{
  "id": "feudo-de-la-iglesia-y-la-licencia-de-los-reyes",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Were the Indies a papal fief? The four paragraphs that deny it, and the practice they concede",
  "summary": "Política Indiana libro I capítulo XI closes by answering Bodin, who granted that Alexander VI could give the Indies but held the kings thereby became vassals and feudatories of the Church. §§38-39 deny it — no fief was reserved in the grant, and none exists in the crowns of Spain. §40 goes further: the kings could have acted on their own authority. Then §41 records that they laid their wars before the Sacred Consistory first.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "colonial-law",
    "law-of-the-indies",
    "legal-history",
    "jurisprudence",
    "international-law",
    "canon-law",
    "diplomacy",
    "spanish-empire",
    "americas",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "eighteenth-century",
    "books",
    "europe"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "retencion-de-las-indias-y-el-pecado-de-abandonarlas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "dominio-o-tutela-en-la-concesion-pontificia"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mare-clausum-y-la-navegacion-exclusiva-a-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "bula-de-alexandro-vi-en-romance"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "potestad-indirecta-y-el-titulo-de-la-predicacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "patronato-real-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vazquez-de-menchaca-controversiarum-illustrium"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "school-of-salamanca"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "consejo-de-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Were the Spanish Indies held as a fief of the papacy?",
    "What did Bodin say about Alexander VI's grant of the Indies?",
    "Did the kings of Spain need papal permission to make war?",
    "What was the Sacred Consistory's role in Spanish declarations of war?",
    "How did Spanish jurists limit papal authority over the Indies?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The objection is French and it is stated as a concession that turns into a trap. §38 of Política Indiana libro I capítulo XI, page 48 of the 1736 Madrid impression: \"En este solo nos resta por apuntar, que aun el Bodino reconoce, que Alexandro VI. quiso, y pudo dár este pleno dominio de las Indias, de que tratamos, à nuestros Reyes: pero añade, que por virtud de esta concession quedaron Vassallos, y Feudatarios de la Iglesia. Lo qual parece, que quiere tambien apoyar el Doctor Martha.\" The concession that the pope could grant is what makes the consequence dangerous: a grant implies a grantor, and a grantor may imply a lord. Neither Bodin's work nor Martha's was opened here.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The first answer imputes a programme to both authors and then argues from the instrument. §38 continues: \"Pero ambos con conocido engaño, y siguiendo el intento, que llevan, de quitar sin causa à los mas Reyes la suprema dominacion, como lo advierte el gran Consejero Gregorio Lopez Madera. Siendo assi, que ni en la concession, ni en los tratados de ella se hizo mencion de la reservacion de tal feudo, sin la qual no se suele, ni puede inducir segun los Doctores.\" The decisive point is documentary: no feudal reservation appears in the bull or in the negotiations, and on the common doctrine a fief cannot be inferred where none was reserved.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The second answer argues from the constitutional position of the Indies within the monarchy. §39: \"Y mucho menos por ser las Indias accessoriamente vnidas à los Reynos de España: pues en ellos tampoco se halla tal feudo, antes gozan de total exempcion, como en nuestros terminos, fuera de otros, lo advierte Fr. Domingo de Soto, y Camilo Borrelo.\" The argument runs from the accessory union of the Indies to the Spanish crowns: whatever those crowns are free of, the Indies are free of. Soto and Borrelo are named for it and neither was opened here.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "§40 states the maximal position the treatise is willing to report, and it removes the papal grant from the foundations altogether: following \"la opinion de muchos, y graves Autores\", although the kings, \"como tan Pios, Fieles, y Catholicos hijos de la Iglesia acudieron à ella à dár noticia del descubrimiento de las Indias, y pedir su licencia, y bendicion para continuarle, y hacer suyo, lo que ganassen, lo pudieran haver hecho por sola su autoridad, y que no la prejudicaron ni aun quando pretendieran por esta via cumular mas titulos, y derechos, ò consolidar, los que por ser Reyes les competian.\" Asking the pope is recast as piety rather than necessity, and as cumulative rather than constitutive of the title.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "§41, the last paragraph of the chapter, is the counterweight, and it concedes in practice what the three preceding paragraphs deny in law. The kings do not lose \"el derecho, que en sí, y por sí tienen, de poder mover, y hacer guerras à sus enemigos, quando les pareciere ser justo, y conveniente, aunque llevados de la mesma piedad, y reverencia à la Sede Apostolica, pocas vezes las pongan en execucion, sin darle primero quenta por sus Embaxadores, y hacer, que se refieran, y ventilen las causas en el Sacro Consistorio de sus Cardenales, como lo refiere Camilo Borrelo: cosa digna de perpetua observancia, y alabanza, y que parece assegura los buenos successos de las mesmas guerras, que de ordinario las atribuye Dios à la justificacion de sus causas.