224 W. E. Curtis — Pre-Columbian, Vatican Documents. 



products of different kinds and qualities are to be found. 

 Wherefore you, after diligently considering all these facts, being, 

 like your great and royal ancestors (as becomes Catholic kings 

 and princes), most of all concerned with the exaltation and 

 diffusion of the Catholic faith, have resolved with God's merci- 

 ful assistance to subdue the aforesaid countries and to convert 

 their inhabitants to the Catholic faith. 



Hence, whilst we most highly commend in the Lord your 

 holy and laudable purpose and desire that it be duly accom- 

 plished, and that by this means our Saviour's name be made 

 known in those countries, we most earnestly exhort you in the 

 Lord, and demand of you in virtue of holy baptism, by whose 

 reception you have bound yourselves to obey our apostolic 

 orders, and through the bowels of the mercy of our Lord Jesus 

 Christ, that inasmuch as you intend of your own free will and 

 out of zeal for the orthodox faith, to undertake this expedition, 

 you will diligently and out of a sense of duty induce the inhab- 

 itants of the said countries to embrace the Christian religion. 

 We moreover exhort you not to allow yourselves to be deterred 

 by dangers or trials, and to remain firm in the hope that 

 Almighty God will prosper your endeavors. 



And in order that you may the more willingly and coura- 

 geously set about so great an undertaking, after having received 

 of the abundance of apostolic bounty by our own act, without 

 being moved thereunto by an}^ petition presented to us by you 

 or by another in your behalf, but out of our sheer liberality, 

 with certain cognizance, out of the fullness of apostolic power, 

 by the authority of Almighty God given us in blessed Peter 

 and of the vicegerency of Jesus Christ, which we exercise upon 

 earth, we by tenor of these presents give, grant and assign in 

 perpetuity to you and your heirs and successors, the Kings of 

 Castile and Leon, all the islands and continents that have been 

 or shall be found and discovered westward and southward of a 

 line drawn from the Arctic pole, or the north, to tlie Antarctic 

 pole, or the south, whether these continents or islands that have 

 been or shall be found lie in the direction of India or of any 

 other country, the said line to be one hundred leagues distant 

 to the west and south from the most western and most southern 

 of the islands commonly called the Azores and Cape Verde — that 

 is to say, all the islands that have been or shall be discovered 



