Nicholas V and the bull Romanus Pontifex: A New Interpretation

Organised by

• Department of History

Nicholas (r. 1447-1455) is considered the pope who brought the Renaissance to the gates of Rome. Implementing reforms, he was one of the most visionary of the history of the Catholic Church. He was also a protector of the arts and humanities and said to have been a noble figure living quietly and soberly. However, he is remembered as the person who sanctioned black African slavery. In his 1455 bull Romanus Pontifex, he granted permission to Afonso of Portugal the right to acquire slaves along the west coast of Africa by force or by trade. Or so has history recorded it. My talk offers a thick reading of the papal bull Romanus Pontifex to elucidate whether the Portuguese Crown purposely misinterpreted it. Spending time on the Latin text and on the historical context, I complicate the narrative by offering a Mediterranean centered approach. While scholars have viewed popes as regulator of relations between Christians and non-Christians, I ask whether focusing on West Africa can bring a new understanding of Mediterranean history. By bringing not a colonial, but an imperial perspective to the reading of the bull, I reimagine the intellectual universality of the papacy arguing that Nicholas’s desire to bring all people under a unitary narrative did not fit with the practice of slavery.