# The Doctrine of Discovery The Doctrine of Discovery is the body of fifteenth-century papal decrees and the nineteenth-century common-law rulings built upon them that gave European Christian monarchs a claimed legal title to lands "discovered" outside Christendom, treating non-Christian inhabitants as having no recognized sovereign ownership of their own soil. It runs from the papal bulls *Dum Diversas* (1452), *Romanus Pontifex* (1455), and *Inter Caetera* (1493) through the U.S. Supreme Court's foundational decision in *Johnson v. M'Intosh* (1823), which absorbed the doctrine into American property and Indian law. It matters here because it is the documentary root of the "discovery = title" logic — a Crown-and-Church claim of dominion over peoples and lands — that later arguments (including those reaching back to charters and grants of the 1600s) must reckon with. **Source:** https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/ · *Inter Caetera* translation: https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/assets/pdfs/Inter_Caetera_Modrow&Smith.pdf · *Johnson v. M'Intosh* (full opinion): https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21/543 --- ## Overview: What it is, when, and why it matters **What it is.** "The Doctrine of Discovery" is not a single statute. It is a doctrine assembled from a chain of documents over four centuries. Its core principle: when agents of a Christian European sovereign "discovered" lands not already in the possession of another Christian prince, that sovereign acquired an exclusive right — against rival European powers — to claim, occupy, govern, and acquire the soil, and the non-Christian inhabitants' sovereignty was treated as thereby "diminished." **Timeline of the core documents.** | Year | Document | Pope / Court | What it established | |---|---|---|---| | 1452 | *Dum Diversas* | Pope Nicholas V | Authorized the Portuguese crown to subdue "Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ," seize their goods, and reduce them to perpetual servitude. | | 1455 | *Romanus Pontifex* | Pope Nicholas V | Confirmed Portuguese rights to lands discovered along the African coast and "as far as the Indies"; sanctioned conquest and possession of non-Christian territories. | | 1456 | *Inter Caetera* (the first) | Pope Calixtus III | Extended Portuguese ecclesiastical/temporal rights "as far as the Indies." | | 1481 | *Aeterni Regis* | Pope Sixtus IV | Confirmed Portuguese possession of the Azores, Madeiras, and Cape Verde and future discoveries "in the Ocean Seas." | | **1493** | ***Inter Caetera*** | **Pope Alexander VI** | **Granted Castile and Leon (Spain) all lands discovered or to be discovered west and south of a line 100 leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde — provided they were not already possessed by a Christian prince.** | | 1494 | Treaty of Tordesillas | (Spain–Portugal) | Moved the demarcation line, dividing the non-Christian world between the two crowns. | | **1823** | ***Johnson v. M'Intosh***, 21 U.S. 543 | **U.S. Supreme Court (Marshall, C.J.)** | **Adopted "discovery" as the rule of U.S. property law: discovery gave the discovering government title against other Europeans and the sole right to extinguish the Indians' title of occupancy.** | | 2013 | *Doctrine of Discovery (Christian Doctrine Repudiation) etc.* — modern repudiations | (various church bodies / legislatures) | Twentieth- and twenty-first-century formal repudiations of the doctrine by churches and assemblies. | **Why it matters to a 1666-era argument.** English colonial charters, royal grants, and land patents of the seventeenth century rest on the same underlying premise the papal bulls articulated and that *Johnson v. M'Intosh* later codified: that a European Christian crown could convey title to "discovered" land because the crown was deemed to hold the sovereign right of discovery, leaving native nations only a right of *occupancy*, not full ownership. Any document from 1666 that grants, conveys, or asserts dominion over New World land is operating inside this discovery framework. Reading the doctrine in the colonizers' own words — papal grant and Supreme Court opinion alike — exposes the assumption on which all such grants depend. --- ## I. *Inter Caetera* — Pope Alexander VI, 4 May 1493 (verbatim translation) *Translated by Sebastian Modrow and Melissa Smith from the original 15th-century Latin (collated with the Davenport critical edition, 1917). Published by doctrineofdiscovery.org. The 1493 Latin original and this scholarly translation are in the public domain / freely published for educational use.* > **Bishop Alexander, servant of the servants of God,** [sends his] most beloved son in Christ King Fernando and [his] most beloved daughter in Christ Queen Isabella, [regents] of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Sicily and Granada, salutation and apostolic benediction. > **Among other works pleasing the divine majesty and close to our heart, this indeed stands out the most: elevating the Catholic faith and the Christian religion, especially in [these] our times, as well as extending and spreading it everywhere, securing the salvation of souls and subduing the barbarous nations and bringing them back to the faith itself.