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THE DEMARCATION LINE
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based on decrees and that they must be respected, and not obscured or diminished.[1] It seems more likely, however, that the protest issued from the representatives of Ferdinand and Isabella who pressed for a delimitation of the Spanish possessions from the Portuguese to avoid future contests.[2]
By the new Bull of May 4,[3] a line was to be drawn from the North to the South Pole, one hundred leagues west and south of any one of the islands known as the Azores and Cape Verd Islands.[4] All lands discovered and to be discovered to
- ↑ Gomara asserts that King John had asked for a Bull: "Hizo gran sentimiento el Rey don Juan segundo de tal nombre en Portugal quando leyo la bula y donacion del Papa, aunq̃ sus embaxadores lo avian suplicado assi a su Santidad." Gomara, I, leaf 142, obverse. Further, according to Gomara, Ferdinand and Isabella despatched a courier to Rome, but the negotiations were carried on by their ambassadors at Rome, "y sus embaxadores que pocas meses antes avian ydo a dar el para bien, y obediencia al Papa Alexandre Sexto segun usança de todos los Principes Christianos, le hablaron y dieron las Cartas del rey y reyna con la relacion de Colon," Gomara, I, leaves 29 and 30. Now John II. of Portugal, in 1492, had sent the Commendador Mór d' Aviz D. Pedro da Silva as an ambassador on the death of Innocent VIII, and to present his obedience to Alexander VI. Santarem, Relaçôes Diplomaticas, III, 162. If the Spanish special ambassadors remained until May, 1493, it is not unlikely that the Portuguese representative did likewise.
It will be remembered that as the Portuguese rights extended east "ad Indos," and embraced lands not yet found, and as the new lands were supposed to be the Indies, the grant of May 3 was in downright conflict with the earlier ones to Portugal. - ↑ This is the view of Harrisse and Dawson. See Diplomatic History, 27–39, and Dawson's Essay, 484 ff. Raynaldus says of the Bull of May 4: "Tertio diplomate Alexander ad contraversias, quæ inter Castellanos ac Lusitanos oboriri possent dum classibus Oceanum sulcabant, dirimendas Indias orientales occidentalesque discrevit." Tomus, xix, 421. The possibility of disputes might have suggested itself to the Pope.
The second Bull of May 3 I have not discussed. It was a brief grant to Spain of the same rights for her discoveries which had been conferred on Portugal for hers. The rights of Portugal are there summarized. The Latin text and English translation of this Bull are printed by Dawson. Harrisse also gives a translation of it on pp. 20–24 of his Diplomatic History. - ↑ Printed in full in Fiske's Discovery of America, II, 580–593, with Richard Eden's translation. It is also in Navarrete, Calvo's Recueil, Poore's Constitutions and Charters, and Dawson. Besides Eden's translation there is one in the English edition of Sportono's Codice diplomatico Colombo-Americano and in Dawson. Eden's translation is reproduced in Hart's American History told by Contemporaries, I, 40–43.
- ↑ "Quae linea distet a qualibet insularum, quae vulgariter nuncupantur de los Azores y Cabo Verde, centum leucis versus Occidentem et Meridiem." The Azores and the Cape Verd Islands were supposed to be in the same longitude. What is meant by "versus Occidentem et Meridiem" has puzzled everybody. How a meridian line could be southwest from any given point has baffled explanation. May it not have been simply a confusion of thought resulting from the fact that the lands discovered by Columbus lay to the south of west from Europe or the Azores, and that the Pope evidently thought of the discoveries as to be prosecuted west and south? With this thought in mind he had used the terms "versus Occidentem et Meridiem" appropriately a few lines before. The tendency of such documents to formal repetition, combined with inadvertence and this idea of the southwesterly direction of the new lands, may account for a repetition that makes nonsense.
