Royal Cédula of June 20, 1500

From Hispanopedia
Isabella the Catholic

Through the Royal Cédula of June 20, 1500, Queen Isabella the Catholic decreed that all the American Indigenous people who had been brought to and sold in Spain be set free, and ordered their return to the Americas in the fleet of Francisco de Bobadilla. It was Bobadilla himself who, on commission from the Monarchs, arrested and tried Christopher Columbus, and then sent him in shackles to Spain.

With the promulgation of this Cédula, the enslavement of American Indigenous people was formally abolished in the territories of the Hispanic Monarchy. This was the first recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, a legal principle that until then had not been contemplated in any legislation, much less applied in any other country in the world.

Historical context

At the end of the 15th century, the danger that the Indies would become an immense slave market supplying the Old World seemed unstoppable. In 1494, on the pretext that they were "prisoners of war," Christopher Columbus sent the Catholic Monarchs a shipment of some 500 slaves from Hispaniola with the expedition of Antonio de Torres, as recorded in two Royal Cédulas of April 12 and 16, 1495. Although they were presented as prisoners of war to justify their enslavement, several of the Queen's advisers rejected that status. For example, Bartolomé de las Casas stated in his writings: "... in the four ships that Antonio de Torres brought, in which he returned to Castile and carried five hundred Indians unjustly made slaves...".

The Queen, who was strongly influenced by her confessor, Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros, issued a new Royal Cédula ordering the Bishop of Badajoz, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, to suspend the sale of the slaves: "because We wish to be informed by Lawyers, Theologians and Canonists whether they may be sold in good conscience."

After the suspending Cédula, the Queen waited more than five years for the legal experts to reach a decision. Finally, while she was in Seville, she witnessed the unloading of two ships, those of Ballester and García Barrantes, which arrived at Seville packed with Indigenous people. She was so outraged that she decided not to wait any longer and to grant the Indigenous people the legal status of free men. According to Las Casas, a shaken Queen Isabella asked: «What power of mine does the Admiral have to give my vassals to anyone?» She then ordered that the Indians who had reached Spain sent by Columbus, "whom We now order to be set free...", be returned to their "native lands" on the American Continent.[1]

The Queen also ordered that all the Indigenous people who had arrived earlier be sought out and gathered, handed over to Pedro de Torres, and repatriated to the Americas with their families, all at the Crown's expense. Antonio Rumeu de Armas transcribes the historian Rafael Altamira's comment on this document:

"A memorable date for the whole world, because it marks the first recognition of the respect owed to the dignity and freedom of all men, however uncultured and primitive they may be; a principle that until then had not been proclaimed in any legislation, and much less put into practice in any country."[2]

Text of the Royal Cédula

The document bears the heading «Royal Cédula ordering that the Indians who were brought from the islands and sold by order of the Admiral be set free and returned to their native lands».[3] Its literal text is as follows:

The King and the Queen. Pedro de Torres, contino of our Household. You already know how, by our order, you hold in your custody, under sequestration and in plain view, some of the Indians who were brought from the Indies and sold in this city and its Archdiocese and in other parts of this Andalusia by order of our Admiral of the said Indies; whom We now order to be set free, and We have ordered the Commander Frey Francisco de Bobadilla to take them in his custody to the said Indies and to do with them what We have commanded him. Therefore, We order you that, as soon as you see this our cédula, you give and deliver to him all the said Indians that you thus hold in your custody, without any of them missing, by inventory and before a public notary, and take his receipt of how he receives them from you; with which, and with this our cédula, We order that they not be asked or demanded of you again. And do not do otherwise.[4]

Consequences

The Catholic Queen considered the Indigenous people not only as free persons but also as subjects of the Crown of Castile. The instructions given to Nicolás de Ovando on September 16, 1501 fully reflected this new legal status of the Indigenous people. This legislation achieved, on the one hand, the conversion of the Indigenous people to the Catholic faith, in order to comply with the provisions of the Alexandrine Bulls and to contribute to the consolidation of sovereignty in the new territories, and on the other hand, "that the said Indians be well treated, and those of them who are Christians better than the others; and do not consent to nor allow any person to do them harm or damage or any other wrong..."

The direct implications of this new status as Spanish subjects were the suppression of Indigenous slavery and the replacement of the Repartimientos by Encomiendas. In this way, Queen Isabella anticipated by 35 years the formulation of the law of nations by Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto, and by 41 years the better-known New Laws with which Charles V prohibited the enslavement of the natives, on the grounds that they were "our vassals of the Crown of Castile."

In the Codicil of 1504, executed at Medina del Campo on November 23, 1504,[5] Isabella the Catholic stressed the obligation to evangelize the Indigenous people, free vassals of the Crown, to whom the Roman-rooted category of "man-person" was applied, something unheard of at the time. Thus, among the Queen's last wishes addressed to her American subjects in her testament, it was ordered that:

"… and that they not consent to nor allow the Indians, residents and inhabitants of the said Islands and Mainland, won and yet to be won, to receive any harm in their persons or property, but rather order that they be well and justly treated, and if they have received any harm, that they remedy it and provide in such a way that nothing exceeds what is commanded of us by the apostolic letters of the said concession…".

References

  1. ↑ Descubrimiento Y Evangelización; Isabel ante la esclavitud de los indios Dicionário de História Cultural de la Iglesía en América Latina
  2. ↑ R. ALTAMIRA, Manual de Historia de España (Edit. Sudamericana, 1946); in RUMEU DE ARMAS, La política indigenista de Isabel la Católica, Valladolid, 1969, p. 138.
  3. ↑ Transcription in Konetzke, Richard (ed.), Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493-1810, vol. I (1493-1592), Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953, document no. 5, pp. 4-5. The original is kept in the General Archive of the Indies (Seville), Contratación section, bundle 3249, folio 242. Also edited in Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Colección de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles, volume II, p. 246
  4. ↑ 'Colección de Documentos Inéditos relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de Ultramar (D.I.A.), volume 38, p. 439.
  5. ↑ Codicilo de la Reina Isabel la Católica, otorgado en Medina del Campo, el 23 de noviembre de 1504 (Manuscrito) BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL HISPÁNICA. BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA

See also

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