Background and arrival in the New World in Las Casas's
Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. The print was made by two Flemish artists who had fled the Southern Netherlands because of their
Protestant faith:
Joos van Winghe was the designer and
Theodor de Bry the engraver. Bartolomé de las Casas was born in
Seville on 11 November 1484. For centuries, Las Casas's birthdate was believed to be 1474; however, in the 1970s, scholars conducting archival work demonstrated this to be an error, after uncovering in the
Archivo General de Indias records of a contemporary lawsuit that demonstrated he was born a decade later than had been supposed. Subsequent biographers and authors have generally accepted and reflected this revision. His father, Pedro de las Casas, a merchant, descended from one of the families that had migrated from France to found the Christian
Seville; his family also spelled the name
Casaus. According to one biographer, his family was of
converso heritage, although others refer to them as ancient Christians who migrated from France. Las Casas's first encounter with Indigenous peoples happened before he even sailed to the Americas. In his
Historia de las Indias, he wrote of
Christopher Columbus's return to
Seville, in 1493. Las Casas recorded having seen "seven Indians" in the entourage of Christopher Columbus, being exhibited in the vicinity of the Iglesia de San Nicolás de Bari, along with "beautiful green parrots, vibrant in color" and Indigenous artifacts. Pedro de Las Casas, Bartolomé's merchant father, left in Columbus's second expedition. Upon his return, in 1499, Pedro de Las Casas brought to his son "a young Amerinidian." Three years later, in 1502, Las Casas immigrated with his father to the island of
Hispaniola, on the expedition of
Nicolás de Ovando. Las Casas became a
hacendado and slave owner, receiving a piece of land in the province of
Cibao. He participated in slave raids and military expeditions against the Native population of Hispaniola. In 1506, he returned to Spain and completed his studies of canon law at Salamanca. That same year, he was ordained a deacon and then traveled to Rome, where he was ordained a
secular priest in 1507. In September 1510, a group of
Dominican friars arrived in
Santo Domingo led by
Pedro de Córdoba; appalled by the injustices they saw committed by the slave owners against the Indians, they decided to deny slave owners the right to
confession. Las Casas was among those denied confession for this reason. In December 1511, a Dominican preacher Fray
Antonio de Montesinos preached a fiery sermon that implicated the colonists in the
genocide of the Native peoples. He is said to have preached: "Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before. Why do you keep them so oppressed and exhausted, without giving them enough to eat or curing them of the sicknesses they incur from the excessive labor you give them, and they die, or rather you kill them, in order to extract and acquire gold every day."
Conquest of Cuba and change of heart village from Las Casas's times in contemporary Cuba In 1513, as a chaplain, Las Casas participated in
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar's and
Pánfilo de Narváez' conquest of
Cuba. He participated in campaigns at
Bayamo and
Camagüey and in the massacre of
Hatuey. He witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against the Native
Ciboney and
Guanahatabey peoples. He later wrote: "I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see." Aided by Pedro de Córdoba and accompanied by Antonio de Montesinos, he left for Spain in September 1515, arriving in Seville in November.
