The Enduring Role of Pope Alexander VI’s Inter caetera in Spanish Colonization: The Man Who Sold the World?
CSLR Research Paper No.1.2023-AFF
Brill Research Perspectives in Law and Religion (forthcoming)
84 Pages Posted: 9 Jan 2023 Last revised: 5 May 2023
Date Written: January 6, 2023
Abstract
In 1493, shortly after Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage to the Indies, Pope Alexander VI issued a bull, Inter caetera. It authorized centuries of brutal imperial conquest throughout the world, according to many Indigenous activists and scholarly critics. It was a historically insignificant “remnant,” according to the Holy See and some Catholic apologists.
In reality, the bull played a complicated part in history. It had virtually no role in English and American colonial endeavors. However, Alexander may have actually meant it as the strong mandate for dominance that it is accused of being. At the very least, Inter caetera was a central part of the Spanish Empire’s intellectual self-justification for hundreds of years. It retained prominence even as Spanish scholars working within the natural-law tradition proposed alternative theories. Was Alexander the man who sold Spain the world? For many imperialists, and many colonial subjects, the answer was yes.
Keywords: Inter caetera, Indigenous rights, doctrine of discovery, colonialism, imperialism, Catholic, history, Pope Alexander VI, Spanish Empire, Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolome de Las Casas, human rights, Pope Francis, First Nations
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