Las Casas successfully defended himself against these complaints of high treason and heresy, silencing Sepúveda.[1]  Building on his triumph against these charges, he went on the offensive by writing two additional tracts to reinforce his opinions on restitution and justice in the Americas: Treinta Proposiciones muy Jurídicas and Tratado Comprobatorio del Imperio Soberano. Even though he effectively faced these challenges surrounding his manuscript version in Spain, the controversy about his Confesionario would surface again in the Americas.

Since the original manuscript is unavailable, the focus of this thesis is necessarily on the surviving document, his printed tract.  In the middle of 1552, after almost forty years of privately admonishing the crown, Las Casas went to Seville and printed for the wider public eight inflammatory treatises, those by which he is principally known today.[2]  At the beginning of 1553 a group of Dominican friars carried copies of these documents to the Indies for distribution.  Additional copies were sent to the Dominican convent of San Gregorio at Valladolid for distribution in Spain; this dissemination strengthened Las Casas’ positions on restitution and justice, especially with the intellectual community.[3]  Among this group of printed tracts was his Confesionario, which according to Henry Raup Wagner was identical to the original manuscript, since Las Casas states at the beginning of the tract: “These rules and the addition…”   Wagner asserts that the printed version was the same as the original except for the clarifications made in the Adición de la Primera y Quinta Regals.[4]  This published version raised a storm of controversy similar to the original manuscript.  Commenting on this conflict, Helen Rand Parish and Harold E. Weidman state the following in their book Las Casas en México:

Las Casas defended himself successfully, and even published an amplified version of the same Confesionario which he sent to the New World with other works of his. The arrival in Mexico of these eight printed tracts produced another escándalo on par with his own arrival in 1545. His friend of that time, the learned Augustinian Friar Alonso de la Veracruz, dictated a sensational reading, Del Dominio (about the Indians), for the inaugural course of 1553-1554 at the new University of Mexico.  The friars and lawyers at this gathering vindicated completely the lascasian position: they asked for the total abolition of the encomienda, basing the royal title of the Indies on the free consent of the natives![5]

The escándalo caused by each version centers around an important goal of both Las Casas’ secret manuscript and his public tract, the enforcement of the New Laws.  He knew that the law abolishing the encomienda, the Law of Inheritance, had been revoked in 1545.[6]  The revocation of this particular part of the New Laws would perpetuate the unjust encomienda system, making restitution nearly impossible for the damages caused by the conquest and permitting the passing on of slaves to heirs.  Explaining Las Casas’ motivations, Dominican scholar Mauricio Beuchot writes: “As bishop of Chiapa, Bartolomé de las Casas redacted some Avisos so that the confessors of his diocese, while administering the sacrament of penance, might demand that the conquistadores recognize the situation of the sin of injustice in which they were in because of all that they had done to the Indians and that, once recognized, they might give themselves to the work of making restitution for the justice that had been injured.”[7]  Therefore, by composing these Doce Reglas Para Confesores for trusted priests of his diocese, he outlined rules that reflected for him the position of the true Christian conscience, the making of restitution in order to do justice for damages done against one’s neighbor.[8]  Las Casas incorporated these two themes of restitution and justice in both his first written manuscript as well as in the second printed tract, in fact they were major concepts of his entire life’s work.

The major difference between the assumed original manuscript and the printed tract was the Adición de la Primera y Quinta Reglas.[9]  In this addition to Rules 1 and 5, Las Casas clarified the parts of his manuscript that created the most uproar, and he provided more support for his core position regarding restitution and justice.[10]  Rules 1 and 5 dealt explicitly with individuals before they confessed themselves, whether on their deathbeds or in good health.  These rules required them to execute a legal document (enforceable in an ecclesiastical court) that authorized the confessor to dispose of all the penitents’ property in order to make restitution to the Indians.[11]  Supporting this point, in various parts of his Confesionario, he indicated that none of the property was lawfully owned by the penitent, since it was not brought from Spain but was taken from the Indians – all the conquests and wars were crimes, all the tributes and services were received unjustly, all the slaves were acquired illegally.  Therefore the confessor was required to order the penitent to make restitution to any surviving victims or their descendants or their villages, or to pay to free Indian slaves and to establish new villages, or to help Spanish settlers and peasant immigrants.  Even with this demanding set of rules, Las Casas conditioned the requirement for restitution according to the means of the penitent; but all slaves were to be freed.  Rich encomenderos with other sources of wealth were able to keep a modest part of this to support their families, but they had to pay all the rest for restitution and were forbidden from accepting further tribute.  Poor encomenderos were allowed to receive enough for sustenance, provided they cared for the Indians and instructed them in the faith.  Restitution of past tributes was stipulated for the wealthy, while poor encomenderos were simply to persuade the Indians to forgive them.[12]  Reinforcing the themes of restitution and justice, Las Casas added that no children of Spaniards had any right to an inheritance, since all this property was stolen, although they could be given a small amount to settle in the Americas.  In the end, the focus of this pointed tract summarized the message of Las Casas’ entire life’s effort: making restitution for the wrongs committed against the Indians in order to do the justice demanded by the Gospel message.[13]

Notes