After gaining maritime knowledge, the Portuguese embark on explorations that lead to the discovery of islands that become their new outposts. In search of gold, they reach the west African coast and instead create a new slave market by enslaving and trading descendants of ancient Israelites. Meanwhile, Spain finances Columbus’s first voyage to the New World—mistaken for the East Indies—which touches off the European age of “discovery.”
Show Transcript
Shalom, and welcome to our history podcast. This is a production of Kingdom Preppers.org. I’m your host, Kingdom Prepper, and you’re listening to: Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. We continue with our history.
Part 24: The New World
While the Renaissance was flourishing within Italy, and in fact reaching its height on the peninsula, the Portuguese were expanding their empire into the Atlantic. They looked to establish new trading routes, and thus settled Madeira in 1419, the Azores in 1427, and the Cape Verde Islands in 1450. This allowed for the establishment of important trading posts along the African coast. While their primary pursuit was gold, this was not easy to come by, therefore slaves took precedence since they were easier to acquire. The already booming trans-Saharan slave trade allowed the Portuguese to branch off into a distinct market, but, being Catholics, they first needed the approval of the pope.
The justification for that approval came on the basis of war, or to be more precise, a crusade. The people on whom the Portuguese had set their sights were descendants of ancient Israelites, who had established settlements in West Africa and other territories after fleeing Jerusalem and its surroundings during the Roman siege of 70 CE, and the failed Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 CE. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a bull to Alfonso V of Portugal titled Dum Diversas. That bull allowed the king to launch a crusade on Saracens and pagans—namely Israelites—and, in conquering them, submit them to perpetual slavery.
“Dum Diversas regarded the enslavement of Africans to be part of the Holy War of Reconquest.”
Writes Katharine Gerbner, in her book Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World.
“It also granted the Portuguese Crown the authority to act as the head of the Church in Africa and, later, in Brazil, a right known as the padroado real. In 1454, Nicholas V reconfirmed his support for Portuguese expansion in the brief Romanus Pontifex. Later Popes reiterated the grants in 1456, 1481, and 1514.”
Those popes were Calixtus III, Sixtus IV, and Leo X—three popes of the Renaissance—and they reiterated the grants of the papal bulls on the cusp of the Protestant Reformation, which would act as a judgment of the church while existing as a fulfillment of prophecy. The Portuguese eventually formed alliances on the African coast and set up colonies there. In 1483, they arrived at the mouth of the Congo River and discovered that the vast land beyond, and all its territories, was ruled by Nzinga a Nkuwu, who held the title mani kongo, meaning “king.”
In the hopes of accessing distant Ethiopia by sailing the Congo, the Portuguese maintained good relations with the mani kongo and his subjects. An agreement was soon reached that left four Portuguese in Congo, while four Africans were taken to Lisbon to experience court life. When they returned, reports of the pleasant treatment they received and the splendors of European civilization they witnessed were enough to convince the king to make Portugal his ally. This eventually led to baptisms, and the king and his heir naming themselves after Portuguese kings. Portuguese missionaries were able to labor in the Congo freely and thus a church was formed, complete with a bishop who was the son of the next Congolese king.
Relations deteriorated after a few decades, however, and the Portuguese looked to new lands south of the Congo. Now known as Angola, these lands were a rich source for slaves. Unlike the Congo, where the mani kongo controlled the slave trade, the Portuguese were free to use force in Angola and establish another important colony, and also lay claim to vast lands stretching well into the interior, which were another source for slaves.
