LAS CASAS. A PEACEFUL VICTORY
Although held in general detestation in Hispaniola, as a seditious
mischief-maker and an enemy of the Spaniards’ interests, there were not
wanting some sympathisers who, when Las Casas arrived, dejected and
bankrupt, at Santo Domingo, received him kindly, and even offered to lend
him five thousand ducats with which to begin again.
The clear thinking and high resolution which had carried him through so
many trials seemed at this time to fail him; nor indeed is there just
cause for wonder, for there is a limit to human powers of endurance, and
if ever a man was overtaken by a dark hour, Las Casas was he. In after
years, he arraigned his own conduct at this period with undue severity,
reflecting that as the Emperor was back in Spain with the Flemings, and
his old friend Cardinal Adrian had become Pope, he might have accomplished
his life’s purpose of ending the sufferings of the Indians, had he only
adopted the resolution of going directly to Spain. As it was, he wrote an
extensive account to the Emperor of all that had occurred and the causes
that had brought on the calamity at Cumaná.
To the monks of the Dominican order, Las Casas had years since been united
by the strong bonds of devotion to a common cause, which was the dominant
influence, as it was the sole object, of his life. As they had accompanied
and sustained him throughout his long struggle, so it was to them that he
naturally turned for sympathy in the extremity of his disappointment,
exiled, as he was, amidst the hostile colonists of Hispaniola. These were
the saddest days of his tempestuous life, during which doubts began to
penetrate his very soul—doubts of his own worthiness to carry on the
mission to which he had believed himself called, doubts even as to whether
it might not be ordained by the inscrutable wisdom of Divine Providence
that the Indians should perish before the advance of the Spaniards. If
this were true, then his life had been wasted in a vain conflict with the
occult forces that govern the destiny of races.
While waiting for answers to the letters he had written to Spain, he found
his only consolation in his intercourse with the Dominican friars, with
whom in fact he had been for years closely united in spirit. Fray Domingo
de Betanzos exercised a great influence upon him at this time, and to him
is due the decision of Las Casas to enter the Dominican Order.
The discussions between the two must have been frequent and prolonged for,
weary and disappointed as he was, Las Casas seems not to have yearned for
the seclusion of the cloister. To his objection that he must await the
King’s reply to his letter before taking a decision, Betanzos answered,
“Decide now father, for if you were to die meanwhile, who will receive the
King’s letters and orders?” These words sunk deep into his soul and from
thence-forward he pondered seriously upon his vocation. Finally his mind
was made up and he decided to imagine himself dead when the King’s letter
should arrive and so beyond the reach of royal commands. In 1522, he
asked for the habit of the Order. (39) The news of his solemn profession,
which took place in 1523, was received with great joy by the people
outside the convent, though for very different reasons, for they assisted
at his exit from the world and his entrance into the cloister with the
same satisfaction with which they would have attended his funeral. While
making his novitiate, the letters from the Cardinal (now Pope) Adrian and
his Flemish friends at Court arrived. The Flemings urged his immediate
return to Spain, promising him every assistance in their power, but the
superiors of the monastery in Hispaniola did not deliver these disquieting
epistles to their novice, for fear of shaking his resolution to persevere
in his vocation.
The earliest biographer of Las Casas, Antonio de Remesal, says that he was
chosen Prior of the monastery, and this statement is supported by a letter
from the Auditors of Hispaniola dated June 7, 1533, addressed to Prince
Philip who was governing Spain during the absence of the Emperor his
father, in which Fray Bartholomew is mentioned as Prior of the Monastery
of Santo Domingo in the town of Puerto de Plata. (40) In chapter 146 of
his _Historia Apologetica_, he himself speaks of “conferring the habit” on
a novice, which he could only do if he were Prior.
The first seven years that Las Casas passed in the seclusion of his
monastery were not marked by any salient incident. He devoted himself
with all the intensity of his nature to the practice of the austere rule
of St. Dominic and became, as he himself afterwards described in writing
of that period of his life, as though dead to the world, so little part
did he have in the course of events outside his cloister’s walls. He gave
much time to the study of theology, especially to the works of St. Thomas
Aquinas, the glory of the Dominican Order. These studies served to equip
him with stores of canonical and philosophical learning which enabled him,
when the time came, to sustain controversies with some of the most learned
men in Europe.
