Ovi Magazine : The Portuguese and Spanish Slave Trade

These negotiations actually marked a triumph of the direct diplomacy diligences, as before them the Bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) by the Pope Nicholas V (giving discovered lands to Portugal and the Order of Christ), and the Bull Æterni regis (1481) by the Pope Sixtus IV (dividing lands by a parallel crossing the Canary Islands) had represented the main legislative documents on such disputes.

“The medieval tradition of the political supremacy of the Holy See still subsisted, which recognized to Rome the right to dispose of the lands and the peoples. Adrian IV, English Pope (1154-59) endowed Ireland to the English King and Sixtus IV (1471-84) had granted the Canary Islands to the Kings of Castile (1471-84). Such acts were based, in part, on the fact that an Edict by Constantine conferred to the Pope Sylvester the sovereignty over all the islands of the globe: and such happened because all the lands still undiscovered were, by then, supposed to be exclusively islands.” (the Brazilian historian Delgado de Carvalho, transcribing Oliveira Lima in The Discovery of Brazil, Book of the Centenaries, 1900)

Cabral arrived to Brazil in 1500, and in 1524 the Maluku Islands and the Philippines had to be given to the Spaniards in exchange of the Brazilian lands.

The Company of Jesus owned several slave trade ships which sailed, like all the others – but without paying taxes – from Angola, Cabinda, Mina, Guinea, Saint Tomé and Mozambique to the coasts of Brazil.

In the New World, every product traded (including slaves, one of the most profitable “products”) was taxed and a big slice of those taxes was delivered to the Holy See. Just like the fazendeiros[ii] of Brazil, this institution owned thousands of slaves, together with hundreds of plantations of coffee and sugar cane, cattle ranches and public buildings, and was involved with the trade of gold and precious metals, as some common conquistadores were. The lands of the New World were vast, and their abundance was tempting for everyone.

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), a missionary in Cuba and Venezuela and Bishop of Chiapas, was one of the most notable voices in the Spanish-speaking South America opposing the slavery of Native Americans, still he curiously advocated the slavery of blacks in the New World. Anyhow, his ideas were not broadly accepted, as the Pope condoned the actions of the conquistadores and the Inquisitor Cardinal Cisneros, twice a regent of Spain in those times, paladin of the Spanish campaigns in the North of Africa (he had an active role in several conquests) had not been impressed by his arguments either.

The same didn’t happen with the King Charles I of Spain who, after conceding to Bartolomé a territory in today’s Venezuela so he could “apply his theories” there, in 1540 listened to de las Casas’ demands in defence of the Native Americans, while being influenced by the new legal ideas concerning “The Rights of the People” (Francisco Vitoria). In 1542, Charles I promulgated the New Laws, in which he prohibited the slavery of the Native Americans, ordered that all the natives should be freed from their encomenderos[iii] and considered under the direct protection of the Spanish Monarchs.

In the Spanish colonies, the colonial institution of the Encomienda was a social-economic system which demanded that a group of individuals should reward other individuals with work or goods in compensation for the services lent by the first group. Such system derived from the Castile and Aragon Middle Ages, when the goods or services were estates, buildings, rents or benefits commonly owned by a Military Order, which the individuals of the second group (generally the peasants, the plebs) should reward with semi-slave work, most of the goods they produced or owned, absurdly high taxes and a number of other mortifying obligations.

If the system was already problematic in the Old World, in the New World the natives had not shown any particular interest or motivation to adhere. Besides, the supposed protection by the encomenderos was seldom guaranteed, on the contrary: the natives were enslaved, exploited and often beaten up. In 1512, the Spanish Laws of Burgos, formulated by a panel of theologians and jurists, had already tried to organize this notion of property in the New World, with no success apparently, after protests by Antonio de Montesinos about the conditions of the indigenous people during his sermon in today’s Dominican Republic/Haiti (1511).

Socially, Montesinos was not alone – Gil Vicente the playwright, for example, had been presenting some anti-slavery, anti-colonization and anti-materialist theatre plays before the Kings of Portugal and their court, in 1502-09 –, but he was one of the first voices speaking against slavery inside the Catholic institution, and as a Dominican friar his positions eventually had resonance over King Ferdinand of Spain, who convened the commission of Burgos.

So the conclusions of the Burgos panel of theologians and jurists (1512) had been as follows: 1) the Indians are free men; 2) the Catholic Kings are masters of the Indians because of their evangelization compromise 3) the Indians can be forced to work, as long as the work is tolerable and the salary fair, although the salary can be paid in goods/services/others instead of money 4) war is justified if the Indians refuse to be Christianized 5) the Requerimiento, which authorises and announces the violent subjugation of the Indians who refuse to be evangelized.

The two most influential members of this panel were: Juan Rubios, the passionate and solid defender of the theocratic argument which justified the papal concession (determined by the Bulls Inter cœtera, Eximiœ devotionis and Dudum siquidem, 1493, of Pope Alexander VI to the Kings of Castile[iv]), and Matías de Paz, a senior lecturer and professor of Theology in the University of Salamanca, also theocratic, who insisted in the need to inform the Indians of the rights of the King of Castile, with a Requerimiento, either before subduing them pacifically or declaring war against them.

