{
  "id": "bulas-de-paulo-iii-de-1537",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The two apostolic letters of 1537 on the liberty of the Indians (Pastorale officium and Veritas ipsa / Sublimis Deus)",
  "summary": "Two acts of Paul III, four days apart in 1537: a brief to the Cardinal of Toledo threatening excommunication against anyone who enslaved the Indians, and the constitution declaring them \"veros homines\" who could not be deprived of liberty or property though they stood outside the faith. Read from a collection that prints both in Latin — including the fact usually left out, that the brief says the pope acted because the Emperor had already forbidden the same by public edict.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "colonial-law",
    "indigenous-peoples",
    "human-rights",
    "religion",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "spanish-empire",
    "slavery",
    "documents"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "altitudo-divini-consilii-1537"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "omnimoda-de-adriano-vi-1522"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "valladolid-debate"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "bartolome-de-las-casas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "montesinos-sermon-1511"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "new-laws-of-1542"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "encomienda"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vitoria-relectio-de-indis-1557"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanzas-para-el-tratamiento-de-los-indios-1513"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What did the bull Sublimis Deus of 1537 actually say?",
    "Why is Sublimis Deus also called Veritas ipsa?",
    "What was Pastorale officium?",
    "Did Charles V prohibit the enslavement of the Indians before the pope did?",
    "What penalty did Paul III attach to enslaving Indians?",
    "Where does Spanish law record the liberty of the Indians?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Both documents are read here from the Latin printed in the first volume of Francisco Javier Hernaez's Coleccion de Bulas, Breves y otros Documentos relativos a la Iglesia de America y Filipinas (Brussels, 1879), under the running head \"Privilegios primitivos de los indigenas\". That is a nineteenth-century compilation and not the chancery original, so the evidence tier of this object follows the compilation and not the age of the texts inside it. The volume states where each text was taken from: the brief to the Cardinal of Toledo from \"Bullar. de Propaganda Fide App. tom. 1, p. 26\", the constitution from \"Extat apud Haroldum Lima Limata, pag. 338\".",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The first act is a brief, not a bull, and it is addressed to a Spanish prelate rather than to the Indies. Its head reads \"Paulo III escribe al Cardenal Toledano, Tabera, para que los Indios no sean reducidos a esclavitud\", and the text opens \"Cardinali Toletano etc. — Dilecte fili noster… Pastorale officium erga oves nobis coelitus creditas, solerti studio exercentes\". It is dated at Rome, under the Fisherman's ring, \"die 29 Maji 1537 Pontificatus nostri anno tertio\".",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The brief gives the Emperor's prior prohibition as the reason the pope is acting, which is the reverse of the order in which the episode is usually told. \"Ad nostrum siquidem pervenit auditum\", it says, that Charles, Roman Emperor and King of Castile and Leon, in order to repress those who \"contra humanum genus inhumanum gerunt animum, publico edicto omnibus sibi subjectis prohibuit, ne quisquam occidentales aut meridionales Indos in servitutem redigere aut eos bonis suis privare praesumat\". The pope then commissions the Cardinal, by himself or by others, to assist the Indians with the protection of an effective defence, forbidding any person of whatever dignity, status, condition or degree to reduce them to servitude or despoil them, \"sub excommunicationis latae sententiae poena, si secus fecerint, ipso facto incurrenda\", from which none but the pope may absolve except at the point of death and after satisfaction.",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The famous constitution is printed here under the incipit Veritas ipsa, not Sublimis Deus — a detail that matters for anyone trying to find the text, since the two names, together with Excelsus Deus, belong to the same act. The compilation heads it \"El mismo Paulo III vuelve a prohibir la esclavitud de los Indios, y se queja de que los traten indignamente sus amos\" and begins \"Paulus Papa III: Universis Christi fidelibus praesentes litteras inspecturis… Veritas ipsa quae nec falli, nec fallere potest, cum Praedicatores fidei ad officium praedicationis destinaret, dixisse dignoscitur: euntes docete omnes gentes\".",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The