Peter d'Errico: Forum takes on Doctrine of Christian Discovery

The historical record that "European Discovery" is "Christian Discovery" is clear all the way back to the initial colonial intrusion, when Christopher Columbus planted the Spanish flag in the "New World" in 1492.

In the 1493 Bull "Inter Caetera," Pope Alexander VI praised "our beloved son, Christopher Columbus"; and, for the Spanish Crown that financed Columbus, the Pope did "give, grant, and assign to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon, forever, …all rights, jurisdictions, and appurtenances, all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered." The only limit to the Pope's grant was if the lands were already "in the actual possession of any Christian king or prince." Columbus' name bears witness to the doctrine: As the Oxford English Dictionary states, "Christopher" means "Christ-bearing."

As Prof. Jeffers points out, the doctrinal roots of Christian Discovery go back even further, to 13th century Pope Innocent IV, who "gave Christians the legal authority to circumscribe non-Christian property and sovereignty rights." By the 16th and 17th centuries, legal scholars such as Franciscus de Victoria and Hugo Grotius began to develop what they called international law (i.e., the law of the nation state system). They built on papal precedents "legitimating the confiscation of the land, property, and sovereignty of non-Christian peoples."

Johnson v. McIntosh admitted this religious origin. As Chief Justice Marshall wrote, "No one of the powers of Europe gave its full assent to this principle, more unequivocally than England. The documents upon this subject are ample and complete. So early as the year 1496, her monarch granted a commission to the Cabots, to discover countries then unknown to Christian people, and to take possession of them in the name of the king of England."