SOURCE: "Analysis of Las Casas's Treatise," in All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians, Northern Illinois University Press, 1974, pp. 73–112.

The main lines of the argument Las Casas developed at Valladolid in his presentation to the Council of the Fourteen in August 1550 have been known ever since 1552, when he published a résumé by Domingo de Soto of both his own views and those of Sepúlveda. Soto, the Dominican theologian who was a member of the Council appointed to hear the controversy, and who had been commissioned by his colleagues to prepare a summary of both arguments, never mentioned the second part, the Spanish apología. He remarked, however, that Las Casas had once said more than was necessary on a certain point and, at another time, had been "as copious and diffuse as the years of this business," especially in his response to Sepúlveda's charge that the Indians were barbarians and therefore slaves by nature, "to which he did not respond in any one place, but in all his writings may be found his arguments on this topic which may be reduced to two or three main points" (an accurate and perceptive description of Las Casas's writings). At another point Soto stated:

The bishop described at length the history of the Indians, showing that although some of their customs were not particularly civil, they were not however barbarians on this account but rather a settled people with great cities, laws, arts, and government who punished unnatural and other crimes with the death penalty. They definitely had sufficient civilization that they should not be warred against as barbarians.

As Las Casas stated to Prince Philip in the dedicatory letter of the Defense, he was responding point by point to the doctrine presented by Supúlveda in his manuscript Apología, which was a résumé of Democrates Alter. (It will be recalled that Las Casas complained that several copies of this manuscript were circulating in Spain in the years immediately preceding the Valladolid dispute.) He had to use a summary of this treatise because no copy of the complete text was available to him at the time he was marshaling his hundreds of citations for the Defense, which was written, he informed Philip, "at the cost of much sweat and sleepless nights." Las Casas's purpose was a comprehensive demolition of Sepúlveda, "wrong both in law and in fact," and a demonstration of how he "has distorted the teachings of philosophers and theologians, falsified the words of Sacred Scripture, of divine and human laws, and how no less destructively he has quoted statements of Pope Alexander VI to favor the success of his wicked cause. Finally, the true title by which the Kings of Spain hold their rule over the New World will be shown."

Thus did Las Casas, at almost eighty years of age, and after half a century of experience in America, explain how he came to "unsheathe the sword [pen] for the defense of the truth" in one of his most significant writings on the history of Spain in America and on the nature of the Indians. Although the manuscript embodying Las Casas's attack was already bulky, he requested Philip to command Sepúlveda to give him a copy of the complete Latin work so that he could refute his falsehoods even more thoroughly.

Before we enter into the story of this argument it may be useful to have a closer view of the complicated and controversial subject: Is war lawful as a means for spreading Christianity in America? This question has two aspects.

First, its legality: Is war against the Indians ever just, in itself, as a means of attracting them to the true religion? Sepúlveda had expounded his views on this theoretical issue in his Latin treatise Democrates Alter and in the summary of this treatise, which Las Casas had read. Las Casas presented his position in the Defense, whose text is the basis for this study.

Second, its factual basis: Are the Indians really in such a state of inferiority and barbarism in relation to the rest of the civilized people that this fact alone justifies such war, according to natural law, as a means of liberating them from such inferiority and barbarism? Sepúlveda invoked the testimony of the royal historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in his Historia general y natural de las Indias, which had rendered a very unfavorable opinion on Indian capacity and character. To prove the contrary, Las Casas devoted a large part of his Defense to expounding his very favorable view of the Indians and to attacking Oviedo tooth and nail. Moreover, he composed the second part of his Defense, in Spanish, to demonstrate the truth of his contention that the Indians are not "irrational or natural slaves or unfit for government."

Las Casas divided the Latin part of his argument, the Defense, into two well-defined sections. In the first he replied to the four reasons Sepúlveda adduced in favor of waging war against the Indians, and in the second he commented on the "authorities" Sepúlveda cited to substantiate his position.

The imposition of a scholastic organization of thought on the torrential prose of Las Casas does not give the reader a true understanding of the rare combination of passion and erudition that marks the Defense. Sarcasm, learning, indignation, and memorable phrases are to be found throughout this treatise, which probably presents a more comprehensive view of Las Casas's thought than any other. Certainly he referred to it so frequently in his printed 1552 treatises as to indicate that he looked upon it as the most detailed exposition of his views. The present analysis, however, will not attempt to tell all; the Defense is such a rich and varied combination of his fundamental doctrine and his experiences in the New World that it will doubtless be studied as long as the world maintains its interest in the history of Spain in America and in that procession of remarkable events called the expansion of Europe.

