Concept

Papal Bulls and Slavery

Intro

In the 15th century, three Roman popes issued formal documents that authorized European Christian kingdoms to enslave non-Christians and seize their lands. Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493) are the three most often cited. Together they have come to be called the Doctrine of Discovery, and they are quoted in modern arguments that Christianity itself endorsed slavery, racial hierarchy, and colonial domination.

These documents say what they are said to say. Dum Diversas authorized King Afonso V of Portugal "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever... and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." Romanus Pontifex extended this into a permanent commercial monopoly. Inter Caetera, issued after Columbus's voyage, divided the newly encountered lands between Spain and Portugal. The historical record is not in dispute.

What does need to be carefully distinguished is what these documents are and what authority they actually carried.

Papal bulls were administrative-political instruments, not creeds or doctrinal definitions. They handled disputes between Christian monarchs, authorized military campaigns, regulated church property, and adjudicated jurisdictional questions. They did not have the authority of Scripture, ecumenical councils, or universal doctrinal teaching. European rulers regularly ignored bulls when they no longer served their interests.

A telling feature: none of the three bulls cite the teachings of Jesus, draw on biblical ethics, or offer theological argument from the gospel for the authorizations they grant. There is no exegesis, no appeal to the Sermon on the Mount, no reference to love of neighbor, no theological case at all. They read like the political-imperial documents they were.

It is also worth noting what Christianity produced on the other side of this question. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican friar, spent his life defending the Indigenous peoples of the Americas against enslavement, and his argument was explicitly Christian. The Quaker abolitionist movement, the evangelical movement led by Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect, the Catholic worker tradition, the Black American church, all rejected slavery on biblical grounds. The bulls are part of the story; they are not the whole story, and they do not represent Christianity at its core.

The page below works through each bull in detail, what it actually says, what authority it carried, what historians make of it, and how it sits inside the larger Christian engagement with slavery.

What papal bulls are The historical and theological assessment of these documents requires distinguishing what they actually were (political-administrative instruments issued in specific imperial disputes), what doctrinal weight they actually carried (limited and situational, not universally binding), and what content they actually contain (no biblical exegesis, no appeal to the teachings of Christ, no theological argument for their authorizations).

What papal bulls are

Papal bulls were formal documents issued by popes to address specific administrative, legal, or political matters within Latin Christendom. They functioned as instruments of governance, responding to disputes between Christian monarchs, questions of jurisdiction, authorization of military campaigns, regulation of church property, rather than as creeds, confessions of faith, or universally binding doctrinal definitions.

Their authority did not equal that of scripture, ecumenical councils, or universally binding doctrinal definitions. They were contingent, situational, and limited in scope. European rulers themselves frequently ignored, contested, or reinterpreted them when they no longer served their political interests.

The three commonly cited bulls

Dum Diversas (1452)

Issued by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal in the context of Christian-Muslim conflict in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, on the eve of the Ottoman capture of Constantinople (1453). The document framed itself as authorizing defense against Islamic military rivals.

The frequently cited passage:

"to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever... and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery"

The immediate target was Islam, but the authorization was not confined to active combatants and explicitly extended to all non-Christians, sanctioning perpetual enslavement. The document offers no biblical justification, no appeal to the teachings of Jesus, and no theological argument for such measures.

Romanus Pontifex (1455)

Also issued by Nicholas V; expanded earlier wartime authorizations into permanent economic privileges for Portugal. While it emerged from the same Christian-Muslim frontier conflicts, its focus shifted from military defense to commercial monopoly:

"subject to servitude all infidels found in those regions... and apply and appropriate their goods and possessions"

Romanus Pontifex represents the moment when holy-war logic hardened into imperial economics, severing any remaining connection to Christian moral reasoning.

Inter Caetera (1493)

Issued by Pope Alexander VI after Columbus's voyage, the bull addressed rivalry between Christian kingdoms (Spain and Portugal), not Islam. The most cited passage declares Spain's authority over lands:

"discovered and to be discovered... not actually possessed by any Christian king or prince"

The bull is not framed as defense against any external religious rival; it transfers the logic once used against Muslim powers to conflicts between European empires. The document assumes that political power and "discovery" confer moral authority, a claim with no basis in scripture or the teachings of Jesus.

What is absent across all three bulls

A consistent feature of these documents: no biblical exegesis, no appeal to the commands of Christ, and no grounding in the moral vision of the New Testament. There is no citation of Jesus' teachings on love of neighbor, the dignity of persons, or the prohibition against domination. When Christian doctrine is articulated, it is anchored in scripture and tradition; the silence of these bulls on biblical ethics indicates they were never intended as doctrinal statements.

Scripture as internal critique

Measured against the teachings of scripture, the ideology embedded in these documents stands in direct contradiction to core biblical principles:

Imago Dei, Genesis 1:26-27 affirms all humans are created in the image of God, a status that precedes ethnicity, religion, or political allegiance. Authorizing perpetual enslavement denies this foundational claim about human dignity.
Kidnapping condemned, Exodus 21:16: anyone who kidnaps another person and sells them is deserving of death. Reaffirmed in 1 Timothy 1:10, which lists andrapodistai (enslavers / kidnappers) among those whose actions are contrary to sound teaching.
Domination rejected, Matthew 20:25-28: Jesus contrasts worldly power, which "lords it over" others, with the kingdom ethic of service.
No ethnic or religious hierarchy, Galatians 3:28: distinctions of ethnicity, status, and social rank do not determine standing before God.

The ideology implicit in the papal bulls is not an extension of Christian teaching but a violation of it.

Why misuse does not define the faith

If papal bulls are treated as definitive expressions of Christianity, Christianity is no longer defined by scripture, the teachings of Jesus, or the moral vision of the early church. By that logic, any abuse committed by religious authorities would retroactively redefine Christian belief, a definition that renders Christianity historically unrecognizable. Equally: Islam would be defined by ISIS, Buddhism by state violence in Myanmar, Judaism by political extremism. No serious scholar accepts such reductions.

The medieval historian James Muldoon argues in Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels (1979) that papal endorsements of conquest and enslavement reflected "the accommodation of ecclesiastical authority to political realities," not the development of Christian moral doctrine.

Tensions

Catholic ecclesiology

The source's argument depends on a relatively low view of papal magisterial authority, taking scripture and ecumenical councils as the load-bearing sources of Christian doctrine and treating papal bulls as administrative instruments. A Catholic interlocutor might push back that magisterial pronouncements (even non-creedal ones) carry real binding weight and that the post-Vatican-II teaching tradition has had to reckon with these bulls (the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Vatican statements have, in recent years, moved toward repudiating the "Doctrine of Discovery" framework). The categorical distinction between "doctrine" and "papal bull" is real but narrower than the source suggests, and the question of how Catholic readers should weigh institutional history vs. scripture is not engaged in depth.