Editing Bartolomé de las Casas (section)

=== Later years and death ===
[[File:Valladolid San Gregorio 20080815.jpg|thumb|The façade of the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid, where Las Casas spent his final decades]]
Having resigned the Bishopric of Chiapas, Las Casas spent the rest of his life working closely with the imperial court in matters relating to the Indies. In 1551 he rented a cell at the [[Colegio de San Gregorio|College of San Gregorio]], where he lived with his assistant and friend Fray Rodrigo de Ladrada.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Wagner|Parish|1967|pp=183–184}}</ref> He continued working as a kind of procurator for the natives of the Indies, many of whom directed petitions to him to speak to the emperor on their behalf. Sometimes indigenous nobility even related their cases to him in Spain, for example, the [[Nahua peoples|Nahua]] noble [[Francisco Tenamaztle]] from [[Nochistlán]]. His influence at court was so great that some even considered that he had the final word in choosing the members of the [[Council of the Indies]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Wagner|Parish|1967|pp=191–192}}</ref>

In 1552, Las Casas published ''[[A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies]]''. This book, written a decade earlier and sent to the attention of then-prince [[Philip II of Spain]], contained accounts of the abuses committed by some Spaniards against Native Americans during the early stages of colonization. In 1555 his old Franciscan adversary [[Toribio de Benavente Motolinia]] wrote a letter in which he described Las Casas as an ignorant, arrogant troublemaker. Benavente described indignantly how Las Casas had once denied baptism to an aging Indian who had walked many leagues to receive it, only on the grounds that he did not believe that the man had received sufficient doctrinal instruction. This letter, which reinvoked the old conflict over the requirements for the [[sacrament]] of [[baptism]] between the two orders, was intended to bring Las Casas in disfavour. However, it did not succeed.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Wagner|Parish|1967|pp=98–100, 243–244}}</ref>

One matter in which he invested much effort was the political situation of the [[Viceroyalty of Peru]]. In Peru, power struggles between [[conquistador]]s and the viceroy became an open civil war in which the conquistadors led by [[Gonzalo Pizarro]] rebelled against the New Laws and defeated and executed the viceroy [[Blasco Núñez Vela]] in 1546. The emperor sent [[Pedro de la Gasca]], a friend of Las Casas, to reinstate the rule of law, and he in turn defeated Pizarro. To restabilize the political situation the encomenderos started pushing not only for the repeal of the New Laws, but for turning the encomiendas into perpetual patrimony of the encomenderos – the worst possible outcome from Las Casas's point of view. The encomenderos offered to buy the rights to the encomiendas from the Crown, and Charles V was inclined to accept since his wars had left him in deep economic troubles. Las Casas worked hard to convince the emperor that it would be a bad economic decision, that it would return the viceroyalty to the brink of open rebellion, and could result in the Crown losing the colony entirely. The emperor, probably because of the doubts caused by Las Casas's arguments, never took a final decision on the issue of the encomiendas.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Wagner|Parish|1967|loc=ch. XVII}}</ref>

In 1561, he finished his ''Historia de las Indias'' and signed it over to the College of San Gregorio, stipulating that it could not be published until after forty years. In fact it was not published for 314 years, until 1875. He also had to repeatedly defend himself against accusations of treason: someone, possibly [[Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda|Sepúlveda]], denounced him to the [[Spanish Inquisition]], but nothing came from the case.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Wagner|Parish|1967|pp=186–188}}</ref> Las Casas also appeared as a witness in the case of the Inquisition for his friend Archbishop [[Bartolomé Carranza|Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda]], who had been falsely accused of heresy.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Wagner|Parish|1967|pp=222–224}}</ref><ref>{{harvcoltxt|Giménez Fernández|1971|p=113}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Homza|first=Lu Ann|title=The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614, An Anthology of Sources|year=2006|publisher=Hackett Publishing Company|isbn=978-0872207943|location=Indianapolis/Cambridge|pages=208–210|language=English}}</ref> In 1565, he wrote his last will, signing over his immense library to the college. Bartolomé de Las Casas died on 18 July 1566, in Madrid.<ref name="Hernández2015">{{cite book|last=Hernández|first=Bernat|title=Bartolomé de las Casas (Colección Españoles Eminentes)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ulTnBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT192| language=es |access-date=2018-07-16|year=2015|publisher=Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España|isbn=978-8430617340|page=192 |df=mdy-all}}</ref>