With the noise of arms or apostolically without them (Quito, 1668): the question a bishop put to the parish clergy of the Indies about how the Gospel should enter unconquered country
A manual printed for the parish clergy of Spanish America devotes a session to a single question: should preachers enter the lands of unconquered peoples with soldiers or without them? It prints more than forty authorities for the no, two royal cedulas of 1609 ordering entradas made without men of war, and the counter-evidence of missionaries killed. The bishop concludes that war to make Christians is never lawful, and that an armed escort for the missionary's own defence is.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of whether Spain thought the Gospel could be imposed by force stop at the sixteenth century - Vitoria, Las Casas, Sepulveda, Valladolid - and treat the question as settled by a debate. This object is the same question a hundred and twenty years later, in a book written not to persuade anyone but to tell working parish priests what to hold, from a volume almost never quoted in English. It gives the question in the author's own heading; it prints the freedom-of-faith argument and the nullity of forced baptism; it names Las Casas and Vitoria among more than forty authorities for the no; it quotes two royal cedulas of 1609 ordering the Chiriguano entradas made without soldiers, and then sets against them a cedula of 1526 and a letter of 1619 pointing the other way, leaving the crown's record visibly contradictory. It also keeps everything a defensive account would cut: the position the author actually adopts, which admits armed escort wherever a people is judged incapable of reason; the missing procedure that makes that test the doctrine's weak point; the dehumanising sentence from Acosta on which the case for arms leans; and the compelle intrare argument in full. The single most quotable line in it is the one a triumphalist reading could not use - that Franciscans in New Spain found it expedient to tell Indians they were not Christians, only the fathers of Christians, because the soldiers had made the name hateful.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The question is put in the heading of a session of a working manual for parish priests, in those words. Libro I, tratado X, sesion II of the Itinerario para parochos de indios asks "Si para la conversion de los Infieles serà mejor entrar a sus tierras con estrepito de armas, ò Apostolicamente sin ellas?" It is not an academic disputation: the treatise it belongs to is headed "De los Missioneros" and stands between a treatise on coadjutors and one on the wills Indians make, in a book of operating instructions for the clergy of the Indies.
The author names his own source for the shape of the argument and says he is abbreviating it. "Esta question hallé tratada con grande erudicion de Humanas, y Divinas Letras, por el Doctor Don Iuan de Solorçan. to.1.de jure Ind. pag. 441. hasta 489. donde pro utraque parte cita grandes autoridades, y fuertes razones: mi cuidado solo servirà de abreviar lo mucho que ay que dezir en esta materia." Forty-eight pages of Solorzano, argued on both sides, are being compressed into a rule a parish priest can act on.
The first position is stated as a doctrine of the freedom of the act of faith, with the nullity of forced baptism as its consequence. "La primera sentencia dize, que no conviene introducir entre Infieles la Ley Evangelica con armas, soldados, y aparatos de guerra; la razon a priori es, porque como dize S. Ambrosio in 2. ad Corinth. Quoniam fides non necessitatis, sed voluntatis res est. La Fé es acto del entendimiento, que lo quiere la voluntad libre, y no serà admitida libremente, si por nuevo temor, y violencia de armas la reciben, y serà nulo el Bautismo que reciben con fuerça, como dizen comunmente los Theologos, y consta del Derecho Canonico."
The second argument for that position is an empirical prediction about what soldiers do, and it is stated without euphemism by a bishop writing for his own clergy. When soldiers go with the preachers, "sus fuerças las emplean en robar a los Indios, servirse dellos, de sus hijas, y mugeres, ocupar sus tierras, y hazerlos trabajar hasta rebentar, con malas palabras, y aspero tratamiento"; and because the Indians "veen por sus ojos las muertes, robos, y crueldades, que con ellos usan, atribuyendo a que la ley que professan les permite semejantes injusticias, cobran grande aborrecimiento al Evangelio, y se quedan mas duros, y protervos en su infidelidad".
