In the one interview which Las Casas obtained, he perceived that the machinations of his enemies had not been entirely in vain, for he found the Cardinal's mind somewhat influenced by the representations which had reached him from the Jeronymites and the agents of the colonists.
Charles V. landed at Villaviciosa in Asturias on September 13, 1517. Among his first acts was the dispatch of a letter to the Cardinal, in which the latter was dismissed to his diocese with a few perfunctory expressions of regard and recognition for his services. Cardinal Ximenez breathed his last a few hours after reading this heartless communication and Las Casas was left to begin anew his life as a courtier and to cultivate the good-will of the all-powerful Flemish favourites. He was fortunate, at this time, in securing the friendship of a brother of Fray Antonio de Montesinos, named Reginaldo, who was also a Dominican and proved a staunch and resourceful ally.
From an engraving by Ferdinand Slema, made in 1778 after the portrait by Titian
Influences and arguments which sound strange enough in twentieth-century ears were powerful, and likely to be employed with dangerous success in Spain at that time. One of the members of the Council having asserted to Fray Reginaldo that the Indians were incapable of conversion, the friar submitted this proposition to the Prior of San Estéban in Salamanca, one of the most learned and influential men in the Dominican order, asking him to invite a body of theologians to determine whether or no such an affirmation was in accordance with Catholic doctrine, and to send him a copy of the decision. Thirteen doctors of theology and other ecclesiastical authorities replied with four or five signed conclusions, the last of which defined that all who held or propagated that error should be condemned to the stake as heretics. This was a weapon in Las Casas's hands which circumstances might make formidable; it was no trifling thing to be arraigned before the tribunal of the Inquisition on a charge of holding heretical doctrines, for neither rank nor calling availed to protect the offender, and it is somewhat astonishing that no reference to use of this "opinion" being made by Las Casas in any given case is found in the records of his struggle for the liberty of the Indians.