European origins The European discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus did not occur until 1492. However, two Papal bulls announced several decades before that event were designed to help ward off increasing Muslim invasions into Europe, which they believed would have an effect on the New World. When Islam presented a serious military threat to Italy and Central Europe during mid-15th Century around the time of the fall of Constantinople, Pope Nicholas V tried to unite Christendom against them but failed. He then granted Portugal the right to subdue and even enslave Muslims whether white or any other race, pagans and other non-Christians in the papal bull Dum Diversas (1452). While this bull preceded the Atlantic slave trade by several decades, slavery and the slave trade were part of African societies and tribes which supplied the Arab world with slaves long before the arrival of the Europeans. Increasingly, the Italian Merchants from the wealthiest states in Italy, especially Genoa and Venice joined in the lucrative trade and some members sported exotic lackeys and few domestic or workshop slaves whereas before slavery was forbidden in Christendom and only formerly in Muslim Spain and Sicily and their buffer border marches were seen and legally allowed. Racial views of Superiority started developing and became more acute about these slaves, social views imported from the Court of Granada where they were highly stratified and classified. The following year saw the Fall of Constantinople to Muslim conquerors of the ever growing Ottoman Empire which left the pope as the undoubted contested leader of Christendom when the Orthodox Church leadership became under submission. Several decades later, European explorers and missionaries spread Christianity to the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Pope Alexander VI had awarded colonial rights over most of the newly discovered lands by the Iberian Kingdoms of Castile and Portugal. Under their patronato system, however, Royal authorities, not the Vatican, controlled as in Europe all clerical appointments in the new colonies. Thus, the 1455 Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex granted the Portuguese all lands behind Cape Bojador "allowing to reduce pagans and other enemies of Christ to perpetual slavery"[citation needed]. Later, the 1481 Papal Bull Aeterni regis granted all lands south of the Canary Islands to the Portuguese Empire, while in May 1493 the Aragonese-born Pope Alexander VI decreed in the Bull Inter caetera that all lands west of a meridian only 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands should belong to the Spanish Empire while new lands discovered east of that line would belong to Portugal. These arrangements were later confirmed in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 04:06:36 +0000
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