The First Section: Las Casas 's Response to Sepúlveda 's "Four Reasons for Justifying War Against the Indians in Order to Convert Them ":

Las Casas made it clear at the beginning of the Defense that his principal concern was to attack those who condemned "en masse so many thousands of people" for faults that most of them did not have. "What man of sound mind will approve a war against men who are harmless, ignorant, gentle, temperate, unarmed, and destitute of every human defense?" He then announced that he would prove Sepúlveda and his followers were wrong in law, a subject he had treated "at greater length elsewhere and in general," and wrong in fact.

For the Creator of every being has not so despised these peoples of the New World that he willed them to lack reason and made them like brute animals, so that they should be called barbarians, savages, wild men, and brutes, as they [i.e., the Sepitlvedistas] think or imagine. On the contrary, they are of such gentleness and decency that they are, more than the other nations of the entire world, supremely fitted and prepared to abandon the worship of idols and to accept, province by province and people by people, the word of God and the preaching of the truth.

Then Las Casas plunged into such a detailed rebuttal of each reason, with so many subsidiary arguments, that at times the reader is almost lost in his torrent of words and in the multiplicity of his learned references. A notable characteristic of the disputation at Valladolid was the way in which both Las Casas and Sepúlveda drew upon the immense reservoir of doctrine and example that was represented in the Bible, the writings of Church fathers, and other authorities and events of the past as recorded by historians. Each contestant tried to demonstrate that his opponent misunderstood, and at times twisted, the words of these authorities and the experience of the past to fit his own argument.

Rebuttal of Sepúlveda's First Argument: "Indians Are Barbarous ":

To Sepúlveda's argument that the inhabitants of the New World were in such a state of barbarism that force was required to liberate them from this condition, Las Casas replied that one cannot generalize about "barbarians" in such a loose and broad way. He examined Aristotle's statements on barbarism and found several different kinds:

1. Those who are barbarians because of their savage behavior. Las Casas replied that, even those who live in the most highly developed states, such as Greeks and Latins, can be called barbarians if their behavior is sufficiently savage. However, the Spaniards, in their treatment of the Indians, "have surpassed all other barbarians" in the savagery of their behavior.

2. Those who are barbarians because they have no written language in which to express themselves. Such persons are barbarians in only a restricted sense, Las Casas said, and do not fall into the class that Aristotle described as pertaining to natural slaves. Spanish missionaries, before and after Las Casas, emphasized the beauty and intricacy of the Indian languages, and the Dominican friar Domingo de Santo Tomás published a grammar of the Peruvian Indians' language to prove their rationality.

3. Those who are barbarians in the correct sense of the term. These, Las Casas argued, are the only ones who may properly be placed in Aristotle's category of natural slaves. They are truly barbarians

either because of their evil and wicked character or the barrenness of the region in which they live…. They lack the reasoning and way of life suited to human beings…. They have no laws which they fear or by which all their affairs are regulated … they lead a life very much that of brute animals…. Barbarians of this kind (or better, wild men) are rarely found in any part of the world and are few in number when compared with the rest of mankind.

Such men are freaks of nature, "for since God's love of mankind is so great and it is His will to save all men, it is in accord with His wisdom that in the whole universe, which is perfect in all its parts, His wisdom should shine more and more in the most perfect thing: rational nature." To find a large part of the people of the world barbaric in this sense would mean a frustration of God's plan, according to Las Casas, who explained that he had discussed this more fully in his treatise The Only Method of Attracting All People to the True Faith, in which he proved that "it would be impossible to find one whole race, nation, region, or country anywhere in the world that is slow-witted, moronic, foolish, or stupid, or even not having for the most part sufficient natural knowledge and ability to rule and govern itself." Even such barbarians should be attracted to the Christian faith by peaceful means; nevertheless, the Indians are not this kind of barbarian, but fall within the second class.

Then Las Casas launched into a description of those barbarians who are "not irrational or natural slaves or unfit for government." They have "kingdoms, royal dignities, jurisdiction, and good laws and there is among them lawful government." Then followed such an optimistic description of Indian culture that one is not surprised that he promised to spell out his views on Indian achievements in greater detail in the second part of the Defense. This argument sounds very much like the parallel one developed in the Apologetic History.

