The Pope and Slavery in the 15th Century
June 25, 2024
ON January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV issued the bull Sicut Duhum, which forbade the enslavement of Africans in the Canary Islands, then held by Portugal. The pope was the most significant moral voice against the burgeoning slave trade, well before it was introduced to the New World.
“Sent to Bishop Ferdinand, located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote, this bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Pope states that after being converted to the faith or promised baptism, many of the inhabitants were taken from their home and enslaved:
“They have deprived the natives of their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery (subdiderunt perpetuae servituti), sold then to other persons and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them . . . Therefore We … exhort, through the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed for their sins, one and all, temporal princes, lords, captains, armed men, barons, soldiers, nobles, communities and all others of every kind among the Christian faithful of whatever state, grade or condition, that they themselves desist from the aforementioned deeds, cause those subject to them to desist from them, and restrain them rigorously. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands … who have been made subject to slavery (servituri subicere). These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money.” [4]
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Sicut Duhum was the first of numerous papal bulls and encyclicals attempting to end slavery and the slave trade in Africa and the Americas. Much misery — including perhaps the misery of modern racial egalitarianism which has helped bring us to the verge of civilizational collapse — would have been prevented if these teachings had been heeded.
