Inter caetera; Pacioli; the Requerimiento

Inter caetera partitions the New World by papal bull. Pacioli prints double-entry bookkeeping. Spain adopts the Requerimiento — a legal text read aloud in Spanish to people who did not understand it, to make conquest lawful.

In plain words

A papal bull divides the New World; Pacioli prints double-entry bookkeeping; Spain reads the Requerimiento aloud, in a language the people it addresses do not speak, to make conquest lawful: the altar issues property title, and the ledger gets its instrument.

The mechanism

THE ALTAR ISSUING PROPERTY TITLE, and THE LEDGER GETTING ITS INSTRUMENT — Pacioli's book is the accounting the entire credit era runs on

How it was checked

• EvidenceT7 PRIMARY DOCUMENT / MEASUREMENT; Status: COMMITTED
• Letter eraTHE RELEASES, AND THE ENCLOSURE THAT FOLLOWS EACH 1382 to 1694
• Plate — Inter caetera, papal bull of Alexander VI, 4 May 1493 · Public domain · source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inter_caetera_1493-05-04.jpg
• SourcesPRIMARY DOCUMENT — the bull, the Summa, the Requerimiento text