In the second chapter of his _Historia Apologetica_ the following sentence
occurs: “Three leagues to the west of the extremity of this plain is
Puerto de Plata, and on a hill above and near by the town thus named there
is a monastery of the Dominican Order, where the composition of this
History was begun in the year 1527,—to be finished when and where the will
of God may ordain.”(41)
In 1529, he lent his efforts to bringing to an end the long standing
rebellion of the cacique Enrique whose forces, in the mountains of
Baranco, the Spaniards had fought at intervals during fourteen years in
vain. This chief had been educated in the Franciscan convent at Vera Paz
and was a man of unusual intelligence and superior courage; he married a
beautiful Indian girl of good lineage and, with the Indians under his
rule, was assigned in repartimiento to a Spaniard named Valenzuela, who
began by robbing him of a valuable mare and ended by taking from him his
wife.
The cacique’s protests were answered with a beating, and his complaints to
the governor of St. Juan de la Maguana, one Pedro Vadillo, were
disregarded.
This grievance led to an organised rebellion of the natives under Enrique,
who assembled numerous forces. By constantly moving from place to place,
he was able to elude the several Spanish expeditions sent against him.
The course of these alternate hostilities and negotiations to obtain the
submission of Enrique, and the dispersal of his people, are described at
length in chapters 125 and 126 of the _Historia General_. Even the
intervention of Fray Remigio, one of the Franciscans who had come from
Picardy to Hispaniola, and who had been one of Enrique’s teachers in the
convent, failed induce the offended cacique to surrender. News of the
continued success of the rebellion reached Spain, and in 1527, Don
Sebastian de Fuenleal was sent out as President of the Audiencia and
Bishop of Santo Domingo, with special instructions to subdue Enrique. His
efforts proved as fruitless as the preceding attempts, and in 1528 the
King wrote still more urgently that the campaign must be brought to a
successful issue. The Bishop-President, being in sore perplexity to
devise means for satisfying the royal commands, showed this embarrassing
letter to Fray Bartholomew.
“My lord,” said Las Casas, “how many times has your lordship and this
Audiencia tried to subdue this man to the King’s service by waging war
against him.”
“Many times,” answered the Bishop, “almost every year a force has been
organised and so it will go on till he dies or submits.” “And how often,”
asks Las Casas, “have you tried to win him by peaceful means?” “I don’t
know that there was but the one time,” answered Fuenleal. Fray Bartolomew
then affirmed that he was confident that he could arrange a peace and, the
Bishop-president having accepted his offer to act as ambassador to
Enrique, he fulfilled his mission as much to the astonishment as to the
satisfaction of everybody.
The Spanish historian Quintana rejects the account of these events which
is given by Remesal and has ever since been accepted by historians as
authentic, declaring it to be fabulous, and limiting the part Las Casas
played in the affair of Enrique to a visit he paid him after peace was
concluded. Remesal bases his narrative on documents which he declares he
found in the archives of the Audiencia of Guatemala, and there seems no
sufficient motive for doubting the veracity of the evidence. Las Casas,
in describing what took place in the early part of the troubles with
Enrique (1520), does not say positively that he took part in the first
negotiations for peace, but he does clearly give it to be understood that
the successful issue of the final efforts was owing to his intervention.
A detailed account of the conclusion of the rebellion would, according to
the system adopted in writing his _History_, find its rightful place in
the fourth book, which is missing, though there is little room for doubt
that it was written and may possibly still be discovered.
Concerning the journey which—according to Remesal—Las Casas made to Spain
in 1530, very little is known, and Quintana is as sceptical about this
voyage as about the part attributed to him by some biographers in
Enrique’s subjugation, though there seems as little reason in this
instance to doubt the explicit statement of one whose good faith is as far
above suspicion as his opportunities for knowing the facts were
exceptional.
Torquemada represents Fray Juan Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, as
visiting Spain in 1532, and as having previously written asking that the
colonists should be prohibited from enslaving the Indians, and that during
that time identical representations had been made to the government by the
Bishop of Chiapa, Don Bartolomé de Las Casas, (42) which procured letters
patent from the Empress-Regent signed in 1530, before the bishop of Mexico
arrived. (43) The scepticism of Quintana seems hardly justified.
The occasion of the alleged journey was the recent discovery and conquest
of Peru by Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. The fate of these
millions of people, newly subjected to the Castilian crown could not have
been a matter of indifference to Las Casas. They stood far higher in the
scale of civilisation than the naked islanders, possessing as they did, as
great an empire as the Mexicans, with religion, laws, and literature of a
high order of development. While the entrance of Las Casas into a
monastic order was, in one sense, a retirement from the world, he had
chosen a community whose members were as devoted to the defence of the
Indians as he himself was, and while he had, when still a secular priest,
sustained a stout fight, unaided save by such friends as chance and his
own efforts might here and there secure him, he could, after his
profession, count upon the moral and active support of one of the most
powerful religious organisations of the age. His retirement, therefore,
proved to be a period of refreshment, during which he reinforced his
powers for continuing his propaganda and, while losing nothing of his
original enthusiasm and determination, he returned to the scene of his
former activity with renewed courage and a great religious Order at his
back.
