Requerimiento

Timeline

1. c. 1512–1513Court of Castile · CastileRoyal Council jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios drafted the notice to be read before force was used, based on the papal bull Inter caetera and just-war doctrine. The text recounts Creation, Saint Peter, and papal authority, claiming the pope had granted the Indies to the king of Castile; listeners had to acknowledge sovereignty and accept missionaries, otherwise the guilt of war, enslavement, and confiscation of property lay with the listener.
2. 1514Santa María la Antigua del Darién · DariénWhen Pedrarias Dávila became governor of Castilla de Oro he carried the text with him, and his party read it to indigenous villages on the isthmus. The ceremony was often performed at a distance and untranslated, followed immediately by war and the establishment of posts such as Panama, turning the Requerimiento from a court legal opinion into a required legal formality on the conquest front.
3. 1519–1573Spanish American conquest frontier · Spanish coloniesThe Requerimiento was repeatedly used by conquering parties across the mainland, becoming the written record notaries left to justify war. Las Casas denounced it as absurd: listeners did not understand Spanish, and refusal meant slaughter. The School of Salamanca and the Valladolid debate further weakened its moral persuasiveness, and the ceremony gradually became a mere formality.