Romanus Pontifex

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The Romanus Pontifex[1] is a papal bull written January 8, 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to Alfonso V of Portugal. As a follow-up to the Dum diversas, it extended to the Catholic nations of Europe dominion over discovered lands during the Age of Discovery. Along with sanctifying the seizure of non-Christian lands, it encouraged the enslavement of native, non-Christian peoples in Africa and the New World.

Aside from long passages of praise for the success of earlier expeditions of conquest into Africa and a call to limit trading on terms of equality with non-Christians, the weight of the Bull's precedents exist in the passages:

"..those Catholic kings and princes, who... not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and subject them to their own temporal dominion, sparing no labor and expense, in order that those kings and princes, relieved of all obstacles, may be the more animated to the prosecution of so salutary and laudable a work."
"...weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso -- to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit -- by having secured the said faculty, the said King Alfonso, or, by his authority, the aforesaid infante, justly and lawfully has acquired and possessed, and doth possess, these islands, lands, harbors, and seas, and they do of right belong and pertain to the said King Alfonso and his successors"

These passages specifically granted to nations and explorers cause to seek out lands unknown to Christians. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued the Inter Caetera stating one Christian nation did not have the right to establish dominion over lands previously dominated by another Christian nation, thus establishing the Law of Nations. Together, the Dum Diversas, the Romanus Pontifex and the Inter Caetera came to serve as the basis and justification for the Doctrine of discovery, the global slave-trade of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Age of Imperialism.

The rights bestowed by the Romanus Pontifex have never fallen from use, serving as the basis for legal arguments over the centuries. The United States Supreme Court ruled in the 1823 case Johnson v. M'Intosh that as a result of European discovery and assumption of ultimate dominion, Native Americans had only a right to occupancy of native lands, not the right of title. This decision was upheld in the 1831 case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, giving Georgia authority to extend state laws over Cherokees within the state, and famously describing Native American tribes as "domestic dependent nations". This decision was modified in Worcester v. Georgia, which stated that the U.S. Federal Government, and not individual states, had authority in Indian affairs, but it maintained the loss of right to title upon discovery by Europeans.

In recent years, Native American groups including the Taino and Onondaga have called on the Vatican to revoke the Bulls of 1452, 1453, and 1493.


[edit] References

  1. ^ See full text pp.13-20 (Latin) and pp.20-26 (English) in European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648, Washington, D.C., Frances Gardiner Davenport, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917-37 - Google Books. Reprint edition, 4 vols., (October 2004), Lawbook Exchange, ISBN 1584774223

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

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