Determined as he was to forestall a repetition in Peru of the
exterminating cruelties perpetrated in the islands, he returned to Court
in his Dominican habit, where he preached several times with great
success. The gift of eloquence he had always possessed, and his eight
years of study and meditation had furnished him with new weapons, which he
wielded with the same fiery zeal that had characterised the first years of
his apostolic championship. During the six months he remained in Spain,
he obtained a royal cedula to be delivered to Pizarro and Almagro,
positively prohibiting the enslavement of any of the natives of Peru for
any reason, or in any manner whatsoever, as they were declared to be the
free vassals of the King, and as much entitled to the possession of their
liberty and property as were the natives of Castile itself. The obnoxious
Bishop of Burgos had long since fallen into disgrace and was dead, so that
Las Casas was free to carry on his negotiations with the India Council
without encountering at every step the obstacles and delays his old enemy
had formerly opposed to his projects.
During his absence in Spain, the first provincial chapter of the
Dominicans had been held in Hispaniola, and on his return there he learned
that the monastery of San Domingo in Mexico had been designated as the
chief house of the province, with Fray Francisco de San Miguel as the
first Prior. Las Casas, in company with other friars embarked with the new
Prior for Mexico, his own destination being Peru, where he had not only to
deliver the royal cedula he had secured, but also to found some convents
in those regions. The friars in Mexico did not welcome their new Prior as
cordially as they might have done, but Fray Bartholomew, ever ready to
exercise his powers of universal peace-maker, smoothed the difficulties,
after which he left for Peru early in 1532, accompanied by Fray Bernardino
de Minaya and Fray Pedro de Angulo. (44) As their port of embarkation was
Realejo in Nicaragua, they passed through Santiago de Guatemala where they
lodged in the abandoned convent of San Domingo. As soon as the news of
their arrival spread, the whole town came eagerly to see them; the
enthusiasm of the inhabitants was somewhat dampened when they learned that
Las Casas was one of the three, for he had earned a terrible fame amongst
slave-dealing Spaniards and whenever he appeared, was apt to produce royal
cedulas of embarrassing purport or, at least, to denounce and report to
Spain the violence and cruelties commonly practised on the Indians.
The friars’ stay at Santiago was brief, in spite of the urgent entreaties
of the priest there, who begged them to remain and to reopen the deserted
monastery, as the field for spiritual labours was a broad and uncultivated
one. Fray Bartholomew was anxious, however, to reach his destination,
knowing from past experiences how much easier it is to forestall an evil
than to remedy a rooted abuse. He rightly judged that whatever good was to
be accomplished by virtue of the royal cedula he carried, must be achieved
before the conquerors of Peru had time to enslave the Indians and to
establish a system similar to those that had worked such damage in the
Islands and in Mexico. They were obliged to wait twenty-four days at
Realejo until a ship which was to carry reinforcements and stores to
Pizarro and Almagro was ready to sail; meanwhile the three monks, under
the exterior guise of the gentle dove, were obliged to use some of the
wisdom of the serpent and to carefully conceal the nature of their
mission, for otherwise the ship-owners, whose chief article of commerce
was slaves, would never have taken them on board.
Upon their arrival in Peru, Las Casas immediately communicated the purport
of the cedula to the Spanish commanders. Both Almagro and Pizarro
protested that they would obey the order to the letter, though it went
sorely against their interests. They ordered the royal command to be
solemnly published with the usual formalities and even added other
penalties to those prescribed, for any violation of its provisions.
This part of his mission accomplished, it remained for Fray Bartholomew
and his companions to take steps to found religious houses as their
superior had ordered, but after consultation with the Bishop of those
parts, Fray Vicente de Valverde, it was decided that such foundations
would be premature, since the country was only half subdued and a
continuous state of warfare still prevailed. Their return to Mexico was
therefore agreed upon and, together with a number of Spaniards who were
disappointed with their prospects in Peru, the three friars left for
Panama whence they sailed for Realejo, where they arrived early in March
of 1532.
The Bishop of Nicaragua, who at that time was Don Diego Alvarez Osorio,
had been instructed by the Emperor to establish Dominican convents in his
diocese, and the arrival of the friars afforded him the first opportunity
that had presented itself to obey the royal commands. A convent was
therefore established with the customary ceremonies at Leon, the seat of
the Bishop, and was dedicated to St. Paul. The friars set themselves to
work to learn the language of the natives, which was not difficult for
Pedro de Angulo, since he already knew the Mexican tongue, whose
similarity rendered intelligible communication with the Indians easy from
the outset.
