SOURCE: "Analysis of Las Casas's Treatise," in All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indians, Northern Illinois University Press, 1974, pp. 73–112.

In the excerpt below, Hanke details Las Casas 's refutation of Sepúlveda's arguments at the council of Valladolid in 1550–51.

The main lines of the argument Las Casas developed at Valladolid in his presentation to the Council of the Fourteen in August 1550 have been known ever since 1552, when he published a résumé by Domingo de Soto of both his own views and those of Sepúlveda. Soto, the Dominican theologian who was a member of the Council appointed to hear the controversy, and who had been commissioned by his colleagues to prepare a summary of both arguments, never mentioned the second part, the Spanish...