** > Since we have been called to this Holy See of Peter by the will of the divine grace despite, of course, being undeserving, and because we recognize that you as those truly Catholic kings and princes, as we know you have always been ... [therefore] consider it worthy and appropriate ... to grant you willingly and enthusiastically those things necessary to pursue ... such a sacred and commendable plan pleasing to the immortal God for the honor of God himself and the extension of the Christian realm. > We have heard, of course, that though for some time you had intended to look for and find certain remote and unknown islands and mainlands, heretofore undiscovered by others, in order to return their local population and inhabitants to the worship of our Redeemer and to the profession of the Catholic faith ... when the aforementioned kingdom [Granada] was finally regained, as it pleased the Lord, and wishing to follow your desire, you designated [our] beloved son **Christopher Columbus**, a man certainly worthy and most highly recommendable and suited for a task of this magnitude, together with ships and men equipped for such an undertaking under the greatest hardships, dangers and expenses, to carefully search for remote and unknown continents and islands of this kind across the sea, where no one had ever sailed before; > with help from above and utmost perseverance while sailing the ocean, these [men] found certain very remote islands and even mainlands heretofore undiscovered by others and inhabited by an abundance of peoples **who live peacefully and who go naked, as we are assured, and don't eat flesh.** And the peoples themselves who dwell in the aforementioned islands and lands believe ... that there is one God, the creator, in heaven, and they appear to be ready to embrace the Catholic faith and to be imbued with good morals ... > ... on those islands and lands already discovered are found **gold, spices, and an abundance of other precious things of various kinds and qualities.** > In our strongest support in the Lord of this sacred and commendable plan of yours ... we urge you, therefore, most strongly in the Lord ... that it be and has to be your intention to induce the populations living in those islands and lands to accept the Christian religion, and neither danger nor hardship should ever deter you ... ### The operative grant (the demarcation line and the gift of dominion) > And, in order to take up more freely and courageously a task of such magnitude, given to you out of the generosity of the apostolic grace, by our own impulse, not at your or someone else's request ... but out of our pure magnanimity and a certain knowledge and full apostolic power, **we draw and establish a line from the Arctic Pole, or north, to the Antarctic Pole, or south, irrespective of whether the mainlands and islands were found or are to be found towards India or any other region — a line that shall be distant one hundred leagues to the west and south of any of the islands that are usually called the Azores and Cape Verde,** so that all islands and mainlands discovered and to be discovered, detected and to be detected, from said line towards the west and south, **as long as they were not in fact in the possession of another Christian king or prince up to the day of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ that just passed** ... > ... and with the authority of the Almighty God bestowed on us in our [succession of] St. Peter and of the Vicariate of Jesus Christ that we execute on earth ... **we give, grant and assign in perpetuity to you and your heirs and successors, the kings of Castile and Leon, all the islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered, in the west and south, with all of their dominions, cities, castles, towns and villages, and all rights, jurisdictions and domains, and make, appoint and regard you and said heirs and successors as their lords with full, free and all-encompassing power, authority and jurisdiction;** > we decree likewise that no right of any Christian prince who in fact owned said islands or mainlands by the said day of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ can be challenged or invalidated by this gift, grant and assignment of ours. > And in addition, we order you by the virtue of holy obedience ... to assign qualified and God-fearing, learned, experienced, and knowledgeable men to said mainlands and islands in order to instruct the aforementioned local populations and inhabitants in the Catholic faith and to imbue them with good morals ... > and **we strictly forbid any person of whatever dignity — even imperial and royal —, status, standing, rank or position, under** immediate **penalty of excommunication, which they would incur should they disobey, to undertake journeys for commercial or any other reasons to the islands and mainlands found and to be found ... in the west and south without your and your aforementioned heirs' and successors' explicit permission** ... > ... No one is allowed, therefore, to infringe upon this our commendation's, exhortation's, request's, gift's, grant's, assignment's, regulation's, deputation's, decree's, mandate's, prohibition's and will's charter or act against it with impetuous insolence. **Should someone dare to try just that, however, he may expect to incur the wrath of the Almighty God and of his apostles St. Peter and Paul.