Slavery had been practiced in Africa for centuries prior to the arrival of the Portuguese, and it took on a new life after other European kingdoms crossed the Atlantic. African elites were able to supply the Europeans with slaves from their territories, and many of these slaves were the descendants of the ancient Israelites. The Kingdom of Ghana for instance, once ruled by Israelite kings, eventually collapsed, forcing its Hebrew subjects into other African territories ruled by various tribes. Arab chronicler al-Zuhri wrote of the Barbara and Amīma people, who were frequently captured as slaves. In his book African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa, Michael A. Gomez writes concerning these peoples:
“It is not clear who the Amīma and Barbara were (possibly ‘Bambara,’ also ambiguous), though the latter were regarded as strong, ‘impetuous,’ ‘brave,’ and ‘skilled in war,’ the ‘most noble and aristocratic of men’ to whom ‘the amīr’ of Ghana was related.’ Said to inhabit ‘the middle of the desert,’ they may have been a branch of the Soninke. The Amīma, on the other hand, are identified as impoverished Jews who ‘read the Torah’ and were involved in the import business.”
These readers of the Torah, captive Israelites no less, bore a similar skin complexion to native Africans, which is primarily why they were able to assimilate into various tribes and adopt their culture. And many African tribes were comprised of ancient paganized Israelites from the northern kingdom who had fled the Assyrians in the seventh century BCE. As to the Portuguese, they were not satisfied with Africa’s west coast. Their initial aim was to circumnavigate Africa entirely in search of a route to the Far East, since the Muslims controlled all the land routes between Europe and the Orient. In their quest, the east African coast was also subjugated. All the while, Portuguese priests were dispatched to Africa’s interior on missions to convert more African kings to Catholicism.
On the heels of the Portuguese voyages to and beyond Africa, other explorers sought to make their fortune on a grand expedition of their own. One such explorer was Christopher Columbus. Born in Liguria, a region in northwestern Italy, the experienced ship captain was well-traveled, having sailed to the Greek Aegean, the waters of west coast Britain, and even the west coast of Africa by his early twenties. But since then, many other voyages were made as part of his occupation, that of a trade agent for Genoese merchants. But he personally participated in trade of a different kind as well. Christina Snyder, assistant professor of American studies and history at Indiana University, says of this:
“Columbus, even before he came to the Americas, he had participated in the African slave trade. This was a trade that people in Spain and Portugal in particular had started engaging in in the fifteenth century. He and his father were both participants, and had bought and sold West Africans in Europe.”
So, being a seafaring captain, Columbus was knowledgeable about North Atlantic trade winds, and their clockwise rotation. He would use this to his advantage and plot a southerly course upon departure for the Far East, keeping the trade winds at his back.
He had experience, he was chockful of knowledge on navigating the ocean, and he had a grandiose plan. All he needed was a rich court to finance his expedition, which was expected to yield tremendous riches by opening up direct trade to the Far East, a region known for its prized Chinese silks and spices. To this end …
“… Columbus had conducted a long dalliance with King John II of Portugal, whom he nearly succeeded in convincing.”
Writes Thomas Cahill, in his book Heretics and Heroes.
“He sought out financial power brokers in both Genoa and Venice but came up short. He sent his brother Bartolomeo to Henry VII of England with the astounding proposal. Henry, father to Henry VIII and founder of the Tudor dynasty, whose claim to the throne was quite shaky, said he would think about it. He thought and thought but had nothing more to say (at least not till it was too late). Meanwhile, Columbus found himself at the Spanish court, spending nearly six seemingly sterile years in the attempt to lure the monarchs into financing his scheme.”
Ferdinand and Isabella’s decision to support the expedition was an auspicious one for Spain, and indeed for Europe. Columbus had raised nearly half of the needed funds through the support of Florentine bankers. It was believed that, because Spain’s treasury had recently been drained by prolonged military campaigns of the successful Reconquista, Queen Isabella was forced to publicly donate a portion of her jewelry in the hopes that members of the Spanish nobility would be moved to match her efforts. But this is now thought to be a myth based on a rumor that was spread in the sixteenth century. The Spanish crown in fact used very little imperial funds to sponsor the voyage. Advisers convinced Isabella to conscript two fully equipped caravels (the Pinta and the Niña) from the Spanish city of Palos as a penalty for past sea crimes. Palos is also the city from which Columbus would set sail. Other ideas on ways to raise funds were put forth as well, and the financing goal was soon met.
