9/26 - What's Latin for Unmitigated Evil? Dudum siquidem!

On September 26, 1493, Mayan date 11.13.13.4.2, Pope Alexander set loose the hounds of hell upon the Americas, the Pacific and its Islands, and some of Asia. On this date, he issued the Papal Bull Dudum siquidem granting their Catholic Majesties (Ferdinand and Isabella) ownership of roughly half of the world, its peoples and its riches. Per Wikipedia, it reads in relevant part:

...just as if in the aforesaid letters full and express mention had been made thereof, we do in like manner amplify and extend our aforesaid gift, grant, assignment, and letters, with all and singular the clauses contained in the said letters, to all islands and mainlands whatsoever, found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered, that are or may be or may seem to be in the route of navigation or travel towards the west or south, whether they be in western parts, or in the regions of the south and east and of India. We grant to you and your aforesaid heirs and successors full and free power through your own authority, exercised through yourselves or through another or others, freely to take corporal possession of the said islands and countries and to hold them forever, and to defend them against whosoever may oppose.

This was an extension and territorial expansion as well as a reaffirmation of his previous bull, Inter caetera of May 4, 1493:

Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself. ...[W]e ... assign to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon, ... all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from ... the north, ...to ...the south, ... the said line to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde. ...you should appoint to the aforesaid mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled, and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals.

An estimation of the behavior to result from the instruction that the ..."barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith..." may be derived from the fact that Pope Innocent III declared a genocidal war of extermination against a sect of European Christians known as the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 and that Ferdinand and Isabella had established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, a mere 15 years prior. The conquistadores, upon landing would approach the first Indians they could and read to them, in Castilian, a document called the Requerimiento. This docement briefly recited how god made everything and gave it via Peter to the Pope who gave all the lands they were standing on and dominion over all of the inhabitants thereof to Ferdinand and Isabella. It then required the indians to immediately swear fealty to the Spanish Crown and acknowledge the Pope as the ultimate ruler of the entire world. Otherwise

But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us. And that we have said this to you and made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses of this Requisition

Since they understood no Castilian the Indians present reliably failed to rush to pledge fealty to the Spanish Crown and the conquistadores immediately took to slaughtering, raping, enslaving and torturing not merely those present but everybody on that chunk of land that they could get hold of on the theory that the earliest victims were deemed to be emmisaries for all. Eddie Izzard once noted that the Romans were forced to invent a word, "decimation", for killing every tenth individual. They were pikers, mere amateurs, the populations that the Spanish got their hands on suffered vastly worse depredations. In 3 decades they managed to wipe out between 80 and 90 percent of the Taino population, for example. There were barbarous nations involved for certain, total savages in fact, but they were not the ones being overthrown. The Pope, as leader of them all, who knew perfectly well what he was authorizing and who did it, in part for personal gain, being a corrupt Borgia after all, (redundant, I know) was chief amongst them. There are really no words for this. It should be an international day of mourning. ((The British Library Image taken from page 185 of 'The Life, Travels and Adventures of F. de Soto, discoverer of the Mississippi ... Steel engravings by J. & S. Sartain, ... The illustrations, designed and engraved on wood, by J. W. Orr and R. Telfer, etc')))

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On this day in history:

1212 –- The Golden Bull of Sicily was issued confirming hereditary royal title in Bohemia for the Přemyslid dynasty. 1493 -- Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Dudum siquidem giving the new world & more to Spain. 1580 -- Sir Francis Drake completed a circumnavigation of the planet 1777 -- The Brits occupied Philadelphia, possibly seeking cheesesteak. 1905 –- Albert Einstein published the third of his Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the special theory of relativity. 1914 -- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was created 1960 -- The first TV debate between Tricky Dick and JFK took place. 1969 -- The Beatles released Abbey Road 1973 -- The Concorde made its first non-stop flight across the Atlantic 1983 -- Stanislav Petrov decided that a reported incoming nuclear missile was a computer error, not a US attack and thereby saved the world 1984 -- The United Kingdom agreed to cede Hong Kong back to China. 2008 -- Yves Rossy flew a jet powered "wingpack" across the English Channel.

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Some people who were born on this day:

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

~~ T. S. Eliot

1641 –- Nehemiah Grew, plant anatomist and physiologist, oddly enough 1750 -- Cuthbert Collingwood, an admiral - look him up sometime if he is unknown to you 1774 -- Johnny Appleseed, yeah, really. 1849 -- Ivan Pavlov, bell ringer 1888 -- J. Frank Dobie, journalist, author, and liberal Texan 1888 -- T. S. Eliot, poet, playwright, critic, eater of peaches 1889 -- Martin Heidegger, philosopher and academic, gave us Dasein 1891 -- Hans Reichenbach, philosopher (Vienna Circle, logical empiricist), commie 1898 -- George Gershwin, pianist and composer 1907 -- Anthony Blunt, art historian and rooskie spy 1925 -- Marty Robbins, singer, songwriter, guitarist 1926 –- Julie London, singer and actress 1938 –- Lucette Aldous, ballerina and educator 1945 -- Bryan Ferry, singer & songwriter 1946 -- Andrea Dworkin, "radical feminist" activist and author 1947 -- Lynn Anderson, never promised anybody a rose garden 1948 -- Olivia Newton-John, singer, songwriter and actress 1949 -- Wendy Saddington, Australian singer and journalis 1951 -- Stuart Tosh, singer, songwriter and drummer 1954 –- Craig Chaquico, guitarist 1955 -- Carlene Carter, singer, songwriter and guitarist 1961 –- Cindy Herron, singer, songwriter and actress 1964 -- John Tempesta, drummer 1965 -- Cindy Herron, singer 1966 -- Dean Butterworth, drummer 1967 -- Shannon Hoon, singer, songwriter and guitarist 1981 –- Serena Williams, tennis player

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Some people who died on this day:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

~~ George Santayana Also those who never learned it in the first damn place - Enhydra 1820 -- Daniel Boone, hunter and explorer, not raised on Boone's Farm 1846 –- Thomas Clarkson, abolitionist 1868 -- August Ferdinand Mobius, mathematician and astronomer 1902 -- Levi Strauss, businessman 1904 -- Lafcadio Hearn, author and academic 1937 -- Bessie Smith, singer and actress 1943 –- Henri Fertet, Resistance fighter 1945 -- Bela Bartok, pianist and composer 1946 -- William Strunk, Jr., stylish author and educator 1947 -- Hugh Lofting, author and poet 1952 -- George Santayana, philosopher, novelist, and poet, remember? 1991 -- Billy Vaughn, singer and bandleader 1998 -- Betty Carter, singer 2000 -- Baden Powell de Aquino, guitarist and composer 2003 -- Robert Palmer, singer & songwriter

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Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such: Meh, try The Feast of Cosmas and Damian, it is as good as any. It's National Good Neighbor Day in the US, as if the US would know anything about that.

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