What the author of this modest volume hopes to contribute to the field of Lascasian studies, fallow since 1992, he does not disclose. The book lacks a preface, and the introduction lacks a thesis. The implied thesis, that the lifework of Bartolomé de Las Casas satisfies the definition of a prophet, is not so much argued as stated. The author sweeps cogent historiographical discussions and important dates into his notes and fills his text with homilies on the subject of religious conversion. In company with other scholars, he believes that Las Casas experienced two such changes of direction, the first in 1514, when he dedicated his life to the defense and peaceful evangelizing of American Indians, and the second in 1522, when he decided to enter the Dominican Order.
During Las Casas’s lifetime, those who were profiting by Spain’s discoveries and brutal conquests in the Americas, from the king on...