Las Casas was reacting, of course, to Sepálveda's harsh estimate of Indian capacity, for Sepálveda described them thus:

In prudence, talent, virtue, and humanity they are as inferior to the Spaniards as children to adults, women to men, as the wild and cruel to the most meek, as the prodigiously intemperate to the continent and temperate, that I have almost said, as monkeys to men.

Several versions of Sepúlveda's treatise, one of which may have been the text that was available to Las Casas while he was preparing his argument at Valladolid, included the "monkeys to men" phrase in this denunciation of Indian character; however, the most complete and apparently latest version of the text of the treatise prepared by Sepúlveda omits this phrase.

In the definitive text of this treatise (prepared by Losada) Sepúlveda softened his position somewhat, but still had a very low opinion of the Indians' capacity and felt that Spaniards were supremely superior:

Now compare their gifts of prudence, talent, magnanimity, temperance, humanity, and religion with those little men (homunculos) in whom you will scarcely find traces of humanity; who not only lack culture but do not even know how to write, who keep no records of their history except certain obscure and vague reminiscences of some things put down in certain pictures, and who do not have written laws but only barbarous institutions and customs. But if you deal with the virtues, if you look for temperance or meekness, what can you expect from men who were involved in every kind of intemperance and wicked lust and who used to eat human flesh? And don't think that before the arrival of the Christians they were living in quiet and the Saturnian peace of the poets. On the contrary they were making war continuously and ferociously against each other with such rage that they considered their victory worthless if they did not satisfy their monstrous hunger with the flesh of their enemies, an inhumanity which in them is so much more monstrous since they are so distant from the unconquered and wild Scythians, who also fed on human flesh, for these Indians are so cowardly and timid, that they scarcely withstand the appearance of our soldiers and often many thousands of them have given ground, fleeing like women before a very few Spaniards, who did not even number a hundred.

Sepúlveda then said that Cortez, whom he greatly admired, had decisively demonstrated the greatness of Spaniards in his conquest of Mexico: "Can there be a greater or stronger testimony how some men surpass others in talent, industry, strength of mind, and valor? Or that such peoples are slaves by nature?" And then Sepúlveda seems to reply to those who, like Dürer, praised the artistic skill of the Indians:

But even though some of them show a talent for certain handicrafts, this is not an argument in favor of a more human skill, since we see that some small animals, both birds and spiders, make things which no human industry can imitate completely.

Even the relatively advanced Mexican Indians fell far short of an acceptable standard:

Nothing shows more of the crudity, barbarism, and native slavery of these men than making known their institutions. For homes, some manner of community living, and commerce—which natural necessity demands—what do these prove except that they are not bears or monkeys and that they are not completely devoid of reason? … Shall we doubt that those peoples, so uncivilized, so barbarous, so wicked, contaminated with so many evils and wicked religious practices, have been justly subjugated by an excellent, pious, and most just king, such as was Ferdinand and the Caesar Charles is now, and by a most civilized nation that is outstanding in every kind of virtue?

Sepúlveda never abandoned the view that Indian culture was vastly inferior to that of Spaniards. Some years after the Valladolid meeting, in a political treatise dedicated to Philip II, he returned to this favorite theme in referring to the justification of wars against the Indians:

The greatest philosophers declare that such wars may be undertaken by a very civilized nation against uncivilized people who are more barbarous than can be imagined, for they are absolutely lacking in any knowledge of letters, do not know the use of money, generally go about naked, even the women, and carry burdens on their shoulders and backs just like beasts for great distances.

The proof of their savage life, similar to that of beasts, may be seen in the execrable and prodigious sacrifices of human victims to their devils; it may also be seen in their eating of human flesh, their burial alive of the living widows of important persons, and in other crimes condemned by natural law, whose description offends the ears and horrifies the spirit of civilized people. They on the contrary do these terrible things in public and consider them pious acts. The protection of innocent persons from such injurious acts may alone give us the right, already granted by God and nature, to wage war against these barbarians to submit them to Spanish rule.

Then he listed the great benefits Spain had conferred on the Indians, in much the same way as the standard ordinance of 1573, and asked: "With what behavior, with what gifts will these people repay such varied and such immortal benefits?"