The book preserves one anecdote that states the problem more sharply than the argument does. Citing Fray Agustin de Avila, in Hist. Mexic. lib. 2 cap. 54, it records that through the outrages of the soldiers "algunos Indios de la Nueva España aborrecieron tanto el nombre de Christiano, que para tratar de su conversion ciertos Religiosos de buen zelo tomaron por consejo dezirles, que ellos no eran Christianos, como los soldados, sino Padres de Christianos, con que los fueron ablandando." Missionaries in New Spain found it expedient to deny that they were Christians at all.
Two royal cedulas of 1609 are quoted as ordering entradas made without men of war. The first, given at El Pardo for those entering to the conversion of the Chiriguanos in the time of the viceroy Marques de Montesclaros, is quoted as saying "Que estas entradas se hagan sin intervencion de armas, y soldados, como lo tengo ordenado, y no consentireis, que en estos descubrimientos, y conversiones intervenga gente de guerra." The second, despatched the same year, is quoted as requiring that this be done "entrando por medio de la Doctrina y suavidad del Evangelio sin ruido, ni estrepito de armas".
The authorities gathered for that position are named, and they are the canonical ones of the Spanish debate. Solorzano is said to cite more than forty doctors who treat the matter in terminis of the Indians; Manuel Rodriguez is named; and beside them "El señor Obispo de Chiapa en la Apologia contra Sepul." - Las Casas against Sepulveda - and "Victoria in relect. de Indis". They commonly affirm "que no es licito entrar con armas a nuevos descubrimientos, y conquistas, a titulo de entablar la Fé, porque estos medios de derramar sangre humana, no convienen con el fin del Evangelio, que es todo paz." The Valladolid argument is here being applied, a hundred and twenty years later, as a working rule.
The position the author adopts is not that one, and he says so in a parenthesis. "La segunda sentencia, que es de Solorçano to.1.de jur. Indiarum, l.7.c.18.n.1.y 2. (la qual yo sigo) dize, que quando los Infieles son de capacidad, y tienen modo de vivir politico, guardan la fé, y palabra que prometen, entonces es mejor, y mas conforme a derecho, predicarles el Evangelio Apostolicamente"; but where it is taken as certain that a people are "tan barbaros, que ni aguardan razon, ni cumplen palabra", it is better to enter with arms - and then only "no para obligarlos con ellas a que se bautizen por fuerça, que esso lo reprueba la misma razon", but so that the soldiers "sirvan de escolta, y guarda de los Ministros Evangelicos".
That test is the weak point of the doctrine and this entry states it plainly. The protection turns on a predicate - capacity, a political way of life, keeping one's word - which the manual does not say who is to apply, on what evidence, or subject to what review. Every party that wanted an armed entrada in the Indies argued that the people in front of it were incapable, and the book supplies the argument in the same sentence in which it supplies the restriction. The text asserts the distinction; the inference about how it would work in the field is this entry's, drawn from the absence of any procedure in the source.
The evidence offered for the armed escort is a list of missionaries killed, and it is offered as experience rather than doctrine. Religious of great virtue entered the provinces of the Omaguas and Encabellados "Apostolicamente, armados de caridad, de paciencia, y sufrimiento, y ha sido trabajar en vano, porque los Indios los matan": Father Ferrer of the Society of Jesus, then Franciscans who went in by the Sucumbios and came back at great risk, then Fray Pedro Pecador, "que no se sabe si vive, ò muere". Dominicans persuaded in Spain that gentleness would serve better than arms entered Florida and "apenas llegaron, quando los hizieron pedaços". Possevino is cited for the same conclusion across Florida, New Spain, Brazil, Peru, the Philippines and the Moluccas: miserè trucidati sunt.
The most degrading sentence in the treatise is quoted here rather than left out, because it is the sentence on which the argument for arms rests. Following Acosta, lib. 2 de procuranda Indorum salute, cap. 8, the manual reports that to reduce Indians by reasons "es tan grande hazaña, como vencer las bestias bravas de los montes", and prints the Latin: "Quamobrem, qui horum Indorum se arbitrio commiserit, poterit is cum apris, & crocodilis amicitiam inire." The same author is cited twelve pages earlier, at the head of the treatise, for the doctrine that the greatest miracle available to a missionary is a life free of greed.
