CHAPTER XIII. - PROFESSION OF LAS CASAS. THE CACIQUE ENRIQUE. JOURNEYS OF 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 [pg 175] 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 [pg 176] 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 [pg 177] 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.