Part 8 (1/2)
CHAPTER XIII. - PROFESSION OF LAS CASAS. THE CACIQUE ENRIQUE. JOURNEYS OF LAS CASAS. A PEACEFUL VICTORY
Although held in general detestation in Hispaniola, as a seditious mischief-maker and an enemy of the Spaniards' interests, there were not wanting some sympathisers who, when Las Casas arrived, dejected and bankrupt, at Santo Domingo, received him kindly, and even offered to lend him five thousand ducats with which to begin again.
The clear thinking and high resolution which had carried him through so many trials seemed at this time to fail him; nor indeed is there just cause for wonder, for there is a limit to human powers of endurance, and if ever a man was overtaken by a dark hour, Las Casas was he. In after years, he arraigned his own conduct at this period with undue severity, reflecting that as the Emperor was back in Spain with the Flemings, and his old friend Cardinal Adrian had become Pope, he might have accomplished his life's purpose of ending the sufferings of the Indians, had he only adopted the resolution of going directly to Spain. As it was, he wrote an extensive account to the Emperor of all that had occurred and the causes that had brought on the calamity at c.u.mana.
To the monks of the Dominican order, Las Casas had years since been united by the strong bonds of devotion to a common cause, which was the dominant influence, as it was the sole object, of his life. As they had accompanied and sustained him throughout his long struggle, so it was to them that he naturally turned for sympathy in the extremity of his disappointment, exiled, as he was, amidst the hostile colonists of Hispaniola. These were the saddest days of his tempestuous life, during which doubts began to penetrate his very soul-doubts of his own worthiness to carry on the mission to which he had believed himself called, doubts even as to whether it might not be ordained by the inscrutable wisdom of Divine Providence that the Indians should perish before the advance of the Spaniards. If this were true, then his life had been wasted in a vain conflict with the occult forces that govern the destiny of races.
While waiting for answers to the letters he had written to Spain, he found his only consolation in his intercourse with the Dominican friars, with whom in fact he had been for years closely united in spirit. Fray Domingo de Betanzos exercised a great influence upon him at this time, and to him is due the decision of Las Casas to enter the Dominican Order.
The discussions between the two must have been frequent and prolonged for, weary and disappointed as he was, Las Casas seems not to have yearned for the seclusion of the cloister. To his objection that he must await the King's reply to his letter before taking a decision, Betanzos answered, ”Decide now father, for if you were to die meanwhile, who will receive the King's letters and orders?” These words sunk deep into his soul and from thence-forward he pondered seriously upon his vocation. Finally his mind was made up and he decided to imagine himself dead when the King's letter should arrive and so beyond the reach of royal commands. In 1522, he asked for the habit of the Order. (39) The news of his solemn profession, which took place in 1523, was received with great joy by the people outside the convent, though for very different reasons, for they a.s.sisted at his exit from the world and his entrance into the cloister with the same satisfaction with which they would have attended his funeral. While making his novitiate, the letters from the Cardinal (now Pope) Adrian and his Flemish friends at Court arrived. The Flemings urged his immediate return to Spain, promising him every a.s.sistance in their power, but the superiors of the monastery in Hispaniola did not deliver these disquieting epistles to their novice, for fear of shaking his resolution to persevere in his vocation.
The earliest biographer of Las Casas, Antonio de Remesal, says that he was chosen Prior of the monastery, and this statement is supported by a letter from the Auditors of Hispaniola dated June 7, 1533, addressed to Prince Philip who was governing Spain during the absence of the Emperor his father, in which Fray Bartholomew is mentioned as Prior of the Monastery of Santo Domingo in the town of Puerto de Plata. (40) In chapter 146 of his _Historia Apologetica_, he himself speaks of ”conferring the habit” on a novice, which he could only do if he were Prior.
The first seven years that Las Casas pa.s.sed in the seclusion of his monastery were not marked by any salient incident. He devoted himself with all the intensity of his nature to the practice of the austere rule of St. Dominic and became, as he himself afterwards described in writing of that period of his life, as though dead to the world, so little part did he have in the course of events outside his cloister's walls. He gave much time to the study of theology, especially to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the glory of the Dominican Order. These studies served to equip him with stores of canonical and philosophical learning which enabled him, when the time came, to sustain controversies with some of the most learned men in Europe.