The crew set sail on August 3, 1492, but by the next month they were stationed in the Canary Islands, at the port of San Sebastián, where they restocked and made necessary repairs prior to sailing into the unknown. On September 6, the day they set sail, the Tenerife volcano erupted behind them like a portent from Heaven. Columbus took his fleet toward what is now called the West Indies, a name that stuck because it was mistaken for the Spice Islands of the East Indies, which is Indonesia today. Land had not been sighted since they left familiar shores thirty-one days before, and tensions began to rise. On October 10, 1492, the sailors threatened mutiny and conspired to toss Columbus overboard for leading them on an endless journey. But finally …
“On October 12, 1492 … land was sighted from the deck of the Pinta by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana.”
Writes Thomas Cahill.
“The time was 2 a.m. The sighting came not a moment too soon for Columbus. They had sailed for five weeks and were beginning the second day of their sixth week. The crew, among whom served a sprinkling of convicts with little to lose, were growing nervous about the unlikelihood of their return if their outward voyage should continue to drag on. Columbus, though a charismatic leader, could not have commanded their compliance much longer.”
The land they spotted was an unknown island in the Bahamas, but they would not walk it until the morning of the next day. Upon reaching land, everyone fell to their knees in prayer, grateful to have made it ashore. Columbus immediately named the island—which was already inhabited—San Salvador, meaning “Set Apart Savior.” He thereafter claimed the land in the name of the Catholic king and queen of Spain by reciting language that was incomprehensible to the natives. Then he presented the naked inhabitants with “little red caps and glass beads which they hung around their necks, and other things of slight worth, which they all valued at the highest price.”
The inhabitants were Tainos, a member of the Arawak people whom Columbus would encounter again and again, not only in the Bahamas, but also in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola (home to the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Tainos are thought to no longer exist, having been decimated by Spanish invaders, though people of mixed descent still carry traces of their blood. For roughly the next 150 years, in what is considered the age of “discovery,” Europeans would spread their colonies throughout the Americas and establish new trade routes to the Far East, where its riches could be directly enjoyed. During this 150-year period, the church would dispatch Jesuit priests as well as friars and monks from the Franciscan and Dominican orders to carry out missionary work while living among the natives who inhabited the colonies. In contrast to the monks and priests, Christian conquerors forced many natives to convert via the point of a sword.
We’ll be back with more exciting scriptural history . . . in a moment.
[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
We now continue with our podcast.
In his book The Civilization of the Middle Ages, author Norman F. Cantor says of the burgeoning European age of “discovery”:
“When Christopher Columbus, flying the Spanish flag, landed in the islands off the coast of America on October 12, 1492, Spain possessed only the Canary Islands and the remnants of the Mediterranean empire of Aragon. Within a few decades it had the largest overseas empire among the European states. At the moment when the economy of the Mediterranean world was entering its last decades of prosperity, Spain was in the forefront of the expansion of Europe into the unknown lands of America and the Orient.
“Spain’s only rival was Portugal, which had survived the unification of the Iberian Peninsula to remain an independent state. Portugal had spent the last half of the fifteenth century exploring the west coast of Africa. The original impetus given to Portuguese exploration by Prince Henry the Navigator had made Portuguese seamen the most advanced in geographic and maritime knowledge in Europe. Soon after Columbus landed in America, Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and completed the voyage to India by the eastern route. His successors established the Portuguese empire.”
By the end of the fifteenth century, all the necessary steps had been taken by the two Iberian empires to allow for the further expansion of European interests throughout the entire world.
“The location of the Iberian Peninsula and the policies of the strong monarchies that developed in Spain and Portugal placed these states in an ideal position to exploit the new opportunities.”
