Mfcttrf

Countless sources claim that the origin of the term terra nullius is from a papal bull issued by Pope Urban II in 1095 called "Terra nullius". Here are a two:

Pramod K. Nayar, The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary, 2015

Terra nullius comes from the Papal Bull Terra Nullius issued by Pope Urban II, at the beginning of the Crusades.

Reed Underwood, TERRA NULLIUS: THE SPECTRAL COLONIALISM OF NO MAN’S SKY, 2016

In 1095 Pope Urban II issued a bull, inaugurating the doctrine of Terra nullius, which declared that lands occupied by non­Christians could be legally interpreted as unoccupied and then claimed by Christians. The doctrine became the legal underpinning for the conquest of Muslim territories during the First Crusade.

The same claim is made in lots of Google Books pages, but they are so hard to copy paste from.

My question is if this claim is correct? If it is, can someone please link to and cite relevant sections from this papal bull? I haven't been able to find it myself.

I doubt the first words of the bull were "terra nullius," as that term has a general meaning in international law as "land that is legally unoccupied or uninhabited."

Pope Urban II's acts in 1095 are listed in Jaffé's Regesta pontificum romanorum (vol. 2) pp. 676-684. Jaffé p. 688 does say the following, under 12 July 1096:

In eodem concilio de liberanda Terra sancta agitur.
[In the same council, the freeing of the Holy Land is treated.]

and

Cives Ianuenses rogat, ut Terrae sanctae subveniant.
[The citizens of Genoa demand that the Holy Land be relieved.]

He also convened councils in Piacenza and Clermont in 1095, so perhaps the terra nullius "bull" is really a conciliar document?

Urban II's writings can be found in Migne's Patrologia Latina vol. 151.

It seems likely this is a historical myth.

According to WikiPedia's list of Papal Bulls, Urban II did issue a bull that year, but it had to do with who was allowed to excommunicate the ruler of the Kingdom of Aragon. I can't find a link to the text online either, so it seems possible other topics were dealt with, but that one's so different it seems unlikely.

Also 1095 is famous as the year this same pope delivered what must have been a real banger of a speech, which effectively kicked off the First Crusade. This wasn't a "bull", and the records that exist of it are contradictory about the exact contents, so we can't say for sure if the words "terra nullius" were in there or not. But it seems possible at least that the "patient zero" of this information was thinking of the general contents of this speech, and confused it with the unrelated papal bull of that year. Our best source (an actual first-hand witness) said the rationale used most mostly about defending themselves and their churches (so a mix of just war and holy war). Nothing about "terra nullius".

Interestingly, I wasn't super-familiar with the term, and when I looked it up there seems to be a big historical dispute about where it came from. Even the historians who think its an old usage apparently only date it back to the 15th Century. However, there are apparently serious historians who insist the term, when used in the context of a legal framework for territorial claims, is actually quite new. Some say as recently as the late 20th century. Mostly the folks using it and arguing over it appear to be Australians. I noticed one of the links in the question started by talking about its use in an Australian-developed computer game.

This seems like an argument among historians that would not be possible if there was a documented instance of a Pope using that term for that purpose in the 11th century. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that no such bull exists, and those two sources are wrong.

The bull is bull.