I saw this news article on the Pope’s recent visit to Canada while reading through the news and thought that it was too important to be understated.

In brief, Pope Francis is on tour through Canada to apologize for the residential schools, which forced assimilation upon Indigenous Peoples.

As you may see in the article, protestors along the tour demanded a repudiation of the “Doctrine of Discovery.” This doctrine, issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI (note) for Columbus, gave explorers rights of discovery and land-ownership in the American continents (1). As a result of these new rights and permissions, the conquistadores, explorers, as well as political and religious refugees sought out the New World as both a means of entrepreneurship and asylum.

However, the American continents were already inhabited by many peoples. The terms of the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which has variously been re-branded as Manifest Destiny, Westward Expansion, the American Dream, American Exceptionalism, Imperialism, and so on, specifically allowed that the explorers view everything within the new lands as their possessions. The consequences of this doctrine has influenced a great deal of the history of the New World and what could be called the American personality.

Sometimes people wonder if we just look at the past with our own ethics and judge badly. This is not the case. From the period of the earliest explorers, authors have been crying foul. In Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” from the early sixteenth century, he satirizes the characterization of the pastoral native as cannibals, since Europeans were quite violent (2). Shakespeare engaged with some of the talk about far-off, tropical utopias in his “Tempest,” but the ending of his play shows that man will meddle with nature. Finally, personal accounts of the doctrine’s effects began to circulate, such as Olaudah Equiano, who was captured from Benin, and worked on plantations and as a sailor, before becoming an abolitionist writer. Of course, there is also the “Florentine Codex,” which was composed in the sixteenth century and only translated from Nahuatl into English in 2002. It includes a description of their culture and life, as well as the Conquest of the Aztecs by Spain.

Ultimately, the Pope’s apology is commendable, but 500 hundred years too late. Though some of my work deals with the early and medieval church, I cannot remember a time in which the Catholic Church or the Pope has officially apologized for anything or acknowledged such an official break from previous tradition, much less with as much pomp. All I know is that this is something worth attention.

Note–Pope Alexander VI is also known by his birth name, Roderigo Borgia. If that rings a bell, it should; regardless, the papal history can be fascinating. The Borgias were an infamous family in Italy during the pre-modern period, known for their scandals as much as for their ability to climb socially. Roderigo’s son (yes, you read that right), Cesare was apparently the model for Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” which provided suggestions to get ahead by any means, usually of shady ethics.

1–”The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493: A Spotlight on a Primary Source by Pope Alexander VI.” History Resources. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/…/doctrine-discovery-1493.

2–Montaigne, Michel de, “Of Cannibals.” Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Trans. by Charles Cotton. Ed. by William Carew Hazlitt. 1877. Project Gutenberg. 2006.