April, Columbus was in Barcelona in the presence of the Catholic sovereigns. On the 3d of May, Pope Alexander VI., in response to their request, issued his first Bull granting the sovereigns exclusive rights over the newly discovered lands. Evidently no time was lost. Why this appeal to the Pope, and why such haste, are questions which at once suggest themselves.
The pretensions of the later Popes of the Middle Ages to the sovereignty of the world are well known to historical students. It became not uncommon for the Popes to grant all territory wrested from the infidels to the victorious Christian prince. Among the many examples of the exercise of this divine sovereign right, the papal grants to Portugal in the latter half of the fifteenth century form important links in the chain of events under discussion. Nicolas V.,[1] June 18, 1452, authorized Alphonso V. of Portugal to attack and subdue any or all Saracen, pagan, and other infidel communities whatsoever, to reduce their inhabitants to perpetual servitude, and to take possession of all their property. Any one who attempted to infringe or defeat this grant would
- ↑ Following Barros, almost all writers mention a Bull of Martin V., e. g., Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo Mundo, 159. Barros says that Prince Henry asked Martin V. for a grant of all the land he should discover from Cape Bojador to the Indies: "que . . . lhe aprouvesse conceder perpetua doaçao a Coroa destes Reynos de toda a terre que se descubrisse per este nosso Mar Oceano do Cabo Bojador té as Indias inclusivé." Da Asia de João de Barros, Dec. I, Lib. I, cap. ii. No such Bull of Martin V. has come down to recent times, and it is altogether probable that Barros wrote Martin V. when he should have written Nicolas V. If such a Bull had been promulgated by Martin V. it would have been included in the great Bull of Leo X. of Nov. 3, 1514, see p. 203. Prince Henry requested Pope Eugene IV. to grant indulgences in favor of those who perished in his expeditions. Azurara, Cronica de Guiné, cap. xv. The Bull of Jan. 5, 1443, was granted in response to this request and granted both the indulgences and the possession of territories wrested from the infidels. Alguns Documentos do Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo Acerca das Nauegações e conquistas Portugezas, Lisbon, 1892, 7. As a precedent for the Demarcation Bulls the grant of the Canaries to Louis of Spain by Clement VI., Nov. 15, 1344, is important. The Bull is translated by D'Avezac in his Iles de l' Afrique, Paris, 1848, part 3, 152–53. The original text and accompanying documents may be read in Theiner's ed. of the Annals of Baronius and Raynaldus, XXV, 341–46. This grant was more like a feudal investiture than the later grants to Portugal.