Las Casas and King Ferdinand Las Casas arrived in Spain with the plan of convincing the King to end the encomienda system. This was easier thought than done, as most of the people who were in positions of power were themselves either encomenderos or otherwise profiting from the influx of wealth from the Indies. In the winter of 1515,
King Ferdinand lay ill in
Plasencia, but Las Casas was able to get a letter of introduction to the king from the Archbishop of Seville,
Diego de Deza. On Christmas Eve of 1515, Las Casas met the monarch and discussed the situation in the Indies with him; the king agreed to hear him out in more detail at a later date. While waiting, Las Casas produced a report that he presented to the Bishop of Burgos,
Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, and secretary
Lope Conchillos, who were functionaries in complete charge of the royal policies regarding the Indies; both were encomenderos. They were not impressed by his account, and Las Casas had to find a different avenue of change. He put his faith in his coming audience with the king, but it never came, for King Ferdinand died on 25 January 1516. The regency of
Castile passed on to
Ximenez Cisneros and
Adrian of Utrecht who were guardians for the under-age
Prince Charles. Las Casas was resolved to see Prince Charles who resided in
Flanders, but on his way there he passed
Madrid and delivered to the regents a written account of the situation in the Indies and his proposed remedies. This was his "
Memorial de Remedios para Las Indias" of 1516. In this early work, Las Casas advocated importing black slaves from Africa to relieve the suffering Indians, a stance he later retracted, becoming an advocate for the Africans in the colonies as well. This shows that Las Casas's first concern was not to end slavery as an institution, but to end the physical abuse and suffering of the Indians. In keeping with the legal and moral doctrine of the time, Las Casas believed that slavery could be justified if it was the result of
Just War, and at the time he assumed that the enslavement of Africans was justified. Worried by Las Casas's descriptions of the situation in the Indies, Cardinal Cisneros decided to send a group of
Hieronymite monks to take over the government of the islands.
Protector of the Indians Three
Hieronymite monks,
Luis de Figueroa, Bernardino de Manzanedo, and Alonso de Santo Domingo, were selected as commissioners to take over the authority of the Indies. Las Casas had a considerable part in selecting them and writing the instructions under which their new government would be instated, largely based on Las Casas's
memorial. Las Casas himself was granted the official title of
Protector of the Indians, and given a yearly salary of one hundred pesos. In this new office Las Casas was expected to serve as an advisor to the new governors with regard to Indian issues, to speak the case of the Indians in court, and send reports back to Spain. Las Casas and the commissioners traveled to Santo Domingo on separate ships, and Las Casas arrived two weeks later than the Hieronimytes. During this time the Hieronimytes had time to form a more pragmatic view of the situation than the one advocated by Las Casas; their position was precarious as every encomendero on the Islands was fiercely against any attempts to curtail their use of Native labor. Consequently, the commissioners were unable to take any radical steps towards improving the situation of the Natives. They did revoke some encomiendas from Spaniards, especially those who were living in Spain and not on the islands themselves; they even repossessed the encomienda of
Fonseca, the Bishop of Burgos. They also carried out an inquiry into the Indian question at which all the encomenderos asserted that the Indians were quite incapable of living freely without their supervision. Las Casas was disappointed and infuriated. When he accused the Hieronymites of being complicit in kidnapping Indians, the relationship between Las Casas and the commissioners broke down. Las Casas had become a hated figure by Spaniards all over the islands, and he had to seek refuge in the Dominican monastery. The Dominicans had been the first to indict the encomenderos, and they continued to chastise them and refuse the absolution of confession to slave owners, and even stated that priests who took their confession were committing a
mortal sin. In May 1517, Las Casas was forced to travel back to Spain to denounce to the regent the failure of the Hieronymite reforms. Only after Las Casas had left did the Hieronymites begin to congregate Indians into towns similar to what Las Casas had wanted.