** > Given at Rome at St. Peter's in the one thousand four hundred ninety-third year of the Lord's Incarnation, on the fourth of May, the first year of our pontificate. --- ## II. *Romanus Pontifex* — Pope Nicholas V, 1455 (context and key sense) *Romanus Pontifex* (8 January 1455) is the bull that, building on *Dum Diversas* (1452), most explicitly fused Christian mission with conquest and enslavement. It confirmed to King Afonso V of Portugal and Prince Henry the Navigator the exclusive right to whatever they discovered along the African coast and onward "as far as the Indies," and it authorized them "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and ... to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." It is the legal-theological predecessor that *Inter Caetera* (1493) assumes and extends. > Authoritative full text (Davenport translation, 1917, public domain): https://www.papalencyclicals.net/nichol05/romanus-pontifex.htm --- ## III. *Johnson v. M'Intosh*, 21 U.S. 543 (1823) — Chief Justice John Marshall (verbatim) *JOHNSON and GRAHAM'S Lessee v. WILLIAM M'INTOSH, 21 U.S. 543; 5 L.Ed. 681; 8 Wheat. 543 (1823). Opinion of the Court by Marshall, C.J. United States Reports — public domain.* The case was an action of ejectment over Illinois land claimed on one side by purchase from the Piankeshaw Indians and on the other by grant from the United States. A unanimous Court held that the United States, not the tribes, held the underlying title — and grounded that holding in the Doctrine of Discovery. These are the load-bearing passages, in Marshall's own words: > **"This principle was, that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession."** > **"The exclusion of all other Europeans, necessarily gave to the nation making the discovery the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives, and establishing settlements upon it."** > **"They were admitted to be the rightful occupants of the soil, with a legal as well as just claim to retain possession of it, and to use it according to their own discretion; but their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it."** > **"They maintain, as all others have maintained, that discovery gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title of occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest; and gave also a right to such a degree of sovereignty, as the circumstances of the people would allow them to exercise."** --- ## Authoritative sources for the full corpus The Doctrine of Discovery is a large, multi-document corpus. The extracts above are the operative passages; the complete texts are available, in the public domain, at these reputable archives: - **doctrineofdiscovery.org** — central repository of the bulls, translations, and scholarship: https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/ - ***Inter Caetera* (1493), Modrow & Smith critical translation (Latin + English):** https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/assets/pdfs/Inter_Caetera_Modrow&Smith.pdf - ***Inter Caetera* (1493), Davenport translation, 1917 (public domain):** https://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/indig-inter-caetera.html - ***Romanus Pontifex* (1455), full text:** https://www.papalencyclicals.net/nichol05/romanus-pontifex.htm - ***Dum Diversas* (1452):** https://doctrineofdiscovery.org/dum-diversas/ - ***Johnson v. M'Intosh*, 21 U.S. 543 (1823) — full opinion, Cornell LII:** https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21/543 - ***Johnson v. M'Intosh* — Justia (full opinion + headnotes):** https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/21/543/ - ***Johnson v. M'Intosh* — U.S. Reports scan, Library of Congress:** https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep021/usrep021543/usrep021543.pdf - **Davenport, *European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States* (Carnegie, 1917), the standard public-domain source edition of the bulls:** https://archive.org/ **Public-domain note:** The papal bulls (1452–1493) and Marshall's 1823 opinion are centuries old and in the public domain; the Davenport (1917) and U.S. Reports texts are likewise public domain. Modern critical translations (e.g., Modrow & Smith) and modern scholarly apparatus carry their publishers' own terms but are freely published for educational use. Any 2013-era *repudiation* statements are recent works under their issuers' copyright (and, where issued by a UK Crown body, under Crown copyright via the Open Government Licence) — note this if quoting those.