In the second chapter of his _Historia Apologetica_ the following sentence occurs: ”Three leagues to the west of the extremity of this plain is Puerto de Plata, and on a hill above and near by the town thus named there is a monastery of the Dominican Order, where the composition of this History was begun in the year 1527,-to be finished when and where the will of G.o.d may ordain.”(41)
In 1529, he lent his efforts to bringing to an end the long standing rebellion of the cacique Enrique whose forces, in the mountains of Baranco, the Spaniards had fought at intervals during fourteen years in vain. This chief had been educated in the Franciscan convent at Vera Paz and was a man of unusual intelligence and superior courage; he married a beautiful Indian girl of good lineage and, with the Indians under his rule, was a.s.signed in repartimiento to a Spaniard named Valenzuela, who began by robbing him of a valuable mare and ended by taking from him his wife.
The cacique's protests were answered with a beating, and his complaints to the governor of St. Juan de la Maguana, one Pedro Vadillo, were disregarded.
This grievance led to an organised rebellion of the natives under Enrique, who a.s.sembled numerous forces. By constantly moving from place to place, he was able to elude the several Spanish expeditions sent against him.
The course of these alternate hostilities and negotiations to obtain the submission of Enrique, and the dispersal of his people, are described at length in chapters 125 and 126 of the _Historia General_. Even the intervention of Fray Remigio, one of the Franciscans who had come from Picardy to Hispaniola, and who had been one of Enrique's teachers in the convent, failed induce the offended cacique to surrender. News of the continued success of the rebellion reached Spain, and in 1527, Don Sebastian de Fuenleal was sent out as President of the Audiencia and Bishop of Santo Domingo, with special instructions to subdue Enrique. His efforts proved as fruitless as the preceding attempts, and in 1528 the King wrote still more urgently that the campaign must be brought to a successful issue. The Bishop-President, being in sore perplexity to devise means for satisfying the royal commands, showed this embarra.s.sing letter to Fray Bartholomew.
”My lord,” said Las Casas, ”how many times has your lords.h.i.+p and this Audiencia tried to subdue this man to the King's service by waging war against him.”
”Many times,” answered the Bishop, ”almost every year a force has been organised and so it will go on till he dies or submits.” ”And how often,”
asks Las Casas, ”have you tried to win him by peaceful means?” ”I don't know that there was but the one time,” answered Fuenleal. Fray Bartolomew then affirmed that he was confident that he could arrange a peace and, the Bishop-president having accepted his offer to act as amba.s.sador to Enrique, he fulfilled his mission as much to the astonishment as to the satisfaction of everybody.
The Spanish historian Quintana rejects the account of these events which is given by Remesal and has ever since been accepted by historians as authentic, declaring it to be fabulous, and limiting the part Las Casas played in the affair of Enrique to a visit he paid him after peace was concluded. Remesal bases his narrative on doc.u.ments which he declares he found in the archives of the Audiencia of Guatemala, and there seems no sufficient motive for doubting the veracity of the evidence. Las Casas, in describing what took place in the early part of the troubles with Enrique (1520), does not say positively that he took part in the first negotiations for peace, but he does clearly give it to be understood that the successful issue of the final efforts was owing to his intervention.
A detailed account of the conclusion of the rebellion would, according to the system adopted in writing his _History_, find its rightful place in the fourth book, which is missing, though there is little room for doubt that it was written and may possibly still be discovered.
Concerning the journey which-according to Remesal-Las Casas made to Spain in 1530, very little is known, and Quintana is as sceptical about this voyage as about the part attributed to him by some biographers in Enrique's subjugation, though there seems as little reason in this instance to doubt the explicit statement of one whose good faith is as far above suspicion as his opportunities for knowing the facts were exceptional.
Torquemada represents Fray Juan Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, as visiting Spain in 1532, and as having previously written asking that the colonists should be prohibited from enslaving the Indians, and that during that time identical representations had been made to the government by the Bishop of Chiapa, Don Bartolome de Las Casas, (42) which procured letters patent from the Empress-Regent signed in 1530, before the bishop of Mexico arrived. (43) The scepticism of Quintana seems hardly justified.