Las Casas and Emperor Charles V: The peasant colonization scheme When he arrived in Spain, his former protector, regent, and
Cardinal Ximenez Cisneros, was ill and had become tired of Las Casas's tenacity. Las Casas resolved to meet instead with the young king Charles I. Ximenez died on 8 November, and the young King arrived in
Valladolid on 25 November 1517. Las Casas managed to secure the support of the king's Flemish courtiers, including the powerful Chancellor Jean de la Sauvage. Las Casas's influence turned the favor of the court against Secretary Conchillos and Bishop Fonseca. Sauvage spoke highly of Las Casas to the king, who appointed Las Casas and Sauvage to write a new plan for reforming the governmental system of the Indies. Las Casas suggested a plan where the encomienda would be abolished and Indians would be congregated into self-governing townships to become tribute-paying vassals of the king. He still suggested that the loss of Indian labor for the colonists could be replaced by allowing
importation of African slaves. Another important part of the plan was to introduce a new kind of sustainable colonization, and Las Casas advocated supporting the migration of Spanish peasants to the Indies where they would introduce small-scale farming and agriculture, a kind of colonization that did not rely on resource depletion and Indian labor. Las Casas worked to recruit a large number of peasants who would want to travel to the islands, where they would be given lands to farm, cash advances, and the tools and resources they needed to establish themselves there. The recruitment drive was difficult, and during the process the power relation shifted at court when Chancellor Sauvage, Las Casas's main supporter, unexpectedly died. In the end a much smaller number of peasant families were sent than originally planned, and they were supplied with insufficient provisions and no support secured for their arrival. Those who survived the journey were ill-received, and had to work hard even to survive in the hostile colonies. Las Casas was devastated by the tragic result of his peasant migration scheme, which he felt had been thwarted by his enemies. He decided instead to undertake a personal venture which would not rely on the support of others, and fought to win a land grant on the American mainland which was in its earliest stage of colonization.
The Cumaná venture in Venezuela, close to the original location of Las Casas's colony at
Cumaná 's slaving raid. Colored copperplate by
Theodor de Bry, published in the "Relación brevissima" Following a suggestion by his friend and mentor
Pedro de Córdoba, Las Casas petitioned a land grant to be allowed to establish a settlement in northern
Venezuela at
Cumaná. Founded in 1515, there was already a small Franciscan monastery in Cumana, and a Dominican one at Chiribichi, but the monks there were being harassed by Spaniards operating slave raids from the nearby Island of
Cubagua. To make the proposal palatable to the king, Las Casas had to incorporate the prospect of profits for the royal treasury. He suggested fortifying the northern coast of Venezuela, establishing ten royal forts to protect the Indians and starting up a system of trade in gold and pearls. All the Indian slaves of the New World should be brought to live in these towns and become tribute paying subjects to the king. To secure the grant, Las Casas had to go through a long court fight against Bishop Fonseca and his supporters
Gonzalo de Oviedo and Bishop Quevedo of
Tierra Firme. Las Casas's supporters were
Diego Columbus and the new chancellor Gattinara. Las Casas's enemies slandered him to the king, accusing him of planning to escape with the money to
Genoa or
Rome. In 1520 Las Casas's concession was finally granted, but it was a much smaller grant than he had initially proposed; he was also denied the possibilities of extracting gold and pearls, which made it difficult for him to find investors for the venture. Las Casas committed himself to producing 15,000
ducats of annual revenue, increasing to 60,000 after ten years, and to erecting three Christian towns of at least 40 settlers each. Some privileges were also granted to the initial 50 shareholders in Las Casas's scheme. The king also promised not to give any encomienda grants in Las Casas's area. That said, finding fifty men willing to invest 200 ducats each and three years of unpaid work proved impossible for Las Casas. He ended up leaving in November 1520 with just a small group of peasants, paying for the venture with money borrowed from his brother in-law. Arriving in
Puerto Rico, in January 1521, he received the terrible news that the Dominican convent at Chiribichi had been sacked by Indians, and that the Spaniards of the islands had launched a punitive expedition, led by Gonzalo de Ocampo, into the very heart of the territory that Las Casas wanted to colonize peacefully. The Indians had been provoked to attack the settlement of the monks because of the repeated slave raids by Spaniards operating from Cubagua. As Ocampo's ships began returning with slaves from the land Las Casas had been granted, he went to Hispaniola to complain to the
Audiencia. After several months of negotiations Las Casas set sail alone; the peasants he had brought had deserted, and he arrived in his colony already ravaged by Spaniards. Las Casas worked there in adverse conditions for the following months, being constantly harassed by the Spanish
pearl fishers of
Cubagua island who traded slaves for alcohol with the Natives. Early in 1522, Las Casas left the settlement to complain to the authorities. While he was gone the Native
Caribs attacked the settlement of Cumaná, burned it to the ground, and killed four of Las Casas's men. He returned to Hispaniola in January 1522, and heard the news of the massacre. The rumours even included him among the dead. To make matters worse, his detractors used the event as evidence of the need to pacify the Indians using military means.
