Pedro Alvares Cabral, Portuguese commander of a large fleet sent to the East in 1500 is told: ‘If you encounter ships belonging to the aforesaid Moors of Mecca at sea, you must endeavour as much as you can to take possession of them, and of their merchandise and property and also of the Moors who are in the ships, to your profit as best you can and to make war on them and do them as much damage as possible as a people with whom we have so great and so ancient an enmity.’ And so, inflexible faith is linked with endless greed and leads to a convenient, and widely encouraged, rapacity.
