A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

500^th Anniversary of the Montesino Sermon

Christopher Columbus had discovered the New World just eighteen years prior to the arrival of Spanish Dominicans on the Caribbean’s Hispaniola.  In 1510, four Dominican friars from the great Salamanca Priory of San Esteban established a mission on the Isla.

The four were soon five, as a lay brother was accepted into the new community from the colony.  The lay brother soon told the four Spanish friars of the killings and torturing of the indigenous population by Spaniards.  This new knowledge, adding to their own assessment of the enslavement of locals, quickly set the Dominicans’ minds to respond to the injustice.

500 years ago this year, on the fourth Sunday of Advent 1511, our brother Antonio Montesino drew upon the rich imagery of St John the Baptist to make the voice of the oppressed heard: he was a voice crying in the moral wilderness of Hispaniola.  His preaching was part of the friars’ strategy to defend the inherent human rights of indigenous people.

Montesino told the congregation that day that they were not likely to save their souls if they continued to live as they had been.  The colonialists had failed in their obligation to treat the locals with proper regard for their physical well-being and their catechesis.

“Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude?  On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly and peacefully on their own lands?”  Montesino fired.

“Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before. Why do you keep them so oppressed and exhausted, without giving them enough to eat or curing them of the sicknesses they incur from the excessive labor you give them, and they die, or rather you kill them, in order to extract and acquire gold every day?”

The Preacher reminded the colonialists that the self-proclaimed superiority of the Spanish political structure and culture over those of the indigenous could not violate the inalienable rights of the people as children of God.

Admiral Diego Columbus, the Governor and son of the explorer, was among those who received the Word from Montesino.  Admiral Columbus demanded that the Prior of the Dominicans, Fr Pedro de Cordova, require Montesino retract what he had said.  Famously, de Cordova told the Governor that all the friars had been responsible for the Sermon and had preached in their name.

After the Sermon, heated debate ensued in the colony and among the Dominican friars themselves.  The then-slave owning agriculturalist, Bartolome de las Casas, joined the chorus against the Montesino Sermon.  It is thanks to de las Casas that we have excerpts from the Sermon.  It would be a short three years until de las Casas completely reversed his position.  He himself gained a reputation as Protector of the Indians.  Eight years after his total conversion to the cause of justice, in 1522, Bartolome de las Casas received the Dominican habit as a friar.

Montesino and the other friars were recalled to Spain to put their case before King Ferdinand II.  They convinced him of the merit of their position.  Ferdinand subsequently proclaimed the Laws of Burgos, the first legal code of a colonial power recognising and protecting the rights of an indigenous people.

The call of Montesino is yet to be heard by other oppressors today, those who advocate abortion, euthanasia, and all the practices which obscure or remove entirely the rights we have as human persons, made in the image of God.  “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”

(Statue of Friar Antonio Montesino delivering his sermon, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)

The concept of poverty,

Material poverty is not necessary for salvation. Jesus himself never condemned the possession of property (although he gave some very explicit warnings to those who are “rich”) and even had wealthy friends such as Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, and disciples such as Joseph “a rich man from Arimathea”. The Church also, over the ages, has always defended private property and taught that creation as such is good and should be enjoyed within reason. Besides, no one can be completely poor; we all need such basic requirements as food, clothing and shelter. Even Jesus and his apostles carried a “money box” (cf Jn 12:6) which presumably they used to purchase their basic necessities.

So the question arises: What is meant by the vow of poverty? The vow of poverty is the renunciation of private property for the sake of the Kingdom of God. This renunciation has two main effects. Firstly, it has certain benefits for the individual which assist in the pursuit of holiness and thus quicken the coming of the Kingdom in the individual. Secondly, it is a powerful witness to the world (which in our age is saturated with materialism) that there are values, above the mere accumulation of temporal goods and money, which are so valuable that it is worth renouncing private property to bear witness to them.

According to St Thomas (Summa II IIae, Q.188, a.7) there are four obstacles to charity which are removed by the renunciation of riches. The first is the excessive cares and worries which wealth can bring; for example the obligation to prepare one's tax return each year, or organizing and paying for the various types of insurance necessary to protect one's goods, each of which consumes much time and worry. The second is the love of riches. There's no doubt that as we accumulate goods, our desire is never diminished. As one of the founding principles of modern economics states, we are all striving “to satisfy our unlimited desires with our limited resources”; a recipe for disaster if there ever was one! The last obstacle removed is “vainglory or elation” related to the acquiring and possession of goods. This mainly applies to those with an abundance of wealth and who glory in it, perhaps forgetting their need of God. St Thomas quotes Psalm 98:7 in relation to them, They that trust in their own strength, and glory in the multitude of their riches. The parable Jesus tells of the man who stores up grain in his barns in Lk 12:16-21 is also an example of this.

It is necessary for all Christians to avoid these dangers associated with the possession of goods, but the religious who professes poverty hopes to make the avoidance of them easier. Thus poverty, while not a precept of the Christian life, removes a host of obstacles which could potentially hinder the pursuit of charity.

The second effect of this vow is the witness which it gives to society. The best example of this can be seen in the social and religious situation in the time of St Dominic. While Dominic was accompanying Bishop Diego on his trip to Denmark (he was to arrange the marriage of a Danish princess with the son of Alphonso, King of Castile), he encountered the preaching and witness of the Albigensian heretics. The Albigensians believed that the material world was absolutely evil and good only existed in the spiritual realm. According to them there were two gods, an evil god who had created matter and a good god who had created the spiritual world. One of the ways they propagated their erroneous beliefs was by an impressive witness of detachment from material things, and despite their false teaching they convinced many people by means of this witness. To combat this heresy the Church ordered 12 Cistercian abbots, each with a companion, to leave their monasteries and travel the countryside preaching the true faith. However, they travelled around with “expensive carriages and furnishing” and large retinues, while the heretics went barefoot with evangelical poverty and austerity. When Bishop Diego encountered these abbots, he besought them to imitate him, give up their large retinues and do without anything superfluous to their mission of preaching. And so, “keeping only the books they would need for the Divine Office, study and disputations”, they travelled the countryside and with much more effectiveness battled the heresy, which eventually was completely eradicated.

The genius of St Dominic and Bishop Diego in this episode was that they saw the grain of truth in the Albigensian message, even though the vast majority of their teaching was erroneous and advocated terrible practices (starving oneself to death was considered virtuous while marriage and procreation evil). While the heretics were wrong in asserting that this world is evil, their witness to the existence of the spiritual through their preparedness to forgo the pleasures of this life appealed to the innate knowledge in man that he is a spiritual being and thus won them many converts. This witness of evangelical poverty, combined with the truth of the Catholic faith, including the teaching of the goodness of creation, formed a powerful and effective weapon of which St Dominic would eventually make use to influence the whole of western society and culture when he founded the Order of Preachers. In this age of materialism and denial of the intrinsic spiritual nature and value of each individual human being, surely this message is more relevant than ever.