Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The concept of a language and the métier d'historien: some considerations on practice
- PART I
- 2 The history of the word politicus in early-modern Europe
- 3 Civil science in the Renaissance: the problem of interpretation
- 4 Dispossessing the barbarian: the language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the property rights of the American Indians
- 5 The ‘modern’ theory of natural law
- PART II
- PART III
- PART IV
- Index
- Ideas in Context
4 - Dispossessing the barbarian: the language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the property rights of the American Indians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The concept of a language and the métier d'historien: some considerations on practice
- PART I
- 2 The history of the word politicus in early-modern Europe
- 3 Civil science in the Renaissance: the problem of interpretation
- 4 Dispossessing the barbarian: the language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the property rights of the American Indians
- 5 The ‘modern’ theory of natural law
- PART II
- PART III
- PART IV
- Index
- Ideas in Context
Summary
In 1537 the Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, Prime Professor of Theology at the University of Salamanca, delivered a lecture entitled De indis whose purpose was, he declared, to discover ‘by what right the barbarians’ – by which he meant the American Indians – ‘had come under the rule of the Spaniards’. For although, he professed, the conscience of the Spanish kings and their advisors was of itself sufficient guarantee that everything ‘had been well-done’, all men are compelled to consult the wisest and best-informed persons they can find before reaching a decision on any issue where matters of conscience are involved.
Vitoria's relectio belongs to a tradition of ritual legitimation which the Castilian crown had, since the later Middle Ages, regularly enacted when confronted by uncertain moral issues. The conclusions which the crown's advisors reached on these occasions were frequently ignored since, as Vitoria himself observed, kings were, of necessity, pragmatic beings compelled to ‘think from hand to mouth’. But the declarations issued by the theologians and jurists on crown policy formed an important part of the ideological armature of what, after the defeat of the comunero revolt in 1521, has some claims to being the first early-modern nation state. With the accession of Philip II, that state had, effectively, secured the consensus of its own political nation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe , pp. 79 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987
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