[s. B. DAWSON] THE LINES OF DEMARCATION 48S 



astical authority ; the original was deposited in the archives of the 

 Indies at Seville where it remained until within very recent years ; it 

 has been printed in all the Bullaria; referred to and cited in all the 

 books. For three hundred years, no suspicion of any other Inter cetera 

 arose in the minds of the numl:)erless officials, annalists and historians, 

 who administered American affairs or wrote on American subjects. 



In the year 1797, Juan Baptista Munoz, who had been entrusted 

 by the King of Spain with the task of writing a history of the New 

 World, and to whom the archives of the kingdom had, for the first 

 time, been thrown open, found, at Simancas, a document in the form of 

 a Bull commencing with the same words Inter cetera, but dated May 3, 

 {quinto nonas Mail) the day before the historic Bull, which bore date 

 quarto nonas Mali. The two documents were, for the greater part of 

 their contents, in identically the same words. In appendix A is printed 

 tlie full text of the historic Bull of May 1, and all the words which are 

 not in the Simancas document are printed in italics. On the other 

 liand, all the words in the Simancas draft which were omitted in the 

 Bull as promulgated are given in the footnotes, with references to the 

 ])laces from whence they were dropped. The reader has, therefore, 

 ]u-actically both Bulls before him. 



The discovery of the Simancas document gave rise to much specu- 

 lation. Himiboldt gave^-"* a partial collation of the two Bulls and ex- 

 ]H-essed surj^rise without offering an explanation. Washington Irving 

 referred to both and did not attempt to reconcile them, but he gave 

 the dates, erroneously, as May 3 and May 3 respectively. Munoz 

 quoted the historical Bull containing the line, but he gave May 3 as the 

 date. In his paper in the American Historical Report, Prof. Bourne 

 gives a partial collation of the two, and Mr. Harrisse in his Diplomatic 

 Histonj has brought the difficulty into strong light, and has moreover 

 increased it by treating the unpromulgated Bull as the primary one 

 and as a valid and efficacious document. He calls it a "privilege," and 

 says, 'apparently within the twenty-four hours" after its publication, 

 Alexander published the other. One of the chief objects of this paper 

 is to show that the Simancas Bull, having never been published, never 

 had the bre^ath of legal life and also, by comparing the two documents, 

 to explain the duplication by internal evidence. 



The Bulls which Mr. Harrisse in his Diplomatic History brings 

 under review, are four in number ; he has lettered three of them as 

 follows, for ready reference : 



A. Inter cetera of May 3 — the Simancas, unpub- 



lished Bull. 



B. Eximiae devotionis of May 3. 



