Whatever history may record about his personal life, there is no denying that Pope Alexander VI was among the most efficient and far-sighted of the Church’s long list of vicars. Perhaps nowhere is this fact more obvious than in the pontiff’s concern and zeal for the missions. In a decree addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, issued at Rome on May 4, 1493, the pope stated, in part:We order you in virtue of holy obedience (for as you promise, so we do not doubt you will do, in your noble dedication and royal magnanimity) that you dispatch to the designated mainlands and islands virtuous and God-fearing men endowed with training, experience, and skill, to instruct the natives and inhabitants before mentioned and to imbue them with the same Christian faith and sound morals, using all speed in the premises.With this and subsequent papal mandates, the Spanish monarchs inaugurated the Christianization and colonization of the New World.