\"",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The shape of the four paragraphs is therefore a denial of juridical subordination alongside a record of voluntary submission: no fief, no necessary licence, and yet the causes of war referred through ambassadors to a college of cardinals before the war is begun, with the practice praised as worthy of perpetual observance. That the two halves stand in tension — that a crown which owes nothing nevertheless submits its war aims to an external forum and commends itself for doing so — is this corpus's reading of the passage, not a statement of the page; the page presents both without remarking on the contrast. The practice is reported at second hand from Borrelo and is not documented here from any act of the Consistory.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "What this entry establishes and what it does not. It establishes that the standard treatise on the law of the Indies closed its chapter on the rights acquired by the bull by denying that the Indies were held in fief of the papacy; that it attributed the vassalage thesis to Bodin and to Doctor Martha and answered it on the ground that no such reservation appears in the grant or its treaties; that it held the Indies accessorily united to the crowns of Spain, which are subject to no such fief; that it reported a body of authors holding the kings could have proceeded on their own authority without a papal licence at all; and that it recorded, and praised, the practice of referring the causes of their wars to the Sacred Consistory through ambassadors first. It does not establish what Bodin, Martha, Gregorio López Madera, Domingo de Soto or Camilo Borrelo actually wrote — none of those printings was opened, and each is known here only as these four paragraphs report it — and it does not establish that any particular war was in fact so referred.",
      "sources": [
        "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-feudo-y-licencia-pontificia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The papal bull that assigned the Indies to Castile is covered everywhere the search for this entry reached; what the Spanish crown's own jurists thought it had NOT done is covered almost nowhere, and it is the more consequential question, because it decides whether the Spanish presence in the Americas rested on a papal title that a later pope could revisit. This entry gives the answer in the treatise's printed words: Bodin's vassalage thesis named and refuted from the silence of the instrument, the Indies placed inside the exemption of the Spanish crowns, and a body of opinion reported at §40 that the kings needed no licence at all — which makes the bull a confirmation rather than a foundation. Against that it sets, from the same page and in the same voice, the paragraph that a triumphalist account would drop: §41's record that the kings nevertheless sent their war causes to be ventilated in the Sacred Consistory before acting, and called the habit worthy of perpetual observance.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-29",
  "media": [],
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    "name": "Were the Indies a papal fief? The four paragraphs that deny it, and the practice they concede",
    "description": "Política Indiana libro I capítulo XI closes by answering Bodin, who granted that Alexander VI could give the Indies but held the kings thereby became vassals and feudatories of the Church. §§38-39 deny it — no fief was reserved in the grant, and none exists in the crowns of Spain. §40 goes further: the kings could have acted on their own authority. Then §41 records that they laid their wars before the Sacred Consistory first.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/feudo-de-la-iglesia-y-la-licencia-de-los-reyes",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-29",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Política Indiana, libro I, capítulo XI, §§38-41 — whether the Indies remained a fief in the pope's favour, whether the kings needed his licence, and the practice of laying their wars before the Sacred Consistory: at §38 that 'aun el Bodino reconoce, que Alexandro VI. quiso, y pudo dár este pleno dominio de las Indias, de que tratamos, à nuestros Reyes: pero añade, que por virtud de esta concession quedaron Vassallos, y Feudatarios de la Iglesia. Lo qual parece, que quiere tambien apoyar el Doctor Martha', and that both err 'con conocido engaño, y siguiendo el intento, que llevan, de quitar sin causa à los mas Reyes la suprema dominacion, como lo advierte el gran Consejero Gregorio Lopez Madera', since 'ni en la concession, ni en los tratados de ella se hizo mencion de la reservacion de tal feudo, sin la qual no se suele, ni puede inducir segun los Doctores'; at §39 that still less can it hold 'por ser las Indias accessoriamente vnidas à los Reynos de España: pues en ellos tampoco se halla tal feudo', as 'Fr. Domingo de Soto, y Camilo Borrelo' note; at §40 that following 'la opinion de muchos, y graves Autores', although the kings 'como tan Pios, Fieles, y Catholicos hijos de la Iglesia acudieron à ella à dár noticia del descubrimiento de las Indias, y pedir su licencia, y bendicion para continuarle, y hacer suyo, lo que ganassen, lo pudieran haver hecho por sola su autoridad', and did not prejudice it even in seeking to cumulate further titles 'ò consolidar, los que por ser Reyes les competian'; and at §41 that neither do they lose 'el derecho, que en sí, y por sí tienen, de poder mover, y hacer guerras à sus enemigos, quando les pareciere ser justo, y conveniente, aunque llevados de la mesma piedad, y reverencia à la Sede Apostolica, pocas vezes las pongan en execucion, sin darle primero quenta por sus Embaxadores, y hacer, que se refieran, y ventilen las causas en el Sacro Consistorio de sus Cardenales, como lo refiere Camilo Borrelo: cosa digna de perpetua observancia, y alabanza, y que parece assegura los buenos successos de las mesmas guerras, que de ordinario las atribuye Dios à la justificacion de sus causas'",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=huEykw_YtzYC&pg=PA48"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Were the Indies a papal fief? The four paragraphs that deny it, and the practice they concede"
  }
}