Las Casas as a Dominican friar Devastated, Las Casas reacted by entering the Dominican monastery of Santa Cruz in
Santo Domingo as a novice in 1522 and finally taking holy vows as a
Dominican friar in 1523. There he continued his theological studies, being particularly attracted to
Thomist philosophy. He oversaw the construction of a monastery in
Puerto Plata on the north coast of Hispaniola, subsequently serving as
prior of the convent. In 1527 he began working on his
History of the Indies, in which he reported much of what he had witnessed first hand in the conquest and colonization of New Spain. In 1531, he wrote a letter to
Garcia Manrique,
Count of Osorno, protesting again the mistreatment of the Indians and advocating a return to his original reform plan of 1516. In 1531, a complaint was sent by the encomenderos of Hispaniola that Las Casas was again accusing them of mortal sins from the pulpit. In 1533 he contributed to the establishment of a peace treaty between the Spanish and the rebel
Taíno band of chief
Enriquillo. In 1534, Las Casas made an attempt to travel to
Peru to observe the first stages of
conquest of that region by
Francisco Pizarro. His party made it as far as
Panama, but had to turn back to
Nicaragua due to adverse weather. Lingering for a while in the Dominican convent of
Granada, he got into conflict with Rodrigo de Contreras, Governor of Nicaragua, when Las Casas vehemently opposed slaving expeditions by the Governor. In 1536, Las Casas followed a number of friars to
Guatemala, where they began to prepare to undertake a mission among the
Maya Indians. They stayed in the convent founded some years earlier by Fray
Domingo Betanzos and studied the
Kʼicheʼ language with Bishop
Francisco Marroquín, before traveling into the interior region called Tuzulutlan, "The Land of War", in 1537. , Las Casas's Franciscan adversary. Also in 1536, before venturing into Tuzulutlan, Las Casas went to
Oaxaca,
Mexico, to participate in a series of discussions and debates among the bishops of the Dominican and
Franciscan orders. The two orders had very different approaches to the conversion of the Indians. The Franciscans used a method of mass conversion, sometimes baptizing many thousands of Indians in a day. This method was championed by prominent Franciscans such as
Toribio de Benavente, known as "Motolinia", and Las Casas made many enemies among the Franciscans for arguing that conversions made without adequate understanding were invalid. Las Casas wrote a treatise called "
De unico vocationis modo" (On the Only Way of Conversion) based on the missionary principles he had used in Guatemala. Motolinia would later be a fierce critic of Las Casas, accusing him of being all talk and no action when it came to converting the Indians. As a direct result of the debates between the Dominicans and Franciscans and spurred on by Las Casas's treatise,
Pope Paul III promulgated the
Bull Sublimis Deus, which stated that the Indians were rational beings and should be brought peacefully to the faith as such. Las Casas returned to Guatemala in 1537 wanting to employ his new method of conversion based on two principles: 1) to preach the Gospel to all men and treat them as equals, and 2) to assert that conversion must be voluntary and based on knowledge and understanding of the faith. It was important for Las Casas that this method be tested without meddling from secular colonists, so he chose a territory in the heart of Guatemala where there were no previous colonies and where the Natives were considered fierce and war-like. Because the land had not been possible to conquer by military means, the governor of Guatemala,
Alonso de Maldonado, agreed to sign a contract promising that if the venture was successful he would not establish any new encomiendas in the area. Las Casas's group of friars established a Dominican presence in
Rabinal,
Sacapulas, and
Cobán. Through the efforts of Las Casas's missionaries the so-called "Land of War" came to be called "
Verapaz", "True Peace". Las Casas's strategy was to teach Christian songs to merchant Indian Christians who then ventured into the area. In this way he was successful in converting several Native chiefs, among them those of
Atitlán and
Chichicastenango, and in building several churches in the territory named
Alta Verapaz. These congregated a group of Christian Indians in the location of what is now the town of Rabinal. In 1538 Las Casas was recalled from his mission by Bishop Marroquín who wanted him to go to
Mexico and then on to
Spain to seek more Dominicans to assist in the mission. Las Casas left Guatemala for Mexico, where he stayed for more than a year before setting out for Spain in 1540.
