ABSTRACT
This chapter is the first of two focusing on the formation of Las Casas’s juridical voice by considering six features in Spain’s historical matrix that contextualized his life. The first section overviews three centuries of complex developments in the European Renaissance (ca. 1300/1350–1550/1600), which in time resulted in formative opportunities for Las Casas. The second section addresses continuity and change in Renaissance Spain, which influenced his early education, linguistic abilities, and humanistic perspective. The third section surveys Spain’s population growth and economic development as the Crowns of Castile and Aragon colonized the Indies, which colonization sensitized him to cultural diversity and guided his initial commercial undertakings. The fourth section focuses on the political power and ideology of Isabel and Ferdinand as they consolidated Castile and Aragon and replicated their centralized hierarchical governance in the Indies. The fifth section considers the Catholic Monarchs’ strategies for reforms in the national ecclesia, the patria, and their vision of orbis Christiano, which greater union of Church and Crown contoured Las Casas’s roles as cleric, friar, and bishop. The last section contrasts Columbus’s illegal expropriation of Indigenous lands and his enslavement of its peoples with Las Casas’s juridical condemnation in the Brevísima relación.
