Las Casas: "The Apostle of the Indies"

by Alice J. Knight

The clerico's old opponent, Bishop Fonseca, was dead, and there was now a much better spirit in the council, so that it proved easier than ever before for him to secure the legislation he desired. The Pope had also recently issued a Bull forbidding all good Catholic subjects to make slaves of the Indians, and this was a great help to Las Casas. Some new laws were passed for their benefit, among them one that forbade any lay Spaniards to enter The Land of War for five years. This royal order was solemnly proclaimed, at Las Casas' request, from the steps of the cathedral of Seville.

And now, his business being finished and the Franciscan and Dominican monks he had procured for Guatemala being ready to sail, Las Casas prepared to start back to the New World; but at the last moment he was detained by the president of the Council of the Indies, who needed the clerico's advice. The Dominicans were kept back with him, as he was their vicar-general, but the Franciscans went, and with them Father Luis Cancer, taking with him a copy of the new laws. These laws were a great triumph for Las Casas, and their acceptance was due to his wonderful personal influence.

The clerico was now seventy years old. He had crossed the ocean twelve times. Four times he had gone to Germany to see the Emperor, and we must remember that traveling then was a much more difficult and unpleasant experience than anything we can conceive of now. In his case poverty made it still more of a hardship. But none of these things mattered to this earnest "apostle" if only he could lighten the hard lot of those for whom he labored and suffered.

One Sunday evening, while he was in Barcelona, the Emperor's secretary called on him to tell him that it was the royal wish to make him Bishop of Cuzco, the largest and richest of all the dioceses in the New World. But Las Casas would accept no reward for his work, and for fear he should be urged, he left Barcelona. Not long after, however, the diocese of Chiapa[2] was established, and the bishop appointed to it having died on his way out, this bishopric was offered to Las Casas. In contrast with the bishopric of Cuzco, it was the poorest in the New World,—so poor indeed that the Emperor had to help out the salary of the bishop with a royal grant. Such a field, however, appealed far more to the Protector of the Indians than the former one, and he accepted the offer and was consecrated in Seville on the 8th of March, 1544, and at once prepared to leave, taking with him forty-four Dominicans. The voyage proved to be a very trying and dangerous one, but at length the holy men arrived at San Domingo. The Dominicans came to meet the Bishop and his companions and escorted them to the monastery, and the Te Deum was sung in the church, in thanksgiving for their escape from so many perils.

Hardly any in San Domingo, except the Dominicans, were glad to see the protector of the Indians. The new laws were regarded as the ruin of the colonies. Indignation meetings were held, and it was determined to boycott the monks. This was a very serious calamity to the Dominicans, for as they, like the Franciscans, belonged to what were known as the mendicant orders, and depended for their daily bread upon what they could beg, they were reduced to extremity.

Prayer was offered in the church night and day, and very soon the Franciscans began secretly to send the Dominicans food from what they themselves received, and an old negro woman offered to make a round every day of the houses where there were people that did not share the evil spirit of the rest of the town, and so their necessity was relieved.

In spite of this condition of things, Las Casas went before the Audiencia, and in the name of the King, summoned them to set free the Indians. But Spanish subjects had a right to protest against any new laws if they so desired, and when this was done, the laws were not enforced until the protest had been either accepted or rejected.

Meanwhile, Las Casas himself wrote to the Emperor, and both he and others of the Dominicans preached constantly against slavery and the wrongs done the Indians. Naturally, these sermons increased the hatred against them. In the midst of these troubles, however, the friars were astonished and delighted to receive a visit one day from a rich widow, said to be the richest person in the colony, who came to tell them that their sermons had convinced her that it was a sin to hold the Indians in bondage, and she had resolved to free hers (she had more than two hundred); and because she now felt that her money had been made wrongly, she was about to make over her plantation to the order. This caused a great sensation in the town. Then, too, seeing the Dominicans holding to their convictions, directly against their own interests, after a time made many people rather ashamed of themselves, and little by little the hostility died away, so that when the time came for Las Casas and his monks to leave, some of the Spaniards even expressed regret.

They sailed early in December, and this voyage also proved a trying one. It was very stormy, and their pilot turned out to be so ignorant that the Bishop himself had to take the wheel; for this truly wonderful man could sail a ship, work a plantation, write books, plead a case in court, perform the duties of a bishop, and at the same time fight unceasingly for the oppressed.