Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/165

 THE SECULAB AND THE SPIRITUAL ARM 117 as follows: " Before he attacked the Moors and idol- aters of those parts with the material and secular sword, he was to allow the priests and monks to use their spiritual sword which was to declare to them the Gos- pel . . . and convert them to the faith of Christ. . . . And should they be so contumacious as not to accept this law of faith . . . and should they forbid commerce and exchange ... in that case they should put them to fire and sword, and carry on fierce war against them." The Portuguese king thus regularized his posi- tion from the theological point of view. The same sen- timent of no common faith, no common rights, still influences the European attitude toward the African races; but for the words Christianity and paganism we now use the terms civilization and barbarism. In carrying out the doctrine of lawful war against all unbelievers, with whom no express compact existed to the contrary, the Portuguese were led into cruelties, in part common to that time, but in part arising from their peculiar position in Asia. Their force was so small that they thought it needful to punish without mercy any resistance or revolt. This necessity for terrorizing the superior numbers of their enemies may explain, though it can never excuse, the atrocities which stained their history in the East. Such severities became a fixed principle of their policy from the second voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1502. The Bishop Osorio blames Almeida (1505 - 1509) for torturing and executing the prisoners after the battle of Diu, and reprobates the conduct of a captain who in 1507 threw the crew of an Arab ship