Bartolome De Las Casas Essay

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In Europe around the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Catholic Church was faced with a challenge that it has continually battled for centuries: a critic. A person, or group of people that do not agree with some action or teaching of church and decide to share their opinions in a public manner. Ordinarily, the Church has been able to suppress these critics in the past by deeming them off as heretics and excommunicating them. However, this particular time period proved most problematic to the Church as a result of the invention of the printing press, allowing these critics to spread their opposition over a vast majority of the empires with which they reside. The invention was successful, and different ideas were widespread across …show more content…
Las Casas embarked on numerous expeditions to the New World and saw first hand the injustices being done to the natives by the Spaniards whom he categorizes into one overarching label of “Christians”. After seeing in person the unfair treatment of the Indians, Las Casas decides to become an advocate for the Indians and he wrote a series of his personal accounts called A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies to send to the King of Spain in hopes that something will be done to change. Unlike Luther’s writings, Las Casas’ work is not openly a critique of the Church. He directs his attention onto Spain directly, but his constants mentioning of “Christians” insinuates a slight attack on the Church and its concept of religious …show more content…
He quotes: “God made all the people of this area as open and as innocent as can be imagined-they are without malice or guile” (Las Casas, 9). Las Casas continually portrays the Indians as completely good and completely defenseless, yet the “Christians” took advantage and tried to impale the Christian faith upon them and steal their gold. His argument proposes two flaws. The first is his failure to consider all aspects of the destruction of the indies and secondly, he essentially promotes freedom of the faith of the

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