monastery in Jamaica
whither, as has been said, he had gone to procure farm stock. During this
period of seclusion from temporal distractions, he came to the conclusion
that the best means to benefit the natives would be to found several
schools or colleges into which the Indian boys and younger men might be
collected, and he formed the determination to go himself, if necessary, to
Spain and seek royal approval and support for this project. Las Casas had
meantime become so impatient of further delay in beginning his labours
that, having made public his intentions, he abandoned his original idea of
waiting for Renteria’s return before starting for Spain. Although he was
without funds and had no means of getting any save by the sale of a mare
worth a hundred pesos of gold, he wrote to Renteria telling him that he
was about leaving Cuba for Spain on business of great importance, so that,
if his friend wished to see him before he started, he must hasten back
from Jamaica. Renteria, in consequence, finished his business in the
island and returned as quickly as possible to Cuba, where he was met upon
landing by the Governor, Las Casas, and numerous others, for he was a very
popular and much esteemed man in the colony. It was only when the two
friends finally found themselves alone that an exchange of confidences
became possible, and Renteria, yielding to the insistence of Las Casas,
unfolded his plan for the establishment of Indian schools. Each in turn
was surprised and gratified to learn the project of the other and, after
some discussion and arguments, it was decided that, of the two, Las Casas
was the one who must go to Spain. Renteria disposed of his Jamaica
purchases and, out of the profits, furnished his friend with money enough
to defray the expenses of what was foreseen would be a long and doubtless
costly sojourn at court.
At this same juncture, the Dominican Prior in Santo Domingo sent four of
his monks to establish a community in Cuba, choosing as their Prior, Fray
Bernardo, who is described as both a pious and a learned man. The
Governor of Cuba received these religious with great satisfaction, but to
no one did their coming afford greater joy than to Las Casas. The
Dominicans began a series of earnest and edifying sermons, in the course
of which practical applications of Scripture texts were made to the actual
condition of affairs in the colony; and, by using the information
furnished them by Las Casas, the preachers were able to make very forcible
home thrusts on the subject of the injustice of the system of serfage and
the grave responsibility of those Spaniards who oppressed the Indians.
These sermons disturbed the conscience of the colonists but not to the
point of amending their evil system, so the chief result was a general
feeling of dissatisfaction within themselves and one of intensified
exasperation towards the preachers of such uncomfortable doctrine. The
monks, on their part, realising that it was idle to combat with purely
spiritual weapons a system of evils which everybody was interested in
maintaining, perceived their only hope of success lay in having their
hands strengthened by royal support, and accordingly their Prior decided
to go to Spain with Las Casas, where they might co-operate in their
undertaking.