operative sentence is a declaration about who the Indians are and what cannot be done to them, and it covers peoples not yet contacted. Attending, it says, \"Indos ipsos, utpote veros homines, non solum Christianae fidei capaces existere, sed, ut nobis innotuit, ad fidem ipsam promptissime currere\", the pope decrees and declares by apostolic authority that \"praedictos Indos et omnes alias gentes ad notitiam Christianorum in posterum deventuras, licet extra fidem existant, sua libertate ac rerum suarum dominio privatos seu privandos non esse, imo libertate et dominio hujusmodi uti, et potiri, et gaudere libere et licite posse, nec in servitutem redigi debere: ac quidquid secus fieri contigerit, irritum et inane\"; and that they are to be invited to the faith of Christ by the preaching of the word and the example of a good life. It is dated \"Romae anno 1537, quarto Nonas Junii, Pontificatus nostri anno tertio\" — 2 June 1537, four days after the brief.",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The text says plainly what it is condemning. It describes the enemy of the human race as having stirred up \"quosdam suos satellites\" who, wanting to satisfy their own greed, oppress \"occidentales et meridionales Indos et alias gentes, quae temporibus istis ad nostram notitiam pervenerunt\" under the pretext that they are strangers to the Catholic faith, driving them \"uti bruta animalia illis servientia\". The compilation's own note glosses the phrase Orci satelites, satellites of hell, and attributes the wording to reports from the Bishop of Chiapas.",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The prohibition the brief attributes to the Emperor is compiled in Castilian law, and the law's own head-note dates it earlier than either papal act. In the 1791 fourth impression of the Recopilacion de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, libro VI opens its second title \"DE LA LIBERTAD DE LOS INDIOS\" with \"Ley j. Que los Indios sean libres, y no sujetos a servidumbre\", carrying the promulgation line \"El Emperador D. Carlos en Granada a 9 de Noviembre de 1526. En Madrid a 2 de Agosto de 1530. En Medina del Campo a 13 de Enero de 1532. En Madrid a 5 de Noviembre de 1540. En Valladolid a 21 de Mayo de 1542. En Castellon de Ampurias a 24 de Octubre de 1548.\" The law forbids any Adelantado, governor, captain, alcaide \"ni otra persona, de qualquier estado, dignidad, oficio, o calidad que sea\" to captive Indians in time of peace or of war \"aunque justa, y mandada hacer por Nos\", or to take, sell, exchange or hold any Indian as a slave under title of just war, purchase, ransom or barter, \"ni por otra qualquier causa, aunque sea de los Indios, que los mismos naturales tenian, tienen, o tuvieren entre si por esclavos\". The penalty is loss of all goods to the Camara and Fisco, and the Indians \"sean luego vueltos, y restituidos a sus propias tierras, y naturalezas, con entera, y natural libertad, a costa de los que asi los cautivaren\"; justices who fail in it lose their office and pay a hundred thousand maravedis. Read as a page scan at PA201 of the second volume on 2026-08-18.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "That the brief's \"publico edicto\" is one of the acts compiled in that law is the natural reading, but this object does not assert it. Neither document names the other, the compiled law fuses six promulgations from 1526 to 1548 into a single text, and nothing on the pages read here identifies which edict reached Rome. What the two sources jointly establish is narrower and still worth stating: a general prohibition on enslaving Indians was being issued in Castile from the 1520s, and the papal brief of 1537 presents itself as reinforcing an imperial prohibition already in existence rather than as correcting a crown that had none.",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1",
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The same law records the limit of its own generality, and it is not a small one. The prohibition holds \"excepto en los casos, y naciones, que por las leyes de este titulo estuviere permitido\" — the general liberty of the Indians was a rule with statutory exceptions written into the same title, and the enslavement of Africans is not touched by any of these texts at all. Neither the brief nor the constitution of 1537 mentions Africans; both speak of the Indians of the west and south and of peoples yet to be encountered.",
      "sources": [
        "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2",
