Dum Diversas Analysis

The Catholic faith is the most populous religion followed in the world, if the general religions were separated into their respective sects. This connection of 1.142 billion people spread from Europe to Africa and the Americas through a juxtaposed image of spread of religion in the most brutal sense in the mid to late 1400’s. As monarchs of Portugal, Spain, and Italy sent their explorers in search of spices to India, the explorers made an even more valuable discovery, a new world. During the Crusades, the Church was suffering losses against the growing Ottoman Empire. The papacy, Pope Nicholas V, called for the assistance of the Kingdom of Portugal against the Ottoman Empire in exchange for entitling territories in Africa; this is detailed

The Dum diversas was written on June 18th, 1452 and the Romanus pontifex was written on January 8th, 1454 both in Rome, Italy at St. Peter’s. The guidelines set throughout Dum diversas are reiterated in Romanus pontifex; in Dum diversas, Nicholas V allows Portugal to conquer the

The maltreatment continued throughout with evidence of this happening in Mexico with mass enslavement of natives on the Yucatan peninsula perpetrated in 1526 by Royal militants against rebellious natives more than ten years after the laws were decreed (Maxwell, 58). Though there was a development of clergy awareness in the rest of Latin American, notably by Bishop Bartholomé de las Casas in 1547 in which he demands all native slaves owned by Spaniards to be liberated, as he mistakenly believed the sole purpose of Spanish presence was to convert natives (Maxwell, 65). This leads to a sort of liberation to the owned slaves of Spaniards as they transition from perpetual servitude to indentured servitude, which does not change much in treatment of natives but it did change their residences. The liberation was later upheld by the papal bull Sublimus deus, that rejected the immoral decree held by Spaniards in America where “Indians” were subhuman and unworthy of having human rights; once again, the Latin American conquistadors do not follow it as is orders (Maxwell,