1537 AD
Sublimis Deus bull
Law & constitutions · Derecho canónico, colonialismo y estatus
In 1537 Paul III declared that Indigenous peoples should not be deprived of liberty or property or reduced to slavery because they were not Christians. It was a normative papal intervention, not general civil legislation: it did not by itself halt conquest, coerced labor, or other forms of colonial domination.
Precision, calendar, and review
- Start
- year · no uncertainty qualifier in this record
- Calendar and convention
- Historical-era years; the source calendar is not identified. No conversion of days is assumed.
- Year zero
- The scale goes from 1 BCE to 1 CE without year zero. Changing era names changes labels only.
- Documentary review
- Date not recorded
Reading the date: point event.
Sources
- press.vatican.va (opens in a new tab)
Source provenance and scope
- Publication date
- Not identified in metadata; document review pending
- Bibliographic date checked
- 2026-09-23
The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.
This record is an editorial synthesis. Consult the sources to check claims and their limits. Chronological relationships alone do not establish causation.