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The compilation prints, next to the documents, the story of the reversal that produced them, and it is unflattering to everyone in it. Quoting Gomara's Historia de las Indias, cap. 217, the note says that \"Fr. Tomas Ortiz Dominicano y otros de su Orden aconsejaron la servidumbre de los Indios y otros de San Francisco\", that Fr. Geronimo de Loaisa, president of the Council of the Indies and confessor to Charles V, \"dio gravisimo credito\" to the argument that for their offences the Indians deserved to be slaves, and that \"El Emperador en 1525 estando en Madrid mando que fuesen esclavos\"; the Dominicans then changed their opinion, \"reprendieron mucho la servidumbre en pulpitos y escuelas\", a fresh information was taken in 1531, and \"Fr. Rodrigo Minaya saco la Bula de Paulo III\". On this account the acts of 1537 are the end of a reversal, not the opening of the argument, and the same emperor had ordered the opposite twelve years earlier. It is reported at two removes — a nineteenth-century editor quoting a sixteenth-century chronicler — and is carried here at that strength.",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The editor of this collection is a partisan witness and the object treats his notes as opinion rather than as evidence. His commentary on the constitution argues that the phrase about satellites of hell came from \"las noticias exajeradas del Obispo de Chiapas\", sets Bernal Diaz del Castillo against Las Casas as \"testigo de vista y hombre de toda integridad y honradez\", quotes Antonio de Leon Pinelo blaming the exaggerations on \"la envidia y mala fe de los escritores estranjeros\", and asserts that \"a nombre del Rey Catolico jamas se declaro guerra a los Indios, y que si algunos escesos se cometieron, fueron propios de los particulares y de los encomenderos\". The same page also prints the concession that undercuts it, from Morelli: \"a la verdad muchas cosas sucedieron al principio que dieron ocasion a esta Constitucion y a varias cedulas reales en que se quejan amargamente los Reyes y tratan de impedir estos males.\"",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "What these pages do not show is whether either act was obeyed, and this object makes no claim that they were. They carry the texts, their dates and their penalties; they carry no record of a prosecution, an absolution refused or an enslaved person freed under them. The well-known sequel — the withdrawal of the executory brief in 1538 after the Emperor protested at a papal censure published in his dominions without his placet — is not in the pages read for this object and is therefore not asserted in it.",
      "sources": [
        "hernaez-coleccion-bulas-america-1879-t1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language pages on Sublimis Deus circulate one translated sentence about \"true men\" with no citation, rarely mention that the text is printed under the incipit Veritas ipsa, almost never mention the brief Pastorale officium of four days earlier, and tell the story as Rome correcting Spain. This object quotes the Latin of both acts from a collection opened page by page, gives the datum of each, and adds the two things that change the shape of the episode: the brief itself says the pope acted because the Emperor had already forbidden the same thing by public edict, and the crown's own Recopilacion carries the prohibition of Indian slavery with a promulgation line beginning at Granada on 9 November 1526. It then declines to close the loop between them, prints the exception clause that limited the law, records the compilation's own account of the 1525 order that went the other way, and says plainly that nothing here shows either act being enforced.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-18",
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  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/bulas-de-paulo-iii-de-1537.json",
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    "name": "The two apostolic letters of 1537 on the liberty of the Indians (Pastorale officium and Veritas ipsa / Sublimis Deus)",
    "description": "Two acts of Paul III, four days apart in 1537: a brief to the Cardinal of Toledo threatening excommunication against anyone who enslaved the Indians, and the constitution declaring them \"veros homines\" who could not be deprived of liberty or property though they stood outside the faith. Read from a collection that prints both in Latin — including the fact usually left out, that the brief says the pope acted because the Emperor had already forbidden the same by public edict.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/bulas-de-paulo-iii-de-1537",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-18",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Segundo (Libros IIII a VIII)",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PP5"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Coleccion de Bulas, Breves y otros Documentos relativos a la Iglesia de America y Filipinas, dispuesta, anotada e ilustrada por el P. Francisco Javier Hernaez, tomo I",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=DbiYHd7vL60C&pg=PA101"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The two apostolic letters of 1537 on the liberty of the Indians (Pastorale officium and Veritas ipsa / Sublimis Deus)"
  }
}