Las Casas attacked this opinion of Indian culture by charging that Sepúlveda depended for his knowledge of these matters on Oviedo, whom Las Casas considered "a deadly enemy of mankind" and utterly wrong on Indian capacity. Las Casas reproached his adversary for missing the truth by failing to consult reliable ecclesiastics and such writers as Paulus Jovius, whose histories gave a more balanced view. Las Casas could not resist pointing out his own long experience, and Oviedo's evident self-interest: "The testimony of such a person as myself, who has spent so many years in America, on the character of the Indians nullifies any allegation founded solely on the testimony of Fernández de Oviedo who had a preconceived attitude against the Indians because he held Indians as slaves."

Las Casas made a final point against the use of force in Spanish treatment of the Indians. Even if it were granted—as it was not—that they had no keenness of mind or artistic ability, they still would not be obliged "to submit themselves to those who are more intelligent … even if such submission could lead to [their] great advantage." Here it is evident that Las Casas was aware of Sepúlveda's contention that the Conquest conferred great benefits on the Indians.

Turning to the fourth category, adduced from Holy Scripture, that those people who are not Christians may be called barbarians and clearly the Indians are barbarians in this sense, Las Casas recapitulated his analysis of the four classes of barbarians and said that they may be reduced to two large categories, as follows. Those improperly termed barbarians comprise the first, second, and fourth classes—together with the Indians—but even Christians are barbarians (of the first class) if they manifest savage customs, and those properly termed barbarians comprise only the third class, from which Indians are definitely excluded. Las Casas concluded his exposition of barbarism by observing that Sepúlveda either did not understand or chose not to understand these distinctions with respect to the different classes of barbarians. As if to underline the connection between the Defense and the Apologética Historia, Las Casas put a long statement on the various kinds of barbarians, based upon the argument in the Defense, at the end of the Apologética Historia.

Rebuttal of Sepúlveda's Second Argument: "Indians Commit Crimes Against Natural Law":

To Sepúlveda's contention that war against the Indians may be justified as punishment for the crimes they commit against natural law, with their idolatry and sacrifice of human beings to their gods, Las Casas responded with the following syllogism: All punishment presupposes jurisdiction over the person receiving it, but Spaniards enjoy no jurisdiction over Indians, and hence they cannot punish them.

In the course of his exhaustive study of the nature of jurisdiction Las Casas made a notable statement for a mid-sixteenth-century Spanish Christian. He held that Jews, Moslems, or idolaters who live in a Christian kingdom are under the temporal jurisdiction of the Christian prince, but not with respect to spiritual matters (a view that was shared by Vitoria and Vera Cruz). Perhaps Las Casas was following the doctrine he had been familiar with as a young man. As Richard Konetzke [1958] has emphasized, kings in medieval Spain permitted full freedom of worship to their subjects, and as late as 1492 the Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabella assured the subjugated Moorish people, after the conquest at Granada, that they could remain in the country and that they would be guaranteed the free exercise of their Islamic religion, their property, and their customs. But in the years after the voyages of Columbus the Crown's authority had steadily tightened, and the modern state which aspires to gain strength by wiping out dissension was well advanced in Spain after 1551, when Las Casas was putting the text of his Defense in final shape. Moreover, Las Casas stated that Jews, Moslems, and idolaters who do not live in a Christian kingdom are not under the jurisdiction of the Church, nor any Christian prince, no matter how their crimes may violate natural law. Heretics, however, can be punished if they fail to observe "the obedience promised to God and the Catholic Church in baptism."

Las Casas cited authority after authority to prove his contention that unbelievers do not come under the competence of the Church. Thus the Church cannot punish pagans who worship idols merely because of their idolatry. Nor is it the business of the Church to punish the unbelief of the idolaters, which Las Casas explained in this way:

The worshipers of idols, at least in the case of the Indians, about whom this disputation has been undertaken, have never heard the teaching of Christian truth even through hearsay; so they sin less than the Jews or Saracens, for ignorance excuses to some small extent. On this basis we see that the Church does not punish the blindness of the Jews or those who practice the Mohammedan superstition, even if the Jews or Saracens dwell in cities within Christian territories. This is so obvious that it does not need any proof. Rome, the bastion of the Christian religion, has Jews, as also do Germany and Bohemia. And Spain formerly had Saracens, who were commonly called Mudejars, whom we saw with our own eyes.

Therefore, since the Church does not punish the unbelief of the Jews even if they live within the territories of the Christian religion, much less will it punish idolaters who inhabit an immense portion of the earth, which was unheard of in previous centuries, who have never been subjects of either the Church or her members, and who have not even known what the Church is.

