Laws of Burgos and Valladolid (Collection) Facsimile Edition

Promulgated at Burgos on December 27, 1512, and completed at Valladolid on July 28, 1513, the Laws of Burgos and Valladolid survive in Seville, at the Archivo General de Indias, as two separate records: a chancery copy of the Burgos ordinances entered in the registers of the Council of the Indies (Indiferente General, 419, L.4, fols. 83–96), and the supplementary declaration issued the following year among the Patronato papers (174, R.1).

A Crown Forced to Answer the Dominicans of Hispaniola

The ordinances answered a crisis. In December 1511 the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos had denounced from the pulpit in Santo Domingo the treatment of the island’s indigenous population, and the dispute traveled quickly to court. Ferdinand convened a junta of theologians and jurists at the Dominican house of San Pablo in Burgos; its deliberations produced this text.

Chancery Paper, Not a Presentation Copy

Neither record was made to be admired. Both are working instruments of government, written in Spanish on paper and plain of decoration. The Burgos copy was addressed to the authorities of San Juan and preserved because the Council’s registry kept what it dispatched. No original of the ordinances is known: every surviving witness is a traslado.

Labor, Doctrine, and the Encomienda

The capitula regulate resettlement and housing, evangelization, food and clothing, mining and agricultural work, rest, transport, and the labor of women and children, together with the visitadores charged with enforcement. The four chapters added at Valladolid moderate provisions concerning women and minors. The encomienda itself was confirmed, not dismantled.

What a Text Can and Cannot Settle

Scholars still disagree sharply over what these documents accomplished, and whether enforcement ever followed. What is not in dispute is that a question raised on an island was argued out in a Castilian convent, and the answer written down.