Pidal - El padre Las Casas, su doble personalidad: "Las Casas..oozes bitter hatred and false exaggeration..He was neither a saint, nor an impostor, nor a malevolent man, nor a madman; he was simply paranoid"

https://ia902805.us.archive.org/8/items/elpadrelascasass00mene/elpadrelascasass00mene.pdf

This lack of perspective we notice results in credulous biographies presenting Las Casas as an isolated figure, as he always presents himself, standing out among his contemporaries, whom he deformedly diminished. I am fortunate not to have initially encountered Las Casas alone, but rather in comparison with other contemporaries; I did not suffer the fascinating charm of the praising siren, because my ears were plugged with the careful reasoning of Fray Francisco de Vitoria and the soldierly tales of Bernal Díaz del Castillo; then Las Casas, next to the great theologians, shrinks extraordinarily, and next to the honorable conquistadors, he oozes bitter hatred and false exaggeration.

[...]

The change I am undertaking is also ungrateful, because I see the danger that this critical rectification will be judged as an anti-Las Casas sentiment, a patriotic vindication of Spain's work in America. But this danger is not enough to silence criticism, which, for its part, is always ready to acknowledge that the rapid Spanish conquest of the New World, as if it were carried out in haste, had many defects that we should not forget, but rather understand. This book has nothing to do with the Black Legend or the Golden Legend, both of which are false.

It is a history book. We should applaud the fact that Charles V allowed Las Casas freedom of accusation, regardless of whether the accusation was defamatory or not; but at the same time, let us lament the religious pusillanimity that followed, which prohibited the few adequate rectifications that were written. But, in short, let us leave this apathetic indifference alone, very Spanish indeed; Let us not think about the Black Legend or the Golden Legend, but rather think a lot about the impartial historical criticism of our American enterprise, to shed light on our conduct then and now.

[...]

And with this, we find ourselves once again faced with Quintana's great antinomy: the perfectly orthodox, virtuous, enthusiastically zealous ecclesiastic incurs several anti-Christian notes and abounds in the most horrendous accusations. Not for a moment is it possible to think that Fray Bartolomé was a fraud, a pretender, a vile soul. I also find the attitude of some ecclesiastical critics (Fathers Bayle and Sáenz) who horrifiedly condemn such a lack of Christian charity in Las Casas or who call him a madman to be inaccurate. He was neither a saint, nor an impostor, nor a malevolent man, nor a madman; he was simply paranoid. The reality is that in the priest Las Casas, not only good actions coexist with those that are simply flawed, but also virtuous actions with anti-Christian and perverse ones. So, to excuse the total lack of charity, the monstrous and stubborn falsehood in a man of religiously ascetic life, one must not resort to the sly trickery of falsehood practiced by Quintana and all the other biographers; one must resort to the only possible explanation: mental illness.

[...]

In Las Casas, normal and abnormal activity coexist. This is the shift I believe is necessary to give to the biography; a shift whose new data and interpretive assessments, so different from the usual, I entrust to the examination of psychologists and historians. I have written these pages with reluctance, because, in them, Las Casas is presented to us in adverse light much more frequently than in favorable ones. And this cannot be otherwise: Las Casas's entire public life and all of his countless writings concern the Indians, and the writings completely distorted by the abnormal fixed idea, those that have had worldwide resonance, are those that have determined Las Casas's only outstanding work, while the other writings, in which abnormality appears only occasionally, barely give us biographical notes on Las Casas's activity free from false prejudice, so the normal Las Casas almost never appears before our eyes.