Still talking about the religious representatives in particular, Priest António Vieira (1608-1697), who vigorously defended the end of slavery in Brazil, was arrested under multiple charges by the Inquisition, for several times, and implacably interrogated – most of the charges were related with defending the slaves, Indians and blacks[v], the converted Jews and the accusation according to which he was a pagan. Vieira was an extraordinary writer of uncommon sermons and other pieces of prosal art, which became famous.

On the other hand, Priests like Jorge Benci (1700) defended the "good treatment of the slaves by their owners" (this good treatment was arguable, while mostly restricted to baptism, marriage and other evangelization tasks), but not their freedom. If baptized by the Bishop of Luanda (Angola) before embarking, the traffickers didn’t have to pay taxes for their slaves when the final destiny of their ships was Brazil. In Central and South America, the official policies of the religious institutions ended up defending the non-slavery of Indians and the slavery of blacks.

For the Grego-Roman mentality, slavery had been licit, and in old times the owner of the slaves had the right to decide about their life and death. The Bulls conceding rights over the natives of non-Christian lands, including the right to enslave/trade them and the obligation of evangelizing these natives, were not uncommon and include: Bull Clara devotionis (1471), Bull Aeterni Regis clementia per quam reges regnant (1481), Bull Ortodoxas fidei (1486), Bull Dudum cupiens (1491), among several others.

Those had been preceded by documents of the Popes Callixtus III (Bull Inter caetera que nobis divina disponente clementia incumbunt peragenda, 1456), Nicholas V (Bull Romanus Pontifex Regni Celestis Claviger, 1454), Eugene IV (Bulls Dudum cum, 1436, and Preclaris tuis, 1437), among others. The Bull Inter Coetera (1493), for example, grants “plain, free and unrestricted power, authority and jurisdiction so that you [Kings of Castile and Léon] can subdue, in favour of the Divine Clemency, those lands and islands [of the New World], as well as their inhabitants, and reduce them to the Catholic Faith", adding that, by acting accordingly, the Kings would be “paying a favour to the Catholic Church".

The authors of this Bull were, of course, far from imagining all the dimensions and the complete implications of such favour. The Christian teachings, in deep connection with the struggle for survival, the African tribal roots (the Yorubas, Lukumi, Igbo and Fon from Nigeria, Benin and Togo, the Kimbundus fom Angola, the Congolese Bantus, the Ewes from Ghana; Guinea and Cameroon language groups, etc.), and the beliefs of the American Natives, new syncretic religions were born in the Quilombos of Brazil, the Cimarrones of Colombia and the plantations of Peru or the Caribbean: Santería, Umbanda, Candomblé (with its nations Jejé, Bantu and Ketu), Ifá, Palo Monte, Haitian Voudou, Abakuá, Obeah...

1- Quilombo dos Palmares, one of the structures of the main settlement, Alagoas, Brazil (photo by Ana Pereira).

2- Statue of Zumbi dos Palmares, city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil (photo by Ana Pereira).

- Theatre plays by Gil Vicente: Auto da Visitação (1502) and Auto da Índia (1509)

- Sermons of the Priest António Vieira (1608-1697), including Sermon of St. Anthony to the Fishes (1654), Sermon of the Sixtieth and Sermon of The Good Thief (1655)

-Documentation of the National Archives and National Libraries of Spain/Portugal/Brazil and the Archives of the Vatican

- BENCI, Jorge (Priest): “Christian Economy of the Masters Governing the Slaves – reduced to four moral speeches”, Jesuitic Mission of the Province of Brazil, 1704 (Archives of the Company of Jesus, Rome).

- LEITE, Serafim. History of the Company of Jesus in Brazil: 16th century. Lisbon: Portucália, 1938.

- MACEDO, Joaquim Manuel de, Lessons of the History of Brazil, Garnier Bookshop, Rio de Janeiro.

[i] There are theories according to which the lands of Brazil had already been seen or suspected during the navigation of Vasco da Gama in 1497-1499, in his inaugural voyage to India, by Duarte Coelho in 1498 or even by one of the other Portuguese navigators who sailed to the Western regions of the Atlantic in the final years of the 15th century - the Atlantic streams usually forced the vessels to distance themselves quite much from the Coast of Africa, to the West.

[ii] Owners of Fazendas or Roças (large farm or estate/ranch/plantation).

[iii] The Spanish encomenderos benefited from the slave and semi-slave work which, under the designation of “personal services” their native encomendados should do. In return, they had the obligation of teaching the natives the Christian doctrine, protect them and their goods, which was seldom the case.

[iv] These documents bestowed to Castile the right of conquering America and the obligation of evangelizing it. Pope Alexander VI was part of the Valencian family of the Borgia, so God could be considered to be playing at home, in this particular case.

[v] Having seen black African slaves disembarking in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, the priest wrote a long and revolted letter to the regional authorities and religious superiors, expressing his disapproval of such practice, as well as several sermons before and after that incident happened, which were actually great literary pieces, condemning Slavery in general as a system, both of blacks and American natives (with whom he had contacted too, in the Amazon region), as well as the persecution of Jews.