The New Laws In Spain, Las Casas started securing official support for the Guatemalan mission, and he managed to get a royal decree forbidding secular intrusion into the Verapaces for the following five years. He also informed the
Theologians of
Salamanca, led by
Francisco de Vitoria, of the mass baptism practiced by the Franciscans, resulting in a
dictum condemning the practice as sacrilegious. But apart from the clerical business, Las Casas had also traveled to Spain for his own purpose: to continue the struggle against the colonists' mistreatment of the Indians. The encomienda had, in fact, legally been abolished in 1523, but it had been reinstituted in 1526, and in 1530 a general ordinance against slavery was reversed by the Crown. For this reason it was a pressing matter for Bartolomé de las Casas to plead once again for the Indians with Charles V who was by now
Holy Roman Emperor and no longer a boy. He wrote a letter asking for permission to stay in Spain a little longer to argue for the emperor that conversion and colonization were best achieved by peaceful means. When the hearings started in 1542, Las Casas presented a narrative of atrocities against the Natives of the Indies that would later be published in 1552 as
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Before a council consisting of Cardinal
García de Loaysa, the
Count of Osorno, Bishop
Fuenleal, and several members of the
Council of the Indies, Las Casas argued that the only solution to the problem was to remove all Indians from the care of secular Spaniards, by abolishing the encomienda system and putting them instead directly under the Crown as royal tribute-paying subjects. On 20 November 1542, the emperor signed the
New Laws abolishing the encomiendas and removing certain officials from the Council of the Indies. The New Laws made it illegal to use Indians as carriers, except where no other transport was available, it prohibited all taking of Indians as slaves, and it instated a gradual abolition of the encomienda system, with each encomienda reverting to the Crown at the death of its holders. It also exempted the few surviving Indians of
Hispaniola,
Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and
Jamaica from tribute and all requirements of personal service. However, the reforms were so unpopular in the New World that riots broke out and threats were made against Las Casas's life. The
Viceroy of
New Spain, himself an encomendero, decided not to implement the laws in his domain, and instead sent a party to Spain to argue against the laws on behalf of the encomenderos. Las Casas himself was also not satisfied with the laws, as they were not drastic enough and the encomienda system was going to function for many years still under the gradual abolition plan. He drafted a suggestion for an amendment arguing that the laws against slavery were formulated in such a way that it presupposed that violent conquest would still be carried out, and he encouraged once again beginning a phase of peaceful colonization by peasants instead of soldiers.
