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A Dominican Voice in the
Wilderness: Preaching Against Tyranny in
(1550) The Dominican friars had already
pondered on the sad life and harsh captivity suffered by the natives on the
island and had noticed the Spanish lack of concern for their fate except as a
business loss which brought about no softening of their oppression. There
were two kinds of Spaniards, one very cruel and pitiless, whose goal was to
squeeze the last drop of Indian blood in order to get rich, and one less
cruel, who must have felt sorry for the Indians; but in each case they placed
their own interests above the health and salvation of those poor people. Of
all those who used Indians, I knew only one man, Pedro de Renter --of whom
there will be much to say later, if God so wills--who was pious toward them.
The friars, then, weighed these matters as well as the innocence, the
inestimable patience and the gentleness of Indians, and deliberated on the
following points among themselves. Weren't these people human beings? Wasn't
justice and charity owed them? Had they no right to their own territory,
their own kingdoms? Have they offended us? Aren't we under obligation to
preach to them the Christian religion and work diligently toward their conversion?
How is it that in fifteen or sixteen years their number has so decreased,
since they tell us how crowded it was when they first came here?... The most scholarly among them [the
Dominicans] composed the first sermon on the subject by order of their superior,
fray Pedro de Cordoba, and they all signed it to show that it represented
common sentiment and not that of the preacher alone. They gave it to their
most important preacher, Fray Anton Montesino, who
was the second of three preachers the Order had sent here. Fray Anton Montesino's talent lay in a certain
sternness when reproaching faults and a certain way of reading sermons both
choleric and efficient, which was thought to reap great results. So then, as
a very animated speaker, they gave him that first sermon on such a new theme;
the novelty consisting in saying that killing a man is more serious than
killing a beetle. They set aside the fourth week of Advent for the sermon,
since the Gospel according to At the appointed time Fray Anton Montesino went to the pulpit and announced the theme of
the sermon: Ego vox clamantis
in deserto. After the introductory words on Advent,
he compared the sterility of the desert to the conscience of the Spaniards
who lived on [Although the settlers request that the
Dominicans apologize, Frey Montesino preaches
again.] To return to the subject: they left the
church in a state of rage and again salted their meal that day with
bitterness. Not bothering with the friars, since conversation with them had
proved useless, they decided to tell the King [Ferdinand] on the first
occasion that the Dominicans had scandalized the world by spreading a new
doctrine that condemned them all to Hell because they used Indians in the
mines, a doctrine that went against the orders of His Highness and aimed at
nothing else but to deprive him of both power and a source of income. The
King required an interview with the Castilian provincial of the Order--the
friars of Credits: Bartolome de Las Casas, History of the |