Why Did a Pope Divide the Entire Planet with One Line

#History #TreatyOfTordesillas #Pope
In the spring of 1493, in a palace in Rome, a Pope took a map of the world and drew a line across it, from the North Pole to the South Pole. Everything on one side would belong to Spain. Everything on the other side, to Portugal.

Hundreds of millions of people today live with the consequences of that line, and most of them have never heard of it.

This is the story of how Portugal’s race for spices around Africa and Columbus’s voyage for Spain pushed two Catholic kingdoms to the edge of war. To settle it, Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, stepped in. Follow the papal decree known as Inter caetera and the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. See the twist that explains why Brazil speaks Portuguese, and how Magellan’s voyage around the world forced a second line on the other side of the planet. You’ll also hear what France’s king reportedly said about it, and why the Vatican formally rejected the “Doctrine of Discovery” more than 500 years later.