Both the Portuguese and Spanish empires are considered to be the first truly worldwide empires in scope and scale. In fact, following Columbus’s so-called discoveries, the two empires were colonizing lands in their maritime quests at such a rapid rate that tensions developed, therefore Pope Alexander VI published a bull that divided the New World between them. The pope decreed that all lands situated west and south of a meridian line 100 leagues west and south of the Azores and Cape Verde islands belonged to Spain by right. But since the decree failed to specify the lands on the other side of the line as possessions of Portugal, the two empires eventually signed several treaties that created an official line of demarcation. This divided rights of trade and colonization for newly discovered lands; those situated to the east belonged to Portugal, while lands to the west belonged to Spain. This is why Brazil speaks Portuguese and Spanish is the language of Latin America. Other European countries were excluded from the treaties and bulls, but in time, nothing would keep the Dutch, English, French, or Germans from entering these divided territories and staking their own claims.
The papacy also commissioned the monarchs of Portugal and Spain to evangelize the people of the lands they conquered. These kings were expected to send missionaries to their new territories and appoint bishops over newly converted Christians among the native inhabitants. It was made a high priority to Catholicize Central and South America, and the Caribbean therefore, and intermarriage between Spaniards and Native Americans occurred in these regions as a result, which gave rise to Mestizos, who are people of mixed European and Indigenous American descent. Missionaries had less success in Africa and Asia, however.
Spain was at the very forefront of colonization and enslavement in Central and South America, and they made their push into North America as well. In addition to their conquest of the Aztec, Inca, and Maya civilizations, which were decimated, the Spaniards battled the French—who were protestant Christians by then—for possession of Florida. The Spaniards then moved on to what are now Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Other European powers, such as England, showed a keen interest in the New World as well, attracted by Spain’s success. They would use Spain as a benchmark and model for their own colonization and enslavement enterprises, and slavery would be used to expand and enrich these colonizing nations. Professor Snyder says of this period:
“Slavery itself is on the go, it’s dynamic, and it’s really colonialism that creates the Atlantic Slave Trade which is what we typically think of as the prototypical form of slavery—that is the kind that was practiced in the South and the Caribbean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But that took a long time to evolve. On the eve of colonialism, Europeans had relatively limited experience with slavery, and they each brought their own experiences and understandings into the colonial context. And, when we think about major colonizing powers in North America, three of the most important are Spain, England, and France. And out of these, especially in the early colonial period, the Spanish are really the most important, because they’re the first colonizers, and partially because other colonizers look at their experiences as they form their own colonial policies.”
As staunch Catholics, the Spanish invaders felt entitled to the newly conquered lands and far superior to its native peoples by right of “discovery,” and this sense of entitlement was supported by papal policy.
“Christianity and the kind of legal doctrines that are developed around colonization have a really strong role in the invasion of North America and also on ideas about slavery.”
Says Professor Snyder.
“This doctrine of discovery is basically a legal notion that’s supported by the Catholic church that decrees that only Catholic powers should colonize North America, and that essentially indigenous people only had use rights; that is, it really didn’t recognize indigenous territorial claims as being legitimate in European eyes.”
Emboldened by the church leadership, Spanish expeditions of the new world were carried out with barbaric violence, not unlike what was seen during the crusades. Yet, the violence exacted on natives of the new world was fueled by centuries of warfare with Muslims—called Moors by the Spanish—who ruled the Andalusian portion of the Iberian Peninsula. Arab-Berber encroachment into Christian Spain had created a fanatic bloodlust in the Spaniards, and a disdain for non-Christians, which did not abate following the defeat of the Moors. Professor Snyder adds to this by saying:
“You know, 1492 is when Columbus sets sail, but it’s also the year that marks the end of the Reconquista, which is Christian Spain’s centuries-long fight to claim all of the Iberian Peninsula for the Christian kingdoms, and those Christian kingdoms eventually become what we now think of as Spain. And ideas that had really propelled the Reconquest were based on an intolerance of non-Christian people, and as part of that, there are these germs of ideas about race that are articulated during the Reconquest, and the Spanish referred to these as notions of blood purity; and that is that, you know, Christians had this pure blood. They also have an anti-black bias against sub-Saharan Africans during this time.”