The occasion of the alleged journey was the recent discovery and conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro. The fate of these millions of people, newly subjected to the Castilian crown could not have been a matter of indifference to Las Casas. They stood far higher in the scale of civilisation than the naked islanders, possessing as they did, as great an empire as the Mexicans, with religion, laws, and literature of a high order of development. While the entrance of Las Casas into a monastic order was, in one sense, a retirement from the world, he had chosen a community whose members were as devoted to the defence of the Indians as he himself was, and while he had, when still a secular priest, sustained a stout fight, unaided save by such friends as chance and his own efforts might here and there secure him, he could, after his profession, count upon the moral and active support of one of the most powerful religious organisations of the age. His retirement, therefore, proved to be a period of refreshment, during which he reinforced his powers for continuing his propaganda and, while losing nothing of his original enthusiasm and determination, he returned to the scene of his former activity with renewed courage and a great religious Order at his back.
Determined as he was to forestall a repet.i.tion in Peru of the exterminating cruelties perpetrated in the islands, he returned to Court in his Dominican habit, where he preached several times with great success. The gift of eloquence he had always possessed, and his eight years of study and meditation had furnished him with new weapons, which he wielded with the same fiery zeal that had characterised the first years of his apostolic champions.h.i.+p. During the six months he remained in Spain, he obtained a royal cedula to be delivered to Pizarro and Almagro, positively prohibiting the enslavement of any of the natives of Peru for any reason, or in any manner whatsoever, as they were declared to be the free va.s.sals of the King, and as much ent.i.tled to the possession of their liberty and property as were the natives of Castile itself. The obnoxious Bishop of Burgos had long since fallen into disgrace and was dead, so that Las Casas was free to carry on his negotiations with the India Council without encountering at every step the obstacles and delays his old enemy had formerly opposed to his projects.
During his absence in Spain, the first provincial chapter of the Dominicans had been held in Hispaniola, and on his return there he learned that the monastery of San Domingo in Mexico had been designated as the chief house of the province, with Fray Francisco de San Miguel as the first Prior. Las Casas, in company with other friars embarked with the new Prior for Mexico, his own destination being Peru, where he had not only to deliver the royal cedula he had secured, but also to found some convents in those regions. The friars in Mexico did not welcome their new Prior as cordially as they might have done, but Fray Bartholomew, ever ready to exercise his powers of universal peace-maker, smoothed the difficulties, after which he left for Peru early in 1532, accompanied by Fray Bernardino de Minaya and Fray Pedro de Angulo. (44) As their port of embarkation was Realejo in Nicaragua, they pa.s.sed through Santiago de Guatemala where they lodged in the abandoned convent of San Domingo. As soon as the news of their arrival spread, the whole town came eagerly to see them; the enthusiasm of the inhabitants was somewhat dampened when they learned that Las Casas was one of the three, for he had earned a terrible fame amongst slave-dealing Spaniards and whenever he appeared, was apt to produce royal cedulas of embarra.s.sing purport or, at least, to denounce and report to Spain the violence and cruelties commonly practised on the Indians.
The friars' stay at Santiago was brief, in spite of the urgent entreaties of the priest there, who begged them to remain and to reopen the deserted monastery, as the field for spiritual labours was a broad and uncultivated one. Fray Bartholomew was anxious, however, to reach his destination, knowing from past experiences how much easier it is to forestall an evil than to remedy a rooted abuse. He rightly judged that whatever good was to be accomplished by virtue of the royal cedula he carried, must be achieved before the conquerors of Peru had time to enslave the Indians and to establish a system similar to those that had worked such damage in the Islands and in Mexico. They were obliged to wait twenty-four days at Realejo until a s.h.i.+p which was to carry reinforcements and stores to Pizarro and Almagro was ready to sail; meanwhile the three monks, under the exterior guise of the gentle dove, were obliged to use some of the wisdom of the serpent and to carefully conceal the nature of their mission, for otherwise the s.h.i.+p-owners, whose chief article of commerce was slaves, would never have taken them on board.
Upon their arrival in Peru, Las Casas immediately communicated the purport of the cedula to the Spanish commanders. Both Almagro and Pizarro protested that they would obey the order to the letter, though it went sorely against their interests. They ordered the royal command to be solemnly published with the usual formalities and even added other penalties to those prescribed, for any violation of its provisions.