HIS: This Day in History: 1454 – The papal bull Romanus Pontifex awards the Kingdom of Portugal exclusive trade and colonization rights to all of Africa south of Cape Bojador.

HIS: This Day in History: 1454 – The papal bull Romanus Pontifex awards the Kingdom of Portugal exclusive trade and colonization rights to all of Africa south of Cape Bojador.

Romanus Pontifex, Latin for "The Roman Pontiff", is a papal bull issued several times over the 15th century, first in 1436 by Pope Eugenius IV and again in 1455 by Pope Nicholas V to King Afonso V of Portugal. As a follow-up to the Dum Diversas, it confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands south of Cape Bojador in Africa. Along with encouraging the seizure of the lands of Saracen Turks and non-Christians. The bull's primary purpose was to forbid other Christian nations from infringing the King of Portugal's rights of trade and colonisation in these regions, particularly amid the Portuguese and Castilian competition for ascendancy over new lands discovered.

This bull should not be confused with a September 21, 1451, bull by the same name, also written by Nicholas V, relieving the dukes of Austria from any potential ecclesiastical censure for permitting Jews to dwell there. 

Around 1312 Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello came upon the Canary Islands. The Portuguese travelled there in 1341 both to trade and raid. By 1346 slave raiding was occurring. However, the first attempt at permanent colonization was sponsored by the Castilians in 1402. During the 14th century, a variety of forces competed for control of the Canaries: Genoese, Catalan-Mallorcan, Castilian, and Portuguese. In the following century, Castile and Portugal were the primary contenders.

In the early 15th century the Portuguese searched for a sea route to India to participate in the spice trade. As a first step, Prince Henry the Navigator launched expeditions to explore the West Coast of Africa. This experience exerted a deep impression so that his reign later on was marked by an ambitious expansion that resulted in exploratory achievements. It led, however, to disputes between the Portuguese and the Castilians regarding control along the African coast. As an independent third party, the Pope would, on occasion, be asked to arbitrate disputes between kingdoms. On January 5, 1443, in the papal bull Rex regum, Eugenius IV had taken a neutral position on the disputed claims of Castile and Portugal over territory in Africa.

It was not until Alfonso V of Portugal responded to a Papal call for aid against the Turks, who eventually seized Constantinople in 1453, that Pope Nicholas V supported the Portuguese claims in the bull Dum Diversas.

Nonetheless, in 1454 a fleet of caravels from Seville and Cadiz traded along the African coast and upon their return were intercepted by a Portuguese squadron. One of the ships was captured with crew and cargo taken to Portugal. Enrique IV of Castile threatened war. Afonso V appealed to the Pope for moral support of Portugal's right to a monopoly of trade in lands she discovered.

The bull, issued in January 1455, endorsed Portuguese possession of Ceuta (which they already held) and the exclusive right to trade, navigation, and fishing in the discovered lands. It provided an exemption from a Canon Law prohibition of trading with infidels.

King Afonso V gave a ceremonial lecture on the bull in Lisbon Cathedral on October 5, 1455, to inform the foreign representatives of commerce. With the bull the Portuguese had a monopoly for trade in the new areas in Africa and Asia. It also served as the legal basis for boarding foreign ships in that area. Historian Stephen Bown notes that, "... Prince Henry and King Afonso V had now also shrouded Portuguese commercial activities in a cloak of pious devotion to the church's work". Along with the right of conquest, Romanus Pontifex effectively made the Portuguese king and his representatives the church's direct agents of ecclesiastical administration and expansion. The Portuguese authorities sent to colonise lands were not only commanded to build churches, monasteries, and holy places, but also authorized to:

...send over to them any ecclesiastical persons whatsoever, as volunteers, both seculars, and regulars of any of the mendicant orders (with license, however, from their superiors), and that those persons may abide there as long as they shall live, and hear confessions of all who live in the said parts or who come thither, and after the confessions have been heard they may give due absolution in all cases, except those reserved to the aforesaid see, and enjoin salutary penance, and also administer the ecclesiastical sacraments freely and lawfully.... .

This authority to appoint missioners was granted to Alfonso and his successors.

Colonialism

In 1493 Pope Alexander VI issued the bull Inter caetera stating one Christian nation did not have the right to establish dominion over lands previously dominated by another Christian nation. Together, the bulls Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex, along with Inter Caetera, have been interpreted as serving as a justification for the Age of Imperialism. They were also early influences on the development of the slave trade of the 15th and 16th centuries, even though the papal bull Sublimus Dei of 1537 forbade the enslavement of non-Christians. The executive brief for Sublimus Dei was withdrawn by the Pope after protests by the Spanish monarchy. Pope Paul III publicly sanctioned slavery in Rome in 1545, the enslavement Englishmen who supported Henry VIII after he had been excommunicated, and the purchase of Muslim slaves in 1548.

Norman Housley observes that "it would be unfair to criticize the papal court exclusively for its failure to be more discriminating in its grants or to take more frequently the kind of action which Eugenius IV adopted in 1454 over the Canaries." The idea of discovery, and the conversion and enslavement that accompanied it, were identified with hard-held concepts of crusade and chivalry at that time.