The conclusion to this detailed exposition is clear: "There is no crime so horrible, whether it be idolatry or sodomy or some other kind, as to demand that the gospel be preached for the first time in any other way than that established by Christ, that is, in a spirit of brotherly love, offering forgiveness of sins and exhorting men to repentance."

The many examples Las Casas introduced into his text after what must have been a wide-ranging search during those "sleepless nights" of study all pointed to one conclusion: "No pagan can be punished by the Church, and much less by Christian rulers, for a crime or a superstition, no matter how abominable, or a crime, no matter how serious, as long as he commits it … within the borders of the territory of his own masters and his own unbelief." Not that Las Casas admitted many "abominations"; rather, he dedicated much space to an exegesis of Pope Paul III's bull Sublimis Deus of 1537, which had played such a prominent part in the long struggle, described above, over Indian capacity. Although Las Casas analyzed the declaration in the light of fundamental and unshakable principles, he did not fail to apply them to the Indians. The methods of force and terror used to preach the faith to them had been "contrived by the devil in order to prevent the salvation of men and the spread of the true religion. And, in truth, this is … what they did in treating the Indians as though they were wild and brute animals so that they might exploit them as if they were beasts of burden."

Rebuttal of Sepúlveda's Third Argument: "Indians Oppress and Kill Innocent Persons":

War against the Indians, Sepúlveda argued, may be justified because the Indians oppress innocent persons and kill them in order to sacrifice them to their gods or to eat their bodies, therefore armed intervention against the Indians would prevent an act contrary to natural law, to which all are subject. Here Las Casas entered into the most complicated and subtle questions in the whole treatise, as may be seen from the large amount of space he gave to this argument. Both adversaries, and such eminent authorities of their time as Francisco de Vitoria, accepted the basic premise. Las Casas, however, strove mightily to demonstrate that the Indians did not commit such acts, and that, if they did worship idols or engage in human sacrifices to their gods, these acts could be justified.

The methods by which Las Casas and Sepúlveda invoked the Bible to support their respective positions are worthy of more extended treatment than can be given here. Suffice it to say that Las Casas twitted his opponent:

He has not diligently searched the scriptures, or surely has not sufficiently understood how to apply them, because in this era of grace and mercy he seeks to apply those rigid precepts of the Old Law that were given for special circumstances and thereby he opens up the way for tyrants and plunderers to cruel invasion, oppression, spoliation, and harsh enslavement of harmless nations.

What God, centuries ago, commanded the Jews to do to the Egyptians and Canaanites should not be applied to Indians of the New World. Later Las Casas stated that "not all of God's judgments are examples for us." The prophet Elisha cursed forty-two boys who mocked him, calling him a "baldhead," for which they were torn to pieces by bears. If men were to imitate such judgments, "we would commit a vast number of most unjust and serious sins and thousands of absurdities would follow."

Las Casas also denounced as an absurd argument Sepúlveda's invocation of Saint Cyprian because this Church father approved the killing of those who, having heard and embraced the truth of the gospel, returned to idolatry. The Indians, obviously, did not fall into this category. Thus we see the importance of Oviedo's view, had it been accepted, that the Indians had once received the faith and had then reverted to their previous idolatry.

To illustrate his position that the Indians could not justly be punished, because no outside power held jurisdiction over them, Las Casas set forth his ideas in some detail on the conditions under which the Church or Christian princes might have jurisdiction over infidels: (1) when infidels are in fact subjects of the Church or some Christian prince, (2) when the Church or a Christian prince is able to change their potential jurisdiction (en hábito) over infidels to actual jurisdiction (a acto.) Six examples of condition two were given, and Las Casas found that the Indians fit into none of the six cases. But special twists to the argumentation on two of the six circumstances merit attention—the fourth and the sixth.

The fourth circumstance occurs when pagans make obstacles per se, and not per accidens, for Christian preachers. Las Casas had to admit that missionaries had been killed in the New World, but not because they were preachers per se but because the Indians tried to defend themselves from the bad treatment of the accompanying soldiers who waged war against them. His previous treatise, The Only Method of Preaching the True Faith, had concentrated on this theme alone, and its doctrine was given in résumé: "What does the gospel have to do with firearms? What does the herald of the gospel have to do with armed thieves?"

