SISTINE CHAPELbuilt, established the Sistine choir, com-
missioned BOTTICELLIand POLLAIUOLO, and opened the
Vatican Library to scholars.
Sixtus V (1521–1590) Pope (1585–90)
Born in Ancona of a poor family, Felice Peretti joined the
Franciscans at age 12. He became known as a harsh re-
former, especially when inquisitor-general in Venice
(1557–60). He was vicar-general of the Franciscans
(1566–72) and was created cardinal in 1570.
As pope he was concerned with the lawlessness and
the financial problems of the Papal States, dealing ruth-
lessly with the bandits and making the papacy rich by in-
troducing heavy new taxes. He embarked on an expensive
building program, including the completion of St. Peter’s
dome and work on the Lateran Palace and the Vatican Li-
brary. Sixtus V reorganized the Curia, limiting the number
of cardinals to 70 and establishing 15 congregations (or
departments) to perform the work of the papacy. He also
inaugurated (1589) a revision of the Vulgate Bible, the edi-
tio Sistina.
Skarga, Piotr (1536–1612) Polish theologian and writer
Skarga was born into a bourgeois family at Grójec and
joined the Jesuits in 1569. His appointment in 1579 as
head of the academy at Vilna gave him scope for the
Counter-Reformation teachings for which he became fa-
mous. His book on the lives of the saints, published the
same year, became a classic. In 1588 he became a preacher
at the court of King Sigismund III, where his influence ex-
acerbated the religious intolerance then beginning to af-
flict Poland. Nonetheless he gained a unique eminence as
a Polish patriot on account of his Kasania Sejmowe (Par-
liamentary sermons; 1597); these combine moral and po-
litical exhortation, prophecies of the downfall of the
Polish state, and patriotic sentiment, expressed in power-
ful and compelling prose that won many admirers.
slavery Slavery had been practiced in various forms in
Europe since classical antiquity. It was sanctioned by Aris-
totle’s opinion that “barbarians,” that is those who lived
beyond the bounds of the “civilized” Mediterranean
world, were natural slaves. Wars, piracy, and raids into
barbarian territory all yielded chattel slaves who could be
bought and sold as any other livestock. High prices were
paid for slaves with particular talents or skills. Such slaves
should be differentiated from unfree members of their
own societies, most of whom owed their slavery to some
form of severe misfortune: among these were children
who had been sold into slavery in time of famine and
penal slaves who were enslaved as punishment for a
crime. The Church accepted the practice of slavery, al-
though with some unease, and it was considered a virtu-
ous act for a Christian to manumit slaves (restore their
freedom).
Piracy was a great source of slaves throughout the
Mediterranean world from antiquity onward, and both
Christian and Muslim pirates sold off the crews and pas-
sengers of captured ships. Able-bodied men often ended
up as galley slaves, rowing the ships of their captors. Large
numbers of galley slaves provided motive power at the
battle of LEPANTOin 1571, and the victorious Christians
claimed to have freed over 12,000 of their coreligionists
from the Ottoman fleet. Seventeen years later over 2000
galley slaves were on the complement of the SPANISH AR-
MADA.
The trade in Black African slaves had long been a fea-
ture of Muslim North and East Africa, and from around
1380 Aragonese merchants were buying slaves from both
the North African littoral and the Black Sea shores. Dur-
ing the latter half of the 14th century, after the Black Death
had wiped out much of the population of western Europe,
causing a severe labor shortage, Genoese and Venetian
merchants trading to Constantinople imported Russian,
Tartar, and Circassian slaves. In Spain the final stages of
the Reconquista under FERDINAND(II) AND ISABELLA Isaw
the enslavement of many Jews and Moors; at the fall of
Malaga in 1487, for example, a third of the population was
enslaved, a further third was exchanged for Christians
held captive in Muslim North Africa, and a massive ran-
som was demanded for 450 Malagan Jews to save them
from being sold into slavery. The Portuguese began build-
ing up an organized slave trade in Africa in the mid-1400s
as a result of their raids into northern Mauritania. As their
ships ventured further south, into the Gulf of Guinea, in
the early 1460s the acquisition of Black slaves became a
major objective. By the mid-1550s slaves from the Por-
tuguese colonies accounted for around 10% of Lisbon’s
population.
In the New World, the Spanish operated a system
known as encomienda, under which royal grants of land
included the native inhabitants as forced laborers. This in
practice reduced the status of native Americans to that of
slaves, and the humanitarian Spanish priest LAS CASASde-
voted most of his life to inveighing against it. However,
even he was not initially opposed to slavery as such, since
his early writings recommend the importation of Africans
to be used as slaves in place of the native Americans; later
he regretted this, and published a treatise condemning the
African slave trade (1546).
See also: RACISM
Further reading: David Eltis et al (eds), The Transat-
lantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2000); Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the
Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).44444 4 SSiixxttuuss VV