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Bartolomé de Las Casas
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Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. (November 1484 – July 1566), was a 16th-century Spanish Dominican priest, and the first resident Bishop of Chiapas. As a settler in the New World he witnessed, and was driven to oppose, the torture and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists.
Casas was born in Seville in the year 1484 (or possibly 1485), most probably on 11 November. Several centuries of tradition had earlier placed Las Casas' birthdate in the year 1474.
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Encyclopedia
Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. (November 1484 – July 1566), was a 16th-century Spanish Dominican priest, and the first resident Bishop of Chiapas. As a settler in the New World he witnessed, and was driven to oppose, the torture and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists.
Biography
Las Casas was born in Seville in the year 1484 (or possibly 1485), most probably on 11 November. Several centuries of tradition had earlier placed Las Casas' birthdate in the year 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.
With his father, he emigrated to the island of Hispaniola in 1502 on the expedition of Nicolás de Ovando, during which he witnessed the brutalities committed against the Taínos, and wrote (1561) in his multivolume History of the Indies:
There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived in 1508], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? He became a priest eight years later, and served as a missionary to the Arawak (Taino) of Cuba in 1512. There, he received a merced de tierra (royal land lease) close to Jagua, today Cienfuegos. Starting in 1514, however, he became an adamant opponent of Spanish colonialism, claiming that it was against the will of the Lord. His ideas were not widely accepted because the Pope condoned the actions of the conquistadores. His 1520-21 attempt to create a more equitable colonial society in Venezuela was sabotaged by his colonial neighbors. He joined the Dominican Order in 1522. He died in Madrid in 1566.
Legacy and commemoration
Las Casas began what became known as the "Black Legend", which created stereotypical images of the Spaniards as rapacious colonists and Indians as innocents. Some scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the Native Americans because of their lack of immunity to new diseases brought from Europe.
However, slavery, serfdom and warfare still inflicted significant casualties on Amerindian populations.
He is commemorated as a missionary in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on July 17. In 2000, the Roman Catholic Church began the process to beatify him. His work is a particular inspiration behind the work of the Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.
David Walker was fiercely critical of Las Casas, calling him a "wretch...stimulated by sordid avarice only", for favouring the importation of black slaves to the Americas. Las Casas later bitterly regretted and opposed his previous support for introducing African slaves in the American colonies after witnessing the maltreatment of black slaves by the colonists.
Bartolomé de las Casas' book Historia de las Indias was first published in 1875.
Works
. Trans. Nigel Griffin.
. Extracts.
See also
External links
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