The Sublime God (Church and Slavery part 4)

The European discovery of the Americas could have been beautiful. The world was becoming smaller; different cultures meeting and sharing, new plants and animals and foods, rich trading and exploration. But instead of a meeting of cultures, it was colonization. Greed, war, disease, and slavery, resulting in genocide of American nations and a trans-continental slave trade.  

Portugal and Spain in particular controlled the seas in the late fifteenth century. Both imported slaves from African islands as they explored the western coast of Africa. During the Crusades it had become understood that enslaving non-Christians, aka “enemies of the faith,” was licit. Popes, bishops, and monasteries not only allowed slavery, but owned slaves themselves. In 1488, King Ferdinand II gave Pope Innocent VIII 100 Moorish slaves, who the pope distributed among some cardinals in Rome.

When exploring the New World, it was common for ships to capture one or two natives to serve as translators or to show off back home. As those explorations turned into settlements, natives were forced into service, clearing land, building forts, and eventually working the plantations that would send resources back to Europe. It seemed so necessary to the colonizers—they needed free labor to get wealthy off of the New World. Greed, not works of mercy, dictated the day. The conquistadors claimed to be good Christians—claiming land for Christendom, celebrating feasts, bringing priests to convert the natives. Yet they were ultimately driven by power and money. A holdover from the Reconquista, the encomienda system allotted Spanish landowners a number of Indian laborers who would owe tributes (usually precious metals or food) in exchange for protection.

The paganism of the natives also made it acceptable to force them into this system of slavery, a “just” punishment for being an enemy against the faith. But with the new land, the concept of slavery changed too. People were defined not so much on their faith but on their physical identities, where they were from and the color of their skin. Natives, and later Africans, weren’t given the choice to convert or be enslaved. They were forced to convert AND forced to be enslaved. And there was no earning one’s freedom anymore. They were an entire race enslaved by another in perpetuity.

Natives, exposed to new European diseases and overworked, died out quickly. The first African slaves arrived in the Americas in 1501. From the beginning, slavery in the New World was the subject of debate. These people weren’t the same as the Muslim crusaders who had invaded Europe for centuries; the argument that they were “enemies of the faith” didn’t really fit anymore. On the other hand, some even doubted these people had souls; they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. The Africans might have had the curse of Ham, but these people were complete unknowns. They were closer to animals, some argued. Priests accompanied every ship to the New World; some blended in with the conquistadors, hungry for adventure and leaving the morality to the Old World. Others recognized the natives as souls who need to hear and believe the Gospel.

In 1537, Pope Paul III issued the papal bull Sublimis Deus, forbidding the enslavement of the native peoples of the Americas (called the Indians of the West and South). He states that the Americans are fully rational beings who have rights to freedom, private property, and evangelization.

He opens, “The sublime God so loved the human race that He created man in such wise that he might participate, not only in the good that other creatures enjoy, but endowed him with capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face.”

He says clearly, “Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.” Attached to the papal bull was a legal brief saying those who did participate in enslaving Indians would be excommunicated latae sententiae, only forgivable by the pope.

So, that was the end of that, right?

What could have been a dark 40 years of slavery in the New World turned into a dark 400. The Church did the right thing and defended not just the humanity of the natives in the Americas, but their rights and freedom. We knew what the right thing was. And, despite Protestantism starting up, the Church still held power. So why did the slavery only escalate?

Under intense pressure from the Spanish, Pope Paul III rescinded the executing brief of the bull within a year, making the bull essentially impossible to enforce. And the colonizers were happy to ignore it.

And that’s truly the most frustrating part of looking at the history of Christians and slavery. It wasn’t just “a different time” where they didn’t realize slavery was bad. They knew it was bad. The Church said it was wrong. But the greed for material wealth and pride of racial supremacy made them look the other way and make up justifications. They wanted to dominate other people so they sought out excuses to make it sound biblically acceptable. They knew the truth and chose another path. So who’s the real enemy of the faith?