Bishop of Chiapas Before Las Casas returned to Spain, he was also appointed as Bishop of
Chiapas, a newly established
diocese of which he took possession in 1545 upon his return to the New World. He was consecrated in the Dominican Church of San Pablo on 30 March 1544. As Archbishop
Loaysa strongly disliked Las Casas, the ceremony was officiated by Loaysa's nephew,
Diego de Loaysa,
Bishop of Modruš, with
Pedro Torres,
Titular Bishop of
Arbanum, and
Cristóbal de Pedraza,
Bishop of Comayagua, as co-consecrators. As a bishop Las Casas was involved in frequent conflicts with the encomenderos and secular laity of his diocese: among the landowners there was the conquistador
Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In a
pastoral letter issued on 20 March 1545, Las Casas refused
absolution to slave owners and encomenderos even on their death bed, unless all their slaves had been set free and their property returned to them. Las Casas furthermore threatened that anyone who mistreated Indians within his jurisdiction would be excommunicated. He also came into conflict with the Bishop of Guatemala
Francisco Marroquín, to whose jurisdiction the diocese had previously belonged. To Las Casas's dismay Bishop Marroquín openly defied the New Laws. While bishop, Las Casas was the principal consecrator of
Antonio de Valdivieso,
Bishop of Nicaragua (1544). At the meeting, probably after lengthy reflection, and realizing that the New Laws were lost in Mexico, Las Casas presented a moderated view on the problems of confession and restitution of property, Archbishop
Juan de Zumárraga of
Mexico and Bishop
Julián Garcés of
Puebla agreed completely with his new moderate stance, Bishop
Vasco de Quiroga of
Michoacán had minor reservations, and Bishops
Francisco Marroquín of
Guatemala and
Juan Lopez de Zárate of
Oaxaca did not object. This resulted in a new resolution to be presented to viceroy Mendoza. His last act as Bishop of Chiapas was writing a
confesionario, a manual for the administration of the sacrament of confession in his diocese, still refusing absolution to unrepentant encomenderos. Las Casas appointed a vicar for his diocese and set out for Europe in December 1546, arriving in Lisbon in April 1547 and in Spain on November 1547.
The Valladolid debate , Las Casas's opponent in the
Valladolid debate Las Casas returned to Spain, leaving behind many conflicts and unresolved issues. Arriving in Spain he was met by a barrage of accusations, many of them based on his Confesionario and its 12 rules, which many of his opponents found to be in essence a denial of the legitimacy of Spanish rule of its colonies, and hence a form of
treason. The Crown had for example received a fifth of the large number of slaves taken in the recent
Mixtón War, and so could not be held clean of guilt under Las Casas's strict rules. In 1548, the Crown decreed that all copies of Las Casas's Confesionario be burnt, and his Franciscan adversary, Motolinia, obliged and sent back a report to Spain. Las Casas defended himself by writing two treatises on the "Just Title" – arguing that the only legality with which the Spaniards could claim titles over realms in the New World was through peaceful proselytizing. All warfare was illegal and unjust and only through the papal mandate of peacefully bringing Christianity to heathen peoples could "Just Titles" be acquired. As a part of Las Casas's defense by offense, he had to argue against
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda was a doctor of theology and law who, in his book
Democrates Alter, sive de justis causis apud Indos (Another Democrates, or A New Democrates, or on the Just Causes of War against the Indians) had argued that some Native peoples were incapable of ruling themselves and should be pacified forcefully. The book was deemed unsound for publication by the theologians of Salamanca and Alcalá for containing unsound doctrine, but the pro-encomendero faction seized on Sepúlveda as their intellectual champion. To settle the issues, a formal debate was organized, the famous
Valladolid debate, which took place in 1550–51 with Sepúlveda and Las Casas each presenting their arguments in front of a council of jurists and theologians. First Sepúlveda read the conclusions of his
Democrates Alter, and then the council listened to Las Casas read his counterarguments in the form of an "Apología". Sepúlveda argued that the subjugation of certain Indians was warranted because of their sins against Natural Law; that their low level of civilization required civilized masters to maintain social order; that they should be made Christian and that this in turn required them to be pacified; and that only the Spanish could defend weak Indians against the abuses of the stronger ones. Las Casas countered that the scriptures did not in fact support war against all heathens, only against certain
Canaanite tribes; that the Indians were not at all uncivilized nor lacking social order; that peaceful mission was the only true way of converting the Natives; and finally that some weak Indians suffering at the hands of stronger ones was preferable to all Indians suffering at the hands of Spaniards. The judge, Fray
