Romanus Pontifex
Romanus Pontifex (from Latin: "The Roman Pontiff") is the title of at least three papal bulls: Around 1312 Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello discovered the Canary Islands.
[3]: 11 On January 5, 1443, in the papal bull Rex regum, Eugenius IV had taken a neutral position on the disputed claims of Castile and Portugal over territory in Africa.
[3]: 12 It was not until Afonso V of Portugal responded to a papal call for aid against the Turks, who eventually seized Constantinople in 1453, that Pope Nicholas V supported the Portuguese claims in the bull Dum Diversas.
[10] The bull, issued in January 1455, endorsed Portuguese possession of Ceuta (which they already held) and the exclusive right to trade, navigation, and fishing in the discovered lands.
[12] The substance of the Bull's articles are as follows: The Roman pontiff, successor of the key-bearer of the heavenly kingdom and vicar of Jesus Christ, contemplating with a father's mind all the several climes of the world and the characteristics of all the nations dwelling in them and seeking and desiring the salvation of all, wholesomely ordains and disposes upon careful deliberation those things which he sees will be agreeable to the Divine Majesty and by which he may bring the sheep entrusted to him by God into the single divine fold, and may acquire for them the reward of eternal felicity, and obtain pardon for their souls.
This we believe will more certainly come to pass, through the aid of the Lord, if we bestow suitable favors and special graces on those Catholic kings and princes, who, like athletes and intrepid champions of the Christian faith, as we know by the evidence of facts, not only restrain the savage excesses of the Saracens and of other infidels, enemies of the Christian name, but also for the defense and increase of the faith vanquish them and their kingdoms and habitations, though situated in the remotest parts unknown to us, and ... the said infante ... believing that he would best perform his duty to God in this matter, if by his effort and industry that sea might become navigable as far as to the Indians who are said to worship the name of Christ, and that thus he might be able to enter into relation with them, and to incite them to aid the Christians against the Saracens ... ... to conserve their right and possession, [the said king and infante] under certain most severe penalties then expressed, have prohibited and in general have ordained that none, unless with their sailors and ships and on payment of a certain tribute and with an express license previously obtained from the said king or infante, should presume to sail to the said provinces or to trade in their ports or to fish in the sea,
Historian Stephen Bown notes that "Prince Henry and King Afonso V had now also shrouded Portuguese commercial activities in a cloak of pious devotion to the church's work".
[10]: 74 Along with the right of conquest, Romanus Pontifex effectively made the Portuguese king and his representatives the church's direct agents of ecclesiastical administration and expansion.
[11] The Portuguese authorities sent to colonise lands were not only commanded to build churches, monasteries, and holy places, but also authorized to send over to them any ecclesiastical persons whatsoever, as volunteers, both seculars, and regulars of any of the mendicant orders (with license, however, from their superiors), and that those persons may abide there as long as they shall live, and hear confessions of all who live in the said parts or who come thither, and after the confessions have been heard they may give due absolution in all cases, except those reserved to the aforesaid see, and enjoin salutary penance, and also administer the ecclesiastical sacraments freely and lawfully ...[15]This authority to appoint missioners was granted to Afonso and his successors.
Pope Paul III publicly sanctioned slavery in Rome in 1545, the enslavement of Englishmen who supported Henry VIII after he had been excommunicated,[16][17] and the purchase of Muslim slaves in 1548.
[18] Norman Housley observes that "it would be unfair to criticize the papal court exclusively for its failure to be more discriminating in its grants or to take more frequently the kind of action which Eugenius IV adopted in 1454 over the Canaries.
