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Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto , Martín de Azpilcueta (or Azpilicueta), Tomás de Mercado , and Francisco Suárez , all scholars of natural law and of morality, founded a school of theologians and jurists who undertook the reconsiliation of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas with the new economic order. The themes of study centered on man and his practical problems (morality, economics, jurisprudence, etc.), but almost equally on a particular body of work accepted by all of them, as the ground against which to test their disagreements, including at times bitter polemics within the School.
The School of Salamanca in the broad sense may be considered more narrowly as two schools of thought coming in succession, that of the Salmanticenses and that of the Conimbricenses. The first began with Francisco de Vitoria ( 1483– 1546Events Spanish conquest of Yucatan Peace between England and France Foundation of Trinity College, Cambridge by Henry VIII of England Katharina von Bora flees to Magdeburg Science Tycho Brahe begins to measure planetary orbits Architecture Michelangelo Bu), and reached its high point with Domingo de Soto ( 1494Events January 25 Alfonso II becomes King of Naples. June 7 Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which divides the New World between the two countries. October 22 Ludovico Sforza becomes Duke of Milan. Start of the Italian Wars. Births Saito– 1560Events February 27 The Treaty of Berhick, which would expel the French from Scotland, is signed by England and the Congregation of Scotland The first tulip bulb was brought from Turkey to the Netherlands. July 6 Treaty of Edinburgh between England, France). The Conimbricenses were Jesuits who, from the end of 16th century took the took over the intellectual leadership of the Roman Catholic world from the DominicanThe adjective Dominican can refer to several different topics. The Dominican Republic The island-nation of Dominica The Dominican Order.s. Among those Jesuits were Luis de Molina ( 1535Events January 18 Lima, Peru founded by Francisco Pizarro June 24 The Anabaptist state of Munster is conquered and disbanded. May 19 French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail for his second voyage to North America with 3 ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacon– 1600Events January January 1 Scotland adopts January 1st as being New Year's Day February February 17 Giordano Bruno burned in a stake for heresy July July 2 Battle of Nieuwpoort: Dutch forces under Maurice of Nassau defeat Spanish forces under Archduke Alber) and the aforementioned Francisco Suárez ( 1548Events Mary I of Scotland sent to France Births Deaths September 7 Catherine Parr, widow of King Henry VIII of England. Sigismund I of Poland 1548.– 1617). The name Conimbricenses refers to the the University of Coimbra in Portugal. [1]
The juridical doctrine of the School of Salamanca represented the end of medieval concepts of law, with a revindication of liberty not habitual in Europe of that time. The natural rights of man came to be, in one form or another, the center of attention, including rights as a corporeal being (right to life, economic rights such as the right to own property) and spiritual rights (the right to freedom of thought and to human dignity).
The School of Salamanca reformulated the concept of natural law: law originating in nature itself, with all that exists in the natural order sharing in this law. The obvious conclusion is that, given that all humans share the same nature, they also share the same rights, such as equality or liberty. Counter to the view then predominant in Spain and Europe that viewed the people indigenous to the Americas as children or as incapable, the recognition of their rights — such as a right to reject forcible religious conversion or the right to their own land — constituted a novelty in European thought.
Given that we all live not isolated but in society, natural law is not limited to the individual. Thus, for example, justice is an example of natural law realized in society. For Gabriel Vázquez ( 1549– 1604) natural law dictates an obligation to act in accord with justice.
The School of Salamanca distinguished two realms of power, the natural or civil realm and the realm of the supernatural, which were not differentiated in the Middle Ages. One direct consequence of the separation of realms of power is that the king or emperor does not legitimately have jurisdiction over souls, nor does the Pope have legitimate temporal power. This included the proposal that there are limits on the legitimate powers of government. Thus, according to Luis de Molina a nation is analogous to a mercantile society (the antecedent of a modern corporation) in that those who govern are holders of power (effectively sovereigns) but a collective power, to which they are subject, derives from them jointly. Nonetheless, in de Molina's view, the power of society over the individual is greater than that of a mercantile society over its members, because the power of the government of a nation emanates from God's divine power (as against merely from the power of individuals sovereign over themselves in their business dealings).
At this time, the monarchy of England was extending the theory of the divine right of kings — under which the monarch is the unique legitimate recipient of the emanation of God's power — asserting that subjects must follow the monarch's orders, in order not to contravene said design. Counter to this, several adherents of the School sustained that the people are the vehicle of divine sovereignty, which they, in turn, pass to a prince under various conditions. Possibly the one who went furthest in this direction was Francisco Suárez, whose work Defensio Fidei Catholicae adversus Anglicanae sectae errores (The Defense of the