Pope Alexander vi, Slavery and Voluntary Subjection: 'Ineffabilis et Summi Patris' in Context

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Renaissance papal policies, especially those formulated by Alexander vi (1492-1503), helped to shape views toward the enslavement of both American Indians and Africans for centuries afterwards.¹Among the Alexandrine bulls that have attracted the most attention in discussions of the papal role in slavery, few are as obscure as Ineffabilis et summi patris, a letter from Alexander vi to Manuel i, king of Portugal (1495-1521), dated 1 June 1497.²But, according to Joel Panzer's The popes and slavery (1996), Ineffabilis is very important in clarifying the voluntary nature of subjection in the two bulls known as Inter caetera (3, 4 May 1493) and in Eximiae devotionis (3 May 1493), Alexandrine bulls that are commonly interpreted as allowing the outright conquest and enslavement of newly-discovered peoples.³

In particular, Panzer argues that Ineffabilis explains that newly-encountered peoples can be placed under a Christian king's rulership only if those newly-encountered people voluntarily submit to such a rule. As such, Panzer's interpretation of Alexandrine bulls follows the interpretation of the famed papal historian, Ludwig von Pastor, as well as that of some sixteenth-century commentators. ⁴However, Panzer did not provide a complete Latin edition or English translation of Ineffabilis, something that he did for some of the other important documents that he cited.

Accordingly, this article offers a complete English translation of the standard Latin edition of Ineffabilis as preserved by Francisco Javier Hernaez (see Appendix).⁵Based on a re-examination of the Latin edition of Ineffabilis, Panzer is shown to have misread the plain sense of Ineffabilis, and to provide insufficient information about the geopolitical context. Indeed, Panzer misidentifies a key cardinal mentioned in Ineffabilis, and that cardinal was the recipient of another letter from Manuel that helps to place Ineffabilis in the context of the voyage (1497-9) of Vasco da Gama to India. Ineffabilis must also be read in the context of the conflict between Spain and Portugal over territorial rights in Africa. The argument is that Ineffabilis confirms that Manuel has a right to conquer indigenous peoples that he encounters whether they agree to be his subjects or not. As such, Ineffabilis is firmly within an established papal tradition that...