The Church has an obligation to preach the gospel to all nations, but Las Casas declared (and illustrated his doctrine with four examples) that it does not follow from this that Christians can force unbelievers to hear the gospel. The conclusion will be no surprise to those familiar with other Las Casas treatises, particularly The Only Method of Preaching the True Faith:

From the foregoing it is evident that war must not be waged against the Indians under the pretext that they should hear the preaching of Christ's teaching, even if they may have killed preachers, since they do not kill the preachers as preachers or Christians as Christians, but as their most cruel public enemies, in order that they may not be oppressed or murdered by them. Therefore let those who, under the pretext of spreading the faith, invade, steal, and keep the possessions of others by force of arms—let them fear God, who punishes perverse endeavors.

The final case brought forward by Las Casas holds unusual interest, for he invoked Erasmus to support his position—probably one of the few times that the sage of Rotterdam was so cited before a royal council in Spain. In this instance Las Casas referred to the doctrine of Alberto Pío, Prince of Carpi, who advanced the idea that the Church may wage war against infidels who maliciously impede the spread of the gospel. Las Casas agreed with this, especially with respect to the Turks, a point on which he was at one with Sepúlveda, who had dedicated a book to Charles V in which he advocated war against the Turks as soon as possible. Las Casas, we know, felt just as strongly as his opponent on this point.

Opposition to the anti-Moslem crusades was considered in Catholic Europe to be a Lutheran error, and one of Sepúlveda's objectives at Valladolid may have been to make the Leopoldo of his treatise, the character who questions the justice of war against the Indians, a quasi-Lutheran, inasmuch as Luther attacked the campaigns against Turkey in his Resolutiones. If so, Sepúlveda failed, as Las Casas seems never to have been touched by the Inquisition, despite his strong advocacy of several unpopular doctrines. At any rate, he always held that just war could be levied against the Turks and the Saracens; however, Indians were in an entirely different category, he wrote: they could not be justly warred against because their resistance was purely defensive in the face of conquistador attacks. In adopting this position Las Casas knew very well that the Prince of Carpi had been Sepúlveda's protector when the latter had first arrived in Rome as a young man, and that Sepúlveda had published his Antapologia in 1532 to take the part of his protector when the Prince of Carpi was feuding with Erasmus. Las Casas evidently considered Erasmus a Christian thinker in this matter:

Erasmus never dreamed of what Carpi cites against him. In fact [he] very explicitly teaches the Catholic opinion in his commentary on the psalm "Give to the Lord, you sons of God," as well as in many other passages in his writings. Possibly Carpi was seeking glory by attacking Erasmus, to whom our Sepúlveda, in putting together his little book, did not devote much attention, contrary to rumor.

The sixth circumstance occurs when infidels injuriously oppress innocent persons, and specifically by sacrificing them or eating their bodies. Here again Las Casas coincided in principle with Sepúlveda and Francisco de Vitoria in upholding the traditional doctrine of the Church, that all men are obliged to aid the innocent who is in danger of being killed unjustly. But does this doctrine apply to the Indians? Yes, said Sepúlveda, while Vitoria agreed less definitely, and Las Casas argued that such an application must be "the lesser evil." For example, one must refrain from war, and even tolerate the death of a few innocent infants or persons discovered to be killed for sacrifice and cannibalism, if in trying to prevent such deaths one should "move against an immense multitude of persons, including the innocent, and destroy whole kingdoms, and implant a hatred for the Christian religion in their souls, so that they will never want to hear the name or teaching of Christ for all eternity. All this is surely contrary to the purpose intended by God and our mother the Church." Even though some wicked persons would escape punishment, this would be the lesser evil. "Would he be a very good doctor who cuts off the hand to heal the finger?"

When Las Casas got down to cases, he must have had in mind the post-1514 experiences of Oviedo and other Spaniards when they tried to read the requirement to Indians:

Let us put the case that the Spaniards discover that the Indians or other pagans sacrifice human victims or eat them. Let us say, further, that the Spaniards are so upright and good-living that nothing motivates them except the rescue of the innocent and the correction of the guilty. Will it be just for them to invade and punish them without any warning? You will say "No, rather, they shall send messengers to warn them to stop these crimes." Now I ask you, dear reader, what language will the messengers speak so as to be understood by the Indians? Latin, Greek, Spanish, Arabic? The Indians know none of these languages. Perhaps we imagine that the soldiers are so holy that Christ will grant them the gift of tongues so that they will be understood by the Indians? Then what deadline will they be given to come to their senses and give up their crimes? They will need a long time to understand what is said to them, and also the authority and the reasons why they should stop sacrificing human beings, so that it will be clear that evils of this type are contrary to the natural law.