While engaged in the apostolic labour of teaching and converting the
natives who were eager to become Christians, Las Casas received a letter
from the licentiate Cerrato, who had succeeded the Bishop Don Sebastian de
Fuenleal as President of the Audiencia in Hispaniola on the transference
of the latter to Mexico, urging him to return forthwith, as his presence
was necessary for the service of God and the Emperor. Money for the
expenses of the journey accompanied this communication, the nature of
which left its recipient no choice but to obey, so leaving the work of
conversions that had so favourably begun to the care of the friars who had
returned with him from Peru, Fray Bartholomew and Fray Pedro de Angulo set
out on their long journey by way of Honduras, where a ship might be found
either at the port of Trujillo or that of Caballos.
Upon his arrival at Santo Domingo, where he was cordially received by the
President, Cerrato though his presence was never a source of tranquillity
to the slave-dealing colonists, Las Casas learned that the principal
reason for recalling him, was the President’s desire to establish a surer
peace with the cacique Enrique; although the latter had made no attack on
the Spaniards since the agreement of 1529, he had not disbanded his
followers, but remained in an inaccessible mountain fastness, a permanent
source of unrest to the Spaniards with whom he showed no intention of
entering into closer relations.
No mission could have been more to Fray Bartholomew’s liking, for he was
ever eager to prove the truth of his perpetual thesis that the Indians
were reasonable, peaceable people who, if treated humanely would readily
embrace civilisation and Christianity. Making his usual condition that no
force should be used, and accompanied only by his faithful companion, Fray
Pedro de Angulo, he set out for the mountain regions to search for
Enrique. After several days of fatiguing wanderings he came upon the
cacique, as well entrenched and with as many precautions against a
possible attack or surprise as though he were engaged in active warfare
instead of being at peace since four years. For some time, during which
the two Dominicans remained as guests in the camp, no news of them reached
Santo Domingo, so that the President and the colonists began to feel great
uneasiness for their safety. Two months of absolute silence elapsed when,
to the stupefaction of the colony, Las Casas appeared at the entrance of
the Audiencia in company with the formidable cacique. During fourteen
years this Indian chieftain had been the terror of the Islands, invincible
and intractable; the triumph of Las Casas was correspondingly great when,
by the force of his reasoning, he led him peacefully into the Spanish
capital. Great was the ovation that greeted this signal success of the
unpopular Dominican; the President fulfilled to the letter all the
promises and assurances which Las Casas had given Enrique in the Emperor’s
name, so that from their most obstinate enemy, this cacique became the
most loyal friend of the Spaniards. (45) Perhaps no accomplishment in his
long life of great achievements and great disappointments afforded him
more unalloyed pleasure than this pacific victory.
The centre of Fray Bartholomew’s action was now transferred to Peru, where
he was bent upon keeping a watchful eye on the execution of the royal
commands for the protection of the Indians, which he had been instrumental
in procuring. There, it seemed still possible to bar out slavery in all
its forms, so he solicited the Dominican superiors in Hispaniola four
friars to accompany him and found religious houses in Peru. Amongst these
four was Fray Luis Cancer, whose name was destined to be written in the
list of the proto-martyrs of the Catholic Church in America.
The President Cerrato, out of gratitude to Las Casas, made all the
provision for the return journey and the five friars set out, probably by
the same road by which Las Casas had come. In 1534, he was in Nicaragua,
where he left three of his companions in the convent of St. Paul at
Santiago, while he and Fray Luis Cancer and Fray Pedro de Angulo continued
on their way to Peru. Embarking at the port of Realejo on board a small
vessel, they were overtaken by a furious storm and such continued bad
weather that, after many days of misery and danger, the ship was obliged
to put back, and they found themselves again at their port of embarkation.
Their journey to Peru being thus frustrated, the friars returned to their
convent at Leon where, in the early days of 1534, a letter reached Las
Casas from Don Francisco Marroquin, who had recently been appointed Bishop
of Guatemala after the renunciation of Fray Domingo de Betanzos. His
diocese was vast but its clergy consisted of himself and one priest, and
in his letter he entreated Fray Bartholomew, since his journey to Peru had
been abandoned and the diocese of Nicaragua was reasonably provided with
priests, to come with his companions to Guatemala, where there was a great
field open for apostolic work and no labourers to occupy it. Las Casas at
once responded to this invitation and in Santiago de los Caballeros, the
trio of Dominicans established their convent, being joined somewhat later
by Fray Rodrigo de Ladrada who came thither from Peru.
The first essential was to learn the Guatemalan language in order to
preach and catechise the Indians, and this was the more easily
accomplished because the Bishop Marroquin was already master of it, and
undertook their instruction. It was this same bishop who published in
Mexico in 1556, a catechism of Christian Doctrine in the Utlateca tongue,
commonly called Quiché, a little book which has become extremely rare and
valuable.