202 W. E. Curtis — Pre-Colamhian, Vatican Documents. 



setting forth that for ahout eighty years (since' the heathen in- 

 vasion, in about 1418) they had been deprived of priests and of 

 a bishop. As a consequence many had ah-eady lost their faith, 

 and to those who remained faithful the only memorial of Christian 

 worship 3^et belonging was the coporal on which, nearly one hun- 

 dred years before, a priest had, for the last time among them, 

 consecrated the blessed sacrament. Once every year this holy 

 and venerated relic was shown to all the people. 



" Before his elevation to the pontificate Alexander, as chan- 

 cellor, had proposed Matthew, a Benedictine monk, for the bishop 

 of Gardar. By this letter he frees liim from the payment of all 

 fees that were due in such -cases and praises the willingness with 

 which he had undertaken the difficult mission. 



" Documents that Relate to the Line of Demarcation. 



"Acting on the approved general opinion, a common consent of 

 the time, which acknowledged the right of popes to interfere 

 autlioritatively even in political and international affairs, when 

 the welfare of souls are involved, the Portuguese kings, with 

 their discoveries along the western coast of Africa, commenced a 

 series of demands for the exclusive right of discovery and coloniza- 

 tion in that direction. This the popes, Martin V, Eugene IV, Nico- 

 las V, and Sextus IV, gradually ceded to them till their successive 

 grants covered all the region from Ceuta around Africa to India. 



" The discovery announced by Columbus, and believed even b}^ 

 himself till the day of his death to be only a new and shorter 

 way to the eastern part of India, naturally excited the appre- 

 hensions and jealousy of the Portuguese court. On the return 

 of the great discoverer (March 4, 1493) from his first voyage, 

 Ferdinand put in operation all his diplomacy at Lisbon for the 

 purpose of preventing any interference with his claims, and at 

 Rome, in order to procure from the pope a sole proprietorship 

 of the new world, he obtained three papal letters, dated May 3d 

 and 4th, which was to effect this result. 



" The letter beginning ' inter cetera,' of the date of May 3, gave 

 to Spain : First, the exclusive right to the lately discovered 

 islands and to the other lands which might still be found, so far 

 as they were not already possiessed by some Christian power; 

 secondly, the same privileges and rights for its new colonies as 

 those previously conceded to Portugal for its possessions on the 



