Бычья булла Inter caetera: Раздел мира между Испанией и Португалией

1493 papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI

Inter caetera ('Among other [works]') was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on the 4 May 1493, which granted to the Catholic Monarchs King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile all lands to the "west and south" of a pole to pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde islands. It remains unclear whether the pope intended a "donation" of sovereignty or an infeudation or investiture. Differing interpretations have been argued since the bull was issued, with some arguing that it was only meant to transform the possession and occupation of land into lawful sovereignty. Others, including the Spanish crown and the conquistadors, interpreted it in the widest possible sense, deducing that it gave Spain full political sovereignty. Inter caetera and its supplement Dudum siquidem (September 1493) are two of the Bulls of Donation. While these bulls purported to settle disputes between Spain and Portugal, they did not address the exploratory and colonial ambitions of other nations, which became more of an issue after the Protestant Reformation.

Before Christopher Columbus received support for his voyage from Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, he had first approached King John II of Portugal. The king's scholars and navigators reviewed Columbus's documentation, determined that his calculations grossly underestimated the diameter of the Earth and thus the length of the voyage, and recommended against subsidizing the expedition. Upon Columbus's return from his first voyage to the Americas, his first landing was made in the Portuguese Azores; a subsequent storm drove his ship to Lisbon on 4 March 1493. Hearing of Columbus's discoveries, the Portuguese king informed him that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas. The treaty had been ratified with the 1481 papal bull Aeterni regis, which confirmed previous bulls of 1452 (Dum diversas), 1455 (Romanus Pontifex), and 1456 (Inter caetera),

Columbus's arrival in supposedly Asiatic lands in the western Atlantic Ocean in 1492 threatened the unstable relations between Portugal and Spain. With word that King John was preparing a fleet to sail to the west, the King and Queen of Spain initiated diplomatic discussions over the rights to possess and govern the newly found lands. Spanish and Portuguese delegates met and debated from April to November 1493, without reaching an agreement. Columbus was still in Lisbon when he sent a report of his success to the Spanish monarchs. On 11 April, the Spanish ambassador conveyed the news to Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard and the former Administrator of Valencia, and urged him to issue a new bull favorable to Spain. At the time, Pope Alexander, as ruler of the Papal States, was embroiled in a territorial dispute with Ferdinand's first cousin, Ferdinand I, King of Naples, hence he was amicable to any requests of Isabella and Ferdinand, to the extent that they could write to Columbus saying that if he thought it necessary, one of the bulls would be modified. They were at Barcelona, in close touch with Rome. The camera apostolica became almost an extension of the Spanish Court, which secured a rapid succession of bulls virtually liquidating Portuguese claims. The Pope issued edicts dated 3 and 4 May 1493. The third superseded the first two. A final edict, Dudum siquidem of 26 September 1493, supplemented the Inter caetera. The third bull, also entitled Inter caetera, dated 4 May, exhorts the Spanish monarchs to spread the faith west from a line drawn "one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde". Diffie notes that it has been suggested that this change may have been prompted by the Portuguese ambassador. The line of demarcation divided Atlantic zones only. For the time being, the question was in abeyance.

An important but unanticipated effect of this papal bull and the Treaty of Tordesillas was that nearly all the Pacific Ocean and the west coast of North America were given to Spain. King John II naturally declined to enter into a hopeless competition at Rome, and simply ignored the bulls, thus neither admitting their authority nor defying the Church. According to Oskar Spate, if Rome was in Ferdinand's pocket, highly placed personages at the Spanish Court were in King John's, and kept him well informed of its moves. In response to Portugal's discovery of the Spice Islands in 1512, the Spanish put forward the idea, in 1518, that Pope Alexander had divided the world into two halves. By this time, however, other European powers had overwhelmingly rejected the notion that the Pope had the right to convey sovereignty of regions as vast as the New World. Even within Spain, influential voices such as Francisco de Vitoria had denounced the validity of the Inter caetera. While Spain never gave up its claims based on papal bulls, neither did the Spanish crown seek papal sanctions over the Atlantic Ocean line of demarcation. Rather, Spain negotiated directly with Portugal. Two other friars whom he had left in the Americas returned to Spain in 1499.

This religious authorization to take non Christian peoples' lands was cited by U. S. Chief Justice John Marshall almost 300 years later as he was developing the discovery doctrine in international law. In the 21st century, groups such as the Shawnee, Lenape, Taíno, and Kanaka Maoli organised protests and raised petitions seeking to repeal the papal bull Inter caetera, and to remind Catholic leaders of the record of conquest, disease and slavery in the Americas, sometimes justified in the name of Christianity, which they say has a devastating effect on their cultures today.