Telling Truth to Kings

By Reinhold Schneider
Foreword by Os Guinness
(1998)

Bartolomé de Las Casas’ stand against Spanish depravity in the New World raises hard questions for our own time. 

From the prophet Jeremiah and John the Baptist in the ancient world down to Edmund Burke on the French Revolution, Winston Churchill in his wilderness years, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at Harvard, a recurring theme of history is the “unheeded messenger.” One of the least known but most courageous twentieth century voices is that of Reinhold Schneider, the German Catholic novelist and poet whose works were so pointed that they were banned by the Nazis in the 1930s.

This excerpt from Schneider’s most famous novel, Las Casas Before Charles V, is at first sight about the corruption of sixteenth-century Spain and the courageous opposition of the Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas to Spanish abuses in the New World. But a deeper reading shows it addresses 1930s Germany—and America and Europe today, for Las Casas’ stand against Spanish depravity raises hard questions for our own time.

What qualities of character are required to address truth to power? How can it be done when the king is “we the people”? What hinders contemporary holders of power from hearing truth? This moving story raises questions that are urgent for concerned citizens today. 

The Emperor had leaned forward and listened to these last words with growing interest and without a sign of disagreement. Now he made a gesture and said almost inaudibly, “Speak!”

This softly spoken word—perhaps only heard by the monk, although all understood the wish of the Emperor—struck Las Casas like a blow. He shrank back, and a terrible emotion gripped his body. Then he clutched at the edge of the table with his left hand, leaned on it, and drew a sharp breath. “I have asked permission to speak of what I have seen,” he began, “and I shall try, although I do not know whether I will succeed.” Reinhold Schneider

Category: Readings (No. 20)