FOOTNOTE:

[i]  “…1493 AD —  “The Requirement”…

“The Requirement was published as a papal “bull”, issued by the infamous Pope Alexander VI, (Rodrigo Borgia), Roman Catholic Pope from 1492 until his death, is the most memorable of the Popes of the Renaissance.

Because of the pre-existence of millions of people living in the Americas in 1493, the King of Spain, had a small twinge of fear at the prospect that God might become angry at him for all the murder, theft and mayhem he endorsed in the New World.  So, he persuaded Pope Alexander VI to sanction an official proclamation intended to dissolve the stain of bloody culpability from the King’s own immortal soul.  This document, called “The Requirement”, was supposed to be read, whether translated into the native language of the inhabitants or not, to the citizens of every foreign nation just prior to their conquest. The gist of the proclamation was to inform the soon to be vanquished that their lands were being “donated” to Spain. 

The Requirement read, in part:

             “I, (name of the Conquistador), servant of the high and mighty Kings of Castile and Leon, conquerors of barbarian peoples, and being their messenger and Captain, hereby notify and inform you … that God Our Lord, One and Eternal, created Heaven and Earth and a man and a woman from whom you and I and all the multitude begotten from these over the past five thousand and some years since the world was made … And so I request and require you … to recognize the Church as your Mistress and as Governess of the World and Universe, and the High Priest, called the Pope, in Her name, and His Majesty (the King of Spain) in Her place, as Ruler and Lord King … And if you do not do this … with the help of God I shall come mightily against you, and I shall make war on you everywhere and in every way that I can, and I shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and His Majesty, and I shall seize your women and children, and I shall make them slaves, to sell and dispose of as His Majesty commands, and I shall do all the evil and damage to you that I am able. And I insist that the deaths and destruction that result from this will be your fault.”

One of the first to hear The Requirement were the chiefs of the Maya, whose scale of time for the creation of life on Earth did not begin a mere 5,000 years earlier, as suggested by the Pope, rather the Mayan measured original creation in millions of years by the astronomical calendars they kept, which tracked the solar year accurately to within a few seconds a year.  Their comment upon hearing The Requirement was, “The Holy Father has indeed been generous with others’ property”.

The Requirement was originally intended as a response to complaints by Spanish clerics that the wars against the Native American peoples were unjust. Comparing them to Spain’s wars against the Moors, the clerics claimed that Muslims had knowledge of Christ and rejected Him, so that waging a Crusade against them was legitimate. In contrast, wars against the Native Americans, who had never come into contact with Christianity were unacceptable. The Requirement was intended as a legal loophole to place the native population in the position of having rejected Christianity. It stated: “We protest that any deaths that result from this [rejection of Christianity] are your fault…”

Many critics of the conquistadors’ policies were appalled by the flippant nature of the Requirement, and the priest, Bartolomeo de Las Casas, said in response to it that he did not know whether to laugh or to cry. While the conquistadors were encouraged to use an interpreter to read the Requirement, this was not absolutely necessary, and in many cases, it was read out to an uncomprehending populace. In some instances, it was read to barren beaches and empty villages, long after the natives had fled, to prisoners after they were captured, or even from the decks of ships once they had just spotted the coast. Nevertheless, for the conquistadors, it provided a religious justification for attacking and enslaving the native population, and because of its potential to enrich the coffers of Spain, the Requirement was not generally questioned.”

— Reference:  Wikipedia.org

The net result of the “discovery” of the “New World” which wasn’t really “new” as it had been around as long as any other continent, and had a larger population than Europe, was as follows:

1) hundreds of indigenous cultures were eradicated  2) approximately 100 million people were killed by disease and war brought upon them by “aliens” 3) 100 million people from the Gold Coast of Africa were enslaved, and/ or murdered by Europeans in an effort to replace the “labor force” of slaughtered indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere 4) nearly all of the priceless literature, history, cultural and artistic artifacts of the Western hemisphere were destroyed 5) most of the gold and gems mined over a period of thousands of years by indigenous people were stolen and shipped off the a handful of greedy, idiotic, uneducated, filthy, disease-ridden, superstitious, murderous, thieves in Europe who squandered it on mindless self-indulgences. — The Editor