The earliest biographer of Las Casas, Antonio de Remesal, says that he was chosen Prior of the monastery, and this statement is supported by a letter from the Auditors of Hispaniola dated June 7, 1533, addressed to Prince Philip who was governing Spain during the absence of the Emperor his father, in which Fray Bartholomew is mentioned as Prior of the Monastery of Santo Domingo in the town of Puerto de Plata. (40) In chapter 146 of his _Historia Apologetica_, he himself speaks of "conferring the habit" on a novice, which he could only do if he were Prior.
The first seven years that Las Casas passed in the seclusion of his monastery were not marked by any salient incident. He devoted himself with all the intensity of his nature to the practice of the austere rule of St. Dominic and became, as he himself afterwards described in writing of that period of his life, as though dead to the world, so little part did he have in the course of events outside his cloister's walls. He gave much time to the study of theology, especially to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the glory of the Dominican Order. These studies served to equip him with stores of canonical and philosophical learning which enabled him, when the time came, to sustain controversies with some of the most learned men in Europe.
In the second chapter of his _Historia Apologetica_ the following sentence occurs: "Three leagues to the west of the extremity of this plain is Puerto de Plata, and on a hill above and near by the town thus named there is a monastery of the Dominican Order, where the composition of this History was begun in the year 1527,--to be finished when and where the will of God may ordain."(41)
In 1529, he lent his efforts to bringing to an end the long standing rebellion of the cacique Enrique whose forces, in the mountains of Baranco, the Spaniards had fought at intervals during fourteen years in vain. This chief had been educated in the Franciscan convent at Vera Paz and was a man of unusual intelligence and superior courage; he married a beautiful Indian girl of good lineage and, with the Indians under his rule, was assigned in repartimiento to a Spaniard named Valenzuela, who began by robbing him of a valuable mare and ended by taking from him his wife.