This Is the Lord's Gift! A dádiva do Senhor
The colonial camp was filled with the sound of logging, hammering, and the sailors' clamor. Only in front of the wooden chapel was there a rare measure of peace. In this era, faith in the Lord ruled the hearts of all Europeans from top to bottom, beyond question. Even the fiercest, most murderous, lawless sailors of Europe likewise feared the judgment of the fiery hell, feared a death without redemption.
Thus, this bond of Catholic faith also tied the nations of Europe deeply together, forming the "Catholic World" in people's hearts. Within the Catholic World, people's pursuit of religious virtue, their reverence for "God," and the order this faith brought stood in an extraordinarily stark contrast to the cruelty with which they treated "Heathens" and "barbarians" outside the Catholic World.
Then could "barbarians" who had converted to Catholicism be brought into the "Catholic World" and recognized by the nations of Europe? This question was very difficult to answer, stretching across far too long an age from the descent of the Son of God to the Renaissance. But in the present Age of Discovery, perhaps a clear answer could be found in the example of those West African tribes who had converted to Catholicism.
That was: among the native peoples of the colonies, the upper nobles, chiefs, and headmen, relying on the wealth and power they held in their hands, could obtain "personhood" in the Catholic World after converting to Catholicism, be accepted in small numbers by the upper ranks of the suzerain state, and become "first-class people" in the colonies, equal to whites!
But the vast majority of ordinary tribesmen, even if they converted to Catholicism, would still remain "third-class people" on the lands of their ancestors, bearing all the harsh