Domingo de Soto, summarised the arguments. Sepúlveda addressed Las Casas's arguments with twelve refutations, which were again countered by Las Casas. The judges then deliberated on the arguments presented for several months before coming to a verdict. The verdict was inconclusive, and both debaters claimed that they had won. Sepúlveda's arguments contributed to the policy of "war by fire and blood" that the
Third Mexican Provincial Council implemented in 1585 during the
Chichimeca War. According to
Lewis Hanke, while Sepúlveda became the hero of the
conquistadors, his success was short-lived, and his works were never published in
Spain again during his lifetime. Las Casas's ideas had a more lasting impact on the decisions of the king,
Philip II, as well as on history and
human rights. Las Casas's criticism of the encomienda system contributed to its replacement with
reducciones. His testimonies on the peaceful nature of the
Indigenous peoples also encouraged nonviolent policies concerning the religious conversions of the Indians in
New Spain and
Peru. It also helped convince more
missionaries to come to the Americas to study the indigenous people, such as
Bernardino de Sahagún, who learned the Native languages to discover more about their cultures and civilizations. The impact of Las Casas's doctrine was also limited. In 1550, the king had ordered that the conquest should cease, because the Valladolid debate was to decide whether the war was just or not. The government's orders were hardly respected; conquistadors such as
Pedro de Valdivia went on to wage war in
Chile during the first half of the 1550s. Expanding the Spanish territory in the New World was allowed again in May 1556, and a decade later, Spain started its conquest of the
Philippines. He continued working as a kind of procurator for the Natives of the Indies, many of whom directed petitions to him to speak to the emperor on their behalf. Sometimes indigenous nobility even related their cases to him in Spain, for example, the
Nahua noble
Francisco Tenamaztle from
Nochistlán. His influence at court was so great that some even considered that he had the final word in choosing the members of the
Council of the Indies. In 1552, Las Casas published
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. This book, written a decade earlier and sent to the attention of then-prince
Philip II of Spain, contained accounts of the abuses committed by some Spaniards against Native Americans during the early stages of colonization. In 1555 his old Franciscan adversary
Toribio de Benavente Motolinia wrote a letter in which he described Las Casas as an ignorant, arrogant troublemaker. Benavente described indignantly how Las Casas had once denied baptism to an aging Indian who had walked many leagues to receive it, only on the grounds that he did not believe that the man had received sufficient doctrinal instruction. This letter, which reinvoked the old conflict over the requirements for the
sacrament of
baptism between the two orders, was intended to bring Las Casas in disfavour. However, it did not succeed. One matter in which he invested much effort was the political situation of the
Viceroyalty of Peru. In Peru, power struggles between
conquistadors and the viceroy became an open civil war in which the conquistadors led by
Gonzalo Pizarro rebelled against the New Laws and defeated and executed the viceroy
Blasco Núñez Vela in 1546. The emperor sent
Pedro de la Gasca, a friend of Las Casas, to reinstate the rule of law, and he in turn defeated Pizarro. To restabilize the political situation the encomenderos started pushing not only for the repeal of the New Laws, but for turning the encomiendas into perpetual patrimony of the encomenderos – the worst possible outcome from Las Casas's point of view. The encomenderos offered to buy the rights to the encomiendas from the Crown, and Charles V was inclined to accept since his wars had left him in deep economic troubles. Las Casas worked hard to convince the emperor that it would be a bad economic decision, that it would return the viceroyalty to the brink of open rebellion, and could result in the Crown losing the colony entirely. The emperor, probably because of the doubts caused by Las Casas's arguments, never took a final decision on the issue of the encomiendas. In 1561, he finished his
Historia de las Indias and signed it over to the College of San Gregorio, stipulating that it could not be published until after forty years. In fact it was not published for 314 years, until 1875. He also had to repeatedly defend himself against accusations of treason: someone, possibly
Sepúlveda, denounced him to the
Spanish Inquisition, but nothing came from the case. Las Casas also appeared as a witness in the case of the Inquisition for his friend Archbishop
Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda, who had been falsely accused of heresy. In 1565, he wrote his last will, signing over his immense library to the college. Bartolomé de Las Casas died on 18 July 1566, in Madrid. == Works ==