That anti-black bias against slaves, the descendants of ancient Israelites taken from sub-Saharan Africa, would be shared by all the colonizing European nations. Not only would those slaves be forced to work on plantations throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean, they would also be forced to accept and practice Catholicism. This policy was enacted via the issuance of papal bulls by Pope Alexander VI, who, in addition to conferring upon Portugal the padroado real in West Africa, also conferred upon Spain the similar patronato real in the East Indies for the same reason: to grant the Spanish monarchy the power and right to establish and oversee a new branch of the Catholic church in the new world.
The Spanish were thereafter afforded the unquestioned right to build churches, appoint their clergy, collect funds, and apply their own ecclesiastical laws as they saw fit. This power of course encompassed slavery in the new world, and the Spanish monarchs sought to enforce the evangelization of slaves.
“The Iberian monarchs decreed that Africans should be baptized before they arrived in the Americas, but it was unclear exactly when and how they should be introduced to Christianity.”
Writes Katharine Gerbner.
“Charles V commanded that Africans should be baptized before they left the African coast, but even when priests did perform baptisms (which was only occasionally), there was rarely any instruction in Christian doctrine. In 1545, the Spanish Crown issued a new set of ordinances for the governance of Africans in the New World that emphasized both Christianization and Spanish language acquisition. All slave owners were commanded to baptize newly arrived slaves, provide chapels on their estates, and allow their slaves to hear Mass.”
The Spanish slave owners, particularly those in possession of larger plantations, initially resisted the command of the monarch. They felt that allowing the slaves to attend Sunday services would slow productivity in the field. The Portuguese forced their slaves to work their Brazilian cane fields on Sundays for the same reason. And rather than provide the slaves with food, the slave owners expected their field hands to keep small plots and produce their own crops to sustain themselves. A few slave owners were brought to court over the matter after receiving heavy criticism by Jesuit missionaries. And as time passed, both enslaved and free Israelites embraced Christianity and interpreted the belief system in their own way, while infusing it with their own worship rituals. They even had their own chapels and performed baptisms themselves. Then there was the establishment of Israelite confraternities, the so-called black brotherhoods, which would see enslaved and free Israelites alike forming their own little religious communities where leaders were elected from within.
“Both the Church and the Crown supported the establishment and growth of black confraternities.”
Writes Katharine Gerbner.
“In 1576, the Portuguese king ordered that tithes collected from baptized slaves should be used for black churches, lay brotherhoods, and other spiritual affairs. In the late sixteenth century, Pope Gregory XIII declared that black brotherhoods could help to indoctrinate newly converted slaves.”
Of course, that was the whole point: to get Israelites to indoctrinate themselves. And so it has been with the Christian movement, well into the Protestant era and up to the present day. Israelites, as dictated by the algorithms set forth in prophecy, would lose their national identity through the actions of enemy nations. The Psalmist Asaph wrote of this passionately, imploring Yah Elohim to not keep silent on the matter; to not hold his peace or be still.
[2] “For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads. [3] They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. [4] They say, ‘Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!’ ”
—Psalm 83:2 – 4
That wraps it up for this episode of Churchianity: Two Thousand Years of Leaven. A production of Kingdom Preppers.org, this episode was written, produced, and hosted by yours truly, Kingdom Prepper. All praise, honor, and glory are due to my boss, Yah Elohim, and to his right hand, Yahushua HaMashiach. You can access the transcript for this episode on our website. Yah willing, our history will continue in the next podcast. Shalom.
Keywords: Amīma, mani kongo, Bambara, Angola, Kingdom of Ghana, Judahite, Portuguese, Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex, padroado real, Nzinga a Nkuwu, Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco de Gama, Moors, blood purity, churchianity, two thousand years of leaven, history of Christianity, church history, Hebrew history, kp, kingdom preppers
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