Council of Castile

The Council of Castile was the chief governing body of the Spanish crown, and in 1513, after theologians at Burgos debated the justice of the conquest, it commissioned the jurist Palacios Rubios to draft the Requerimiento: a proclamation to be read aloud, in Spanish, to the peoples of the Americas, informing them that the pope had given their lands to the kings of Spain and that if they did not submit and accept the faith, war would be made on them and they and their families enslaved. Las Casas said he did not know whether to laugh or weep at it. The lists read it beside Vitoria, who found its titles void.