486 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



C. Itilcr cèlera of May 4 — the promulgated Bull of 

 demarcation — the historic Bull. 



And the fourth may be lettered D. 



It is a Bull known only in a Spanish translation made sixty years 

 after its supposed date and entitled Extension de la concesion y donacion 

 ApostoJira de las Indias. 



These four documents, if all thrown together, are conflicting, but 

 a careful examination will eliminate A as an unpromulgated document 

 which ncAa-r had a valid and legal existence, and show that D does not 

 affect the argument, in the first place, because no original copy has 

 ever been found or proved to have existed, and second, because, even 

 if it were a valid document, it adds nothing to the real Bull, being only 

 an explication of what had already been enacted. There will then 

 remain B and C, and these will be found, not only to harmonize, but 

 to supplement each other and to form, when- taken together, a logically 

 consistent whole, such as the expert lawyers of the Curia Roniana 

 would not be ashamed of. 



While it may be held by extremists, in opposition to the great 

 majority of canonists, and the unanimous opinion of civil lawyers, that 

 a Bull, when affixed to the gate of the Vatican and proclaimed on the 

 piazza of the Campo di Fiori, was sufficiently promulgated to bind the 

 consciences of all Catholics, no one has yet ventured to assert that a Bull 

 never published at all, at Kome or anywhere else, had any efficacy 

 whatever. One well known instance there used to be of a Bull being 

 published annually in that way at Rome, because it was not admitted 

 to publication elsewhere in Europe ; but that was a very exceptional 

 case which proves the rule and the arguments from it have no validity 

 here, for this was a decision, not on dogma or discipline, but in a boundary 

 question, which Spain had applied for and, of necessity, it had to be 

 notified to the parties concerned who were fitting out expeditions and 

 extending discoveries into all seas. In this case, local publication was 

 of the very essence of the matter ; but the Simancas document lay im- 

 known and unsuspected for three hundred years until Munoz found it 

 in 1797. It does not in the least validate the document to say tliat 

 when the present pope opened the archives of the Vatican, both Bulls 

 were found on the secret register of Alexander VI. There was, no 

 doubt, an intention to issue that dated May 3, but the entiy of the 

 next day cancelled it and that without mention, because the first draft 

 was never uttered. In fact the very thing the Catholic sovereigns had 

 asked for, to wit, the line of demarcation, had been entirely lost sight 

 of and, therefore, the instrument was of necessity drafted anew. The 

 subject matter of the petition was then inserted and matter duplicated 



