WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

this system from their experience along the Mediterranean during the crusades and perfected by
the Genoese in the fourteenth century. 55
The initial privatization of the African and North Atlantic expansion sustained this
stalemate for roughly ninety years. Nevertheless, as “infidel” peoples became more wary of
European encroachments and as continued financing of European exploration required an
increase of state involvement the maintenance of this legal limbo became untenable. As James
Muldoon has argued, secular and military institutions increasingly felt impeded by the Church’s
claim to absolute spiritual authority over the world. In turn, the expansion of European powers
into the Atlantic increasingly undermined the evangelizing efforts of the Church and the
presence of its prelates by making natives hostile to European presence. 56 This conflict finally
came to a watershed in 1433. An armed raid into the Canaries, led by the Portuguese Henry the
Navigator, spurred the ire of the presiding prelate Juan de Baeza when the Prince’s armada
unabashedly pillaged the Islands for slaves. Baeza appealed to the Pope Eugene IV for help,
calling the Prince’s raid an illegal act of piracy. 57
The Pontiff’s response was decisive, swift, and seemingly unprecedented. Within months
of Baeza’s complaint, Eugene proclaimed that any person, who enslaved, took the property, or
hindered the free movement of the Canarians, “excommunicacionis senteniam ipso facto
incurrant” ‘would incur the sentence of excommunication ipso facto.’ 58 He also attempted to
redress the harm done by these raids ordering all Christians to restore enslaved Canarians to their
lands immediately (or within fifteen days after receiving the notice) under pain of
55
Charles Verlinden, “Italian Influence in Iberian Colonization,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 33. 2
(May, 1953): 203-204.
56
Muldoon Popes 100-120.
57
Monumenta 6.119-120 note 1.
58
“excummunicacionis sentenciam incurrere uolumus omnes et singulos qui eosdem canarios baptisatos aut ad
baptismum uoluntarie uenientes capere aut uendere uel seruituti subicere attemptabunt” ‘We wish everyone and
each person, who will attempt to take or sell or subject to slavery these same baptized Canarians or coming
voluntarily to baptism, to incur the sentence of excommunication’ (Ibid 6.122).
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