Sublimis Deus
papal bull which forbids the enslavement of any people
Sublimis Deus (English: The sublime God; erroneously cited as Sublimus Dei) is a Papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on 2 June 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas (called "Indians of the West and the South") and all other Indigenous people who could be discovered later or previously known. It states that the Indians are fully rational human beings who have rights to freedom and property, even if they are heathen.
In Sublimis Deus, Paul III declares the Indigenous peoples of the Americas to be "truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it", and denounces any idea to the contrary as directly inspired by the "enemy of the human race". He goes on to condemn their reduction to slavery in the strongest terms, declaring it null and void for any people known as well as any that could be discovered in the future, entitles their right to liberty and property, and concludes with a call for their evangelization.
The bull had a strong impact on the Valladolid debate. Its principles became part of New Laws issued by Charles V in Spain, although such laws were often ignored by the colonists and conquistadores themselves.
The ecclesiastical letter Pastorale officium, issued a few days before the encyclical, imposed excommunication on conquerors who enslave the Indigenous people. This punishment was subsequently repealed after petition by the Emperor.
Background
With the realization that the Americas represented regions of the Earth of which the Europeans were not aware earlier, there arose intense speculation over the question whether the natives of these lands were natural slaves (and perhaps lesser humans) or not. Together with that went a debate over the (mis)treatment of these natives by the Conquistadores and colonists.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sublimis Deus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.