WHAT DOES BULLE OF POPE NICOLAS V REALLY SAY ON SLAVERY?

It is certain that you have already heard of the famous Pope Nicholas V bubble, which was widely believed to be the founding document from the Catholic Church which authorized the enslavement of blacks.

Once again, in the name of a misunderstood Afrocentrism or Pan-Africanism, this idea, which is nothing but a falsification of history, has been falsely spread in the minds of millions of people. The paragraph which was thus falsified is the one where, the pope addressing the Kings of Portugal and the Christian princes asks them "to invade, to seek, to capture, to conquer and to subjugate all the Saracens and all the pagans and other enemies of Christ wherever they are, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, principalities, territories, possessions, and all movable or immovable property in their possession and reduce people to perpetual servitude. "

A critical and objective analysis will allow us to see that, the text was interpreted wrongly especially with regard to the recipients. So what was the subject the bubble dealt with?

It is good to know that the bubble is emitted in a precise and critical geopolitical context. In fact, on May 29, 1453, Constantinople (present-day Turkey), a Christian territory was invaded by Mehmed II, Sultan of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, as was the case in certain territories of North Africa that were once Christians. It should be noted that this is a period of boiling of the Eastern and Western Empires with the advent of the gradual decline of the Roman Empire and the rapid advance of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims.

So this Pope bull pays homage to Portugal’s victory over the Turks, who were feared to extend their conquest to the Christian West. It was then that the Pope, at this time moral guarantor and judge between the Christian Kings and Princes of the West, conferred on Portugal the monopoly of trade with Asia and Africa, as well as the right of fishing and navigation in the discovered territories.

And the buckwheats of which the bubble speaks were by no means the Africans even less the Blacks as some say in their ignorance of history or knowingly with the aim of dirtying the Church. On the contrary, it was the Ottoman occupiers, Muslims who invaded new territories to gain control of trade and who reduced the Christian populations to these regions in servitude.

For example, part of the elite of Sultan Mehmed II’s army, made up of around 12,000 Europeans, were Christians once captured and enslaved before being reintegrated into the army. These were called Janissaries. So it is in this context that the Pope asked that the same fate of servitude be reserved for them once they are defeated, them or any other enemy as well as the barbarian peoples who had been at the base of the decadence of the Roman Empire. We encourage you to do the research too.

Also it must be said that in this period from 1300-1400 Black Africa was almost unknown to Europe. And the kingdoms which could be there do not in any case present a threat to the Western empires, neither in the conquest of new lands, nor in the monopoly of the trade in spices coming from the Indies. Black Africa is therefore not mentioned in the said paragraph when mention is made of the Saracens to be reduced to perpetual servitude. Here we were talking about the known enemies or invaders of the Western Empires.

To be reassured, we just have to analyze the first paragraph of the document where the Pope presents the situation of the wars of conquest and their political, economic and even religious stakes if the Christian Kings remain passive.

Thus he congratulates some of them whom he presents as "intrepid athletes and champions of the Christian faith, who in a known way did not only slow down the advance of the Saracens and other infidels, enemies of the Christianity, but also, for the defense and the expansion of the faith, defeated them in their kingdoms and in their dwellings, although located in distant places and unknown to many of us… ”Here again as everywhere else, there is no question of black Africans being enslaved as we wanted to believe. Unless you want to tell us that it was the Africans who invaded Constantinople, present-day Turkey and North Africa in 1453.

Another analysis which proves that this bubble of Pope Nicolas V has nothing to do with the slavery of the Africans is that, we all know that it is the discovery of America which brought the Europeans to come to seek hand in Africa.

So how to understand, those who say that it was this bubble that marked the beginning of slavery and yet this bubble is written in 1454 and America was discovered in 1492, 38 years later. It therefore appears clear that these accusations are not proven like so many others against Christianity.

But the question remains, why all this manipulation and misinformation against the Catholic Church and who is pulling the strings playing on the ignorance of the masses? we will devote another article to it.

Yao Benois DOS REIS and Vincent Yéssonguiyéta SANOGO