The crown's own record is printed as contradictory, and the book does not resolve it. Against the two cedulas of 1609 forbidding men of war it sets a cedula of Charles V despatched from Granada in 1526 authorising forts and strong houses where necessary for security, and a letter of 1619 from Madrid to the Principe de Esquilache ordering that in the entrada made to the Texococies by Don Gonçalo de Solis to teach the faith they should "vayan siempre asegurando las espaldas, en bastimentos, abrigos, y reparos". Ninety-three years of royal instruction are laid out on facing columns pointing opposite ways.
The strongest argument for compulsion in the Christian tradition is given its own paragraph, attributed to Torquemada. It rests on the parable of Luke 14 and the word compelle intrare, "que significa algun genero de violencia, en que se nos enseña, y advierte el modo de convertir Indios Infieles", for whom, it argues, words and good example do not suffice unless they also understand "que les han de temer, y tener respeto". Torquemada's own limit is printed with it: "Compelerlos a que entren, no violentados, ni de los cabellos con aspereza, y malos tratamientos, como algunos lo hazen, que es escandalizarlos, y perderlos de todo punto."
The conclusion divides the two things the session had held apart, and it is the operative sentence of the whole treatise. "De todo lo dicho se colige la conclusion, y es, que no serà bueno hazer guerra à los Infieles a titulo de convertirlos, y hazerlos Christianos a fuerça de armas... aunque sea el intento bueno, no lo serà la guerra, por ser medio malo, y desproporcionado para la pureza de la Fé; pero llevar armas para defensa, y resguardo de los Ministros, paraque estos Barbaros no se desmanden a matarlos... no ay quien lo contradiga." War to convert is rejected outright; the escort is admitted as uncontroversial.
The author then narrows what he has and has not argued, and the narrowing matters. "No se pregunta, si es causa bastante la infidelidad, para hazer guerra a los Infieles en orden a que se hagan Christianos, que esta dificultad tratan largamente los Doctores"; the only question asked is whether preachers should go with armed men, "no para robar, oprimir, cautivar, ò matar Indios, que esso es muy malo, sino para la defensa, y guarda de los Ministros del Evangelio". He then gives his own testimony rather than an authority: he has several times heard Father Lucas de la Cueva of the Society of Jesus, twenty-five years on the banks of the Marañon, say "que solos dos arcabuzes que le hagan escolta, montan mas que cinquenta Operarios que le acompañassen."
The session immediately following turns the question into method, and its premise is that persuasion is what the crown had ordered. "Por muchas Cedulas manda su Magestad a los Conquistadores, que hazen entradas a nuevos descubrimientos, y conquistas de Pueblos de Gentiles, que siempre mediten los medios mas a proposito para persuadir la Religion Catolica a los Barbaros, atrayendoles la voluntad, para que le cobren amor"; the author adds "algunos arbitrios, que han dado para este fin los experimentados", the first being to win first the wills of the captains, governors and caciques, on an instruction he says was given to Cortes in a cedula despatched from Valladolid in 1523.
What the manual holds up as the strongest proof of the faith is not a doctrine but a standard of conduct for the preacher. Closing the previous session, it argues that miracles are not needed for the conversion of the Indians where apostolic virtues shine in the ministers, "porque el mayor milagro, y la prueba mas evidente de la Fé Catolica es ver al que la enseña ageno de codicia, con descargo de las cosas temporales, mansos, humildes, mortificados, y castos". It illustrates this with Pedro de Gante, whom the Indians loved so much that returning from Tlaxcala to Mexico they received him with dances and carried him into the city.
The limits of this entry. It is read from pages 165 to 169 of a commercial Lyon reprint of 1678, located from the volume's own analytic index. It is a manual of obligations in conscience: direct evidence of the doctrine a bishop of Quito published for the parish clergy of the Indies, and no evidence whatever of what any entrada did, of whether any confessor refused absolution on these grounds, or of how the capacity test was applied to any people. The royal cedulas of 1526, 1609 and 1619 are quoted here only as this book prints them; none was seen in an archival copy, and their wording, dates and force could not be checked against a register. The list of missionaries killed is the author's, given without dates, and is untested here.