Further, within the deadline set for them, no matter what its length, they will certainly not be bound by the warning given them, nor should they be punished for stubbornness, since a warning does not bind until the deadline has run out. Likewise, no law, constitution, or precept is binding on anyone unless the words of the language in which it is proposed are clearly understood, as the learned jurists say….

Now, I ask, what will the soldiers do during the time allowed the Indians to come to their senses? Perhaps, like the forty monks Saint Gregory sent to convert the English, they will spend their time in fasting and prayer so that the Lord will be pleased to open the eyes of the Indians to receive the truth and give up such crimes. Or, rather, will not the soldiers hope with all their hearts that the Indians will become so blind that they will neither see nor hear? And then the soldiers will have the excuse they want for robbing them and taking them captive. Anyone who would foolishly and very unrealistically expect soldiers to follow the first course knows nothing about the military mind.

Human sacrifice required much explanation. Las Casas held that the Indians were "in probable error" for such actions, but added: "Strabo reminds us that our own Spanish people, who reproach the poor Indian peoples for human sacrifice, used to sacrifice captives and their horses." Ancient customs are hard to eradicate: "There is no greater or more arduous step than for a man to abandon the religion which he has once embraced." Las Casas concluded that proving the sinfulness of human sacrifice to those who practice it is very difficult, a basic question to which he applied four "principles":

1. No nation is so barbarous that it does not have at least some confused knowledge about God.

2. By a natural inclination men are led to worship God according to their capacities and in their own ways. We must offer Him whatever we have—our wealth, energies, life, and our very soul—for His service.

3. There is no better way to worship God than by sacrifice.

4. Offering sacrifice to the true God or to the one thought to be God comes from the natural law, while the things to be offered to God are a matter of human law and positive legislation.

From these principles one may adduce that Las Casas recognized the good faith of the pagan in his religion, even if it were idolatrous, and justified the pagan's human sacrifice as a natural act because he was offering his most valuable possession, his life, to the God he considered the true one. Neither Sepúlveda nor Vitoria, nor indeed few theologians then or later, adopted a similar view. Thus Las Casas respected, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, the beliefs, rites, and customs of the Indians as appropriate and proper for them, but in the minds of many of his contemporaries he must have seemed to be teaching something very close to heresy, although the Inquisition never called him to account. For him, the religious beliefs of the Indians were valid—for them at that time—and in no wise indicated atheism. He even considered them more truly religious than those Spaniards who tried to attract Indians to their civilization and their religion by "fire and sword": "If Christians use violent methods to impose their will on the Indians, it would be better for them to maintain their own religion; indeed, in such a case the pagan Indians would be those on the right path and Christians should learn from them how to conduct themselves."

He closed his argument on human sacrifice with these words:

Thus it is clear that it is not possible, quickly and in a few words, to make clear to unbelievers, especially ours, that sacrificing men to God is unnatural. On that account, we are left with the evident conclusion that knowledge that the natives sacrifice men to their gods, or even eat human flesh, is not a just cause for waging war on any kingdom. And again, this longstanding practice of theirs cannot be suddenly uprooted. And so these entirely guiltless Indians are not to be blamed because they do not come to their senses at the first words of a preacher of the gospel. For they do not understand the preacher. Nor are they bound to abandon at once their ancestral religion, for they do not understand that it is better to do so. Nor is human sacrifice—even of the innocent, when it is done for the welfare of the entire state—so contrary to natural reason that it must be immediately detested as something contrary to the dictates of nature. For this error can owe its origin to a plausible proof developed by human reasoning.

The preceding arguments prove that those who willingly allow themselves to be sacrificed, and all the common people in general, and the ministers who sacrifice them to the gods by command of their rulers and priests labor under an excusable, invincible ignorance and that their error should be judged leniently, even if we were to suppose that there is some judge with authority to punish these sins. If they offend God by these sacrifices, he alone will punish this sin of human sacrifice.

As Las Casas stated over and over again during the course of his disquisition on sacrifice: "It is not altogether detestable to sacrifice human beings to God from the fact that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice to Him his only son."

