The Papal Bull ‘Inter caetera’ (the first two words of the Bull and translated as ‘Among others’) was issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493. Generally, this is the Bull most people are referring to when they discuss the Doctrine of Discovery. It was issued about 6 months after Columbus had made landfall in what became known at the time as the ‘New World’ and was an effort by Alexander to reduce the tensions between two major nations, Spain and Portugal, who were both actively exploring uncharted and unknown territories.
In fact, this Bull was the third of four issued by Alexander on this topic in 1493. Two on May 3rd, this one on May 4th, and the last one on September 26th. This group of Bulls are referred to as the ‘Bulls of Donation’, and also as the ‘Alexandrine Bulls’. But it is this third one that establishes a boundary and divides the world in two – one half for Spain and the other half for Portugal. It is addressed to the Spanish monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, but Portugal’s King John’s ambassador to Rome was aware of it and probably received a copy. It is a long and ‘wordy’ document, much like the 1452 ‘Dum Diversas’ by Pope Nicholas V. The pronouncement that divides the world in two is actually in the document twice. The following is the portion that contains the second instance:
“Moreover we command you in virtue of holy obedience that, employing all due diligence in the premises, as you also promise — nor do we doubt your compliance therein in accordance with your loyalty and royal greatness of spirit — you should appoint to the aforesaid mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled, and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals. Furthermore, under penalty of excommunication late sententie [automatically and immediate] to be incurred ipso facto [by the very fact], should anyone thus contravene, we strictly forbid all persons of whatsoever rank, even imperial and royal, or of whatsoever estate, degree, order, or condition, to dare, without your special permit or that of your aforesaid heirs and successors, to go for the purpose of trade or any other reason to the islands or mainlands, found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered, towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic pole to the Antarctic pole, no matter whether the mainlands and islands, found and to be found, lie in the direction of India or toward any other quarter whatsoever, the said line to be distant one hundred leagues [280 miles] towards the west and south, as is aforesaid, from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde; apostolic constitutions and ordinances and other decrees whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding.” (Bold Text and [Definition/Clarification] added)
Primary source: PAPAL ENCYCLICALS ONLINE
While Alexander did not include the same rhetoric regarding the inhabitants that we saw in Nicholas’s document, he did manage to include the qualifications he expected for those who would be selected to administer the acquired territories. After all, it had been forty years since Nicholas had issued Dum Diversas, so it can probably be assumed that the practices of domination and ‘perpetual servitude’ were well established and needed no further embellishment.
The problem with the Bulls of Donation for Portugal was the line drawn gave them very little access to any land west of the boundary. It provided only a very small sliver of the eastern most part of what is now Brazil. Some Portugal ship captains had noted a coastline to the West as they sailed the southern Atlantic seas in search for a passage around Africa to gain access to the East. I haven’t uncovered any documentation that Portugal actually landed in South America before the early 16th century, but scholars who have studied the journals of those early Portuguese explorers, think some entries indicate they were following previously established routes and landing at known destinations. Perhaps King John II of Portugal needed to protect some land that was claimed by his explorers and were beyond that original 1493 boundary. In any event, he felt strongly enough about the matter to ask the Spanish monarchs to consider agreeing to a more westerly position of the line established by Alexander’s Bull.
Spain did agree and a series of meetings and consultations were convened in the Spanish town of Tordesillas. On June 7, 1494 the two countries accepted the terms of a treaty known as the Tordesillas Treaty. The boundary line was increased from 100 leagues to 370 leagues [1,034 miles] to the west of the Azores and Cape Verde. This revision gave Portugal a much larger footprint in South America and at the same time didn’t disturb the lands Spain was already invading.
While this was an important agreement for Spain and Portugal, the other European nations didn’t pay much attention to it and began to pursue their own colonization strategies. With the circumnavigation of the globe in 1522 which essentially changed the world view, this static boundary ceased to have any practical purpose.
Primary source for Tordesillas Treaty: Amy McKenna, Editor – Encyclopedia Britannica
An important point of this Papal Bull is the perceived (and in some quarters actual) control the Catholic Church held over all levels of life during this period of history. It is another example of the supremacy assumed by one man – albeit a Pope – to comfortable divide the world in half, giving those halves to two countries with unlimited power to rule their part of the world. Though the division wasn’t totally effective, this ‘Bull of Donation’ certainly set the tone for many of the colonization practices that followed.
Here’s a graphic that displays the 1493 Alexander line and the 1494 Tordesillas line:
