Fabié affirms that in several passages of his writings Fray Bartholomew confirms the assertion of those authors who have designated his father as Francisco, but he does not indicate the whereabouts of these passages nor have I, in my unaided researches, succeeded in finding them. The descendants of the original founder of the family had multiplied and, by the close of the fifteenth century, were divided into many prolific branches, hence the difficulty of identifying the unimportant father of an extraordinarily important son is not wonderful. Las Casas himself may be reasonably assumed to have known his own father’s name and we must conclude, in view of his assertion, that all other authorities, including the Royal College of Heralds, are wrong, and that not Francisco, but a Pedro de Las Casas, who was not however Dean of Seville, was the immediate progenitor of the illustrious Bishop of Chiapa. The scarcity of positive information concerning his immediate family is equalled by the paucity of trustworthy details of the first twenty-eight years of Fray Bartholomew’s life. He completed his studies and obtained the degree of licentiate in law at the University of Salamanca, the most celebrated in Spain, and which ranked high amongst the great seats of learning in Europe at that time. Jurisprudence was divided into the branches of Roman law as interpreted by the school of Bologna, and of canon law, the principles of which were interwoven with the common practice, whose severer tendencies they somewhat tempered. The precepts of Aristotle as interpreted by scholastics formed the basis of philosophical studies, and the Thomistic doctrine was taught by professors of the Dominican Order. It has been judiciously observed that in that age of growing absolutism, both spiritual and temporal, only a skilful Thomistic scholar could have discerned the limits to the legitimate exercise of the royal authority which Las Casas so clearly perceived and so boldly defined in the very presence of the autocratic sovereigns of Spain.