Anyone who is familiar with the genuine horror produced in the Spaniards by human sacrifice, from foot soldiers to priests, as evidenced in the many chronicles of the Conquest, must reckon the attitude of Las Casas to such ceremonial sacrifices—especially in Mexico—as one of the most remarkable of all his doctrines. It was, moreover, a doctrine to which he was firmly committed, as may be seen from his even more extensive treatment of it in the Apologética Historia, in which he used the same authorities and examples to reach the same conclusions on the justification for human sacrifice by the American Indians. Toward the end of his long life, in a letter to his fellow Dominicans in Chiapa, he proudly referred to the arguments he presented against Sepúlveda in Valladolid: "In this controversy I maintained and proved many conclusions which no one before me dared to treat or write about." And the only specific doctrine he mentioned was his defense of human sacrifice by the Indians.

Rebuttal of Sepúlveda's Fourth Argument: "War May Be Waged Against Infidels in Order to Prepare the Way for Preaching the Faith":

In this section Las Casas argued against Sepúlveda's use of the parable of the wedding feast, when the Lord commanded his servants to go into the highways and byways and "force them to come in." He had treated this subject in other writings, but in refuting Sepúlveda he used language reminiscent of his bitter attacks on the Conquest in his Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies:

At this point I would like Sepúlveda and his associates to produce some passage from sacred literature where the gospel parable is explained as he explains it; that is, that the gospel (which is the good and joyful news) and the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed with arms and bombardments, by subjecting a nation with armed militia and pursuing it with the force of war. What do joyful tidings have to do with wounds, captivities, massacres, conflagrations, the destruction of cities, and the common evils of war? They will go to hell rather than learn the advantages of the gospel. And what will be told by the fugitives who seek out the provinces of other peoples out of fear of the Spaniards, with their heads split, their hands amputated, their intestines torn open? What will they think about the God of the Christians? They will certainly think that [the Spaniards] are sons of the devil, not the children of God and the messengers of peace. Would those who interpret that parable in this way, if they were pagans, want the truth to be announced to them after their homes had been destroyed, their children imprisoned, their wives raped, their cities devastated, their maidens deflowered, and their provinces laid waste? Would they want to come to Christ's sheepfold with so many evils, so many tears, so many horrible massacres, such savage fear and heartbreaking calamity? Does not Paul say, "Treat each other in the same friendly way as Christ treated you"?

Sepúlveda's fourth argument also provided Las Casas with an opportunity to deliver one of his fundamental statements on the nature of man, based on one of his favorite authorities, Saint John Chrysostom:

Just as there is no natural difference in the creation of men, so there is no difference in the call to salvation of all of them, whether they are barbarous or wise, since God's grace can correct the minds of barbarians so that they have a reasonable understanding. He changed the heart of Nebuchadnezzar to an animal mind and then brought his animal mind to a human understanding. He can change all persons, I say, whether they are good or bad: the good lest they perish, the bad so that they will be without excuse.

Therefore Las Casas concluded that "since the nature of men is the same and all are called by Christ in the same way, and they would not want to be called in any other way."

The wedding parable was then explained in familiar terms, after which Las Casas turned to Sepúlveda's use of Constantine the Great's wars against unbelievers so that once subjected to his rule, "he might remove idolatry and the faith might be introduced more freely." Historical data was produced on the Goths and the barbarian Irish to show "how great an opportunity is given to pagans to blaspheme Christ if war is waged against them and how great a hatred for Christian religion is implanted in the hearts of pagans by war…. Pagans, therefore, must be treated most gently and with all charity." If not, the results will be disastrous:

Now if Christians unsettle everything by wars, burnings, fury, rashness, fierceness, sedition, plunder, and insurrection, where is meekness? Where is moderation? Where are the holy deeds that should move the hearts of pagans to glorify God? Where is the blameless and inoffensive way of life? Where is humanity? Finally, where is the meek and gentle spirit of Christ? Where is the imitation of Christ and Paul? Indeed, thinking about this pitiful calamity of our brothers so torments me that I cannot overcome my amazement that a learned man, a priest, an older person, and a theologian should offer deadly poisons of this type to the world from his unsettled mind. Moreover, I do not think that anyone who fails to see that these matters are clearer than the noonday sun is truly Christian and free from the vice of greed.

Christ did not arm his disciples and authorize the use of force to teach the truths of Christianity: "How does it agree with the example of Christ to spear unknowing Indians before the gospel is preached to them and to terrify in the extreme a totally innocent people by a display of arrogance and the fury of war or to drive them to death or to flight?" Preaching the faith by massacres and terror was an Islamic practice that must not be emulated by Christians.

Las Casas aimed to meet, and defeat, every one of his adversary's arguments….