PORTRAITS FROM THE PAST/Decrees That Divided the Continent

After Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage to the Americas in 1493, the kings of Spain and Portugal disagreed on who should control trade and colonization o the newly discovered lands. Spain looked to the  pope, Alexander VI, to settle the dispute. 

KINGS AND POPES SLICE UP CONTINENTS

Spain, Portugal, and the Papacy had already considered ownership of new found lands. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted  the Portuguese exclusive rights to explore land and islands along the Atlantic Coast of Africa and to claim for themselves everything that they found there. In 1479, in the Treaty of Alcacovas, Afonso V  of Portugal and his son, Prince John, surrendered sovereignty over the Canary Islands to Ferdinand  and Isabella of Spain.   In exchange, Spain recognized the Portuguese  monopoly over African trade and Portuguese sovereignty over the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and Maderia. Two years later, Pope Sixtus IV reaffirmed this treaty specifying that any new discoveries  south and east of the Canary Islands would belong to Portugal.

However, John, now John II of Portugal, claimed that the lands discovered by Columbus belonged to Portugal.  The Spanish monarchs were having none of it,m and they appealed to the new pope, Alexander Vi,  for the right to colonized and Christianize the areas discovered by Columbus.

Alexander initiated three  formal decrees in response. The first, "by the authority of Almighty God," awarded exclusive and perpetual possession of the new territories to Spain.  The second fixed a north-south line demarcation running about 350 miles  (560 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands. All lands discovered, or to be discovered, west of that line, said Alexander were Spain's.  By the stroke of a p;en, the pope divided continents! His third decree seemed to extend Spanish influence eastward as far as India.  This, of course, infuriated King John, whose subjects had only recently succeeded in rounding the tip of Africa, thus extending the Portuguese monopoly into the Indian Ocean. 

Next time:PORTRAITS FROM THE PAST/ Decrees That Divided the Continent - A NEW LINE ON THE MAP

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