Finally the Bishop arrested the Dean. In those days, when the Roman Church was so powerful, bishops had a kind of episcopal marshal, and usually there was also an episcopal jail, where ecclesiastical offenders were confined. This arrest of the Dean stirred up a great commotion. A crowd of people gathered around him, and he made a frantic effort to escape, crying out:
"Help me! Gentlemen, help me!"
And he voiced all sorts of promises, if they would assist him. The citizens being armed, in a few minutes the Dean was free; whereupon sentinels were set at all the doors of the monastery, to prevent the monks from going to the assistance of their Bishop, and a shouting mob forced its way into his house.
One of the Dominicans and a knight of Salamanca, who chanced to be there, met the riotous crowd and managed to quiet the tumult a little; but the leaders burst into the Bishop's room, shouting at him, insulting him, and even threatening to kill him.
Las Casas spoke not a word, but stood calmly looking at them until the storm had spent itself, when quietly, with words of pity and forgiveness, he dismissed them.
He now excommunicated the Dean. The monks were greatly alarmed for the Bishop's life and begged him to leave and go to some place of safety, but he said to them:
"Fathers, where would you have me go! Where shall I be safe as long as I act in behalf of these poor creatures? Were the cause mine, I would drop it with pleasure, but it is that of my flock, of these miserable Indians, oppressed by unjust slavery."
While they were talking, four other Dominicans rushed in to tell the Bishop that the man who had threatened to kill him,—the one that had fired the shot to frighten him,—had been stabbed. At once Las Casas rose, and sending for a surgeon and taking some of the brothers with him, went to minister to the injured man. For hours they worked over him, the Bishop ministering to him as to a brother; and so touched was the man that he begged Las Casas' forgiveness with all his heart, and was from that day one of the clerico's warmest friends.
The Bishop's salary was now refused him, all alms withdrawn from the Dominicans, and when Indians were sent out into the province to beg for them, the Spaniards seized whatever was brought in, and gave the bearers a sound beating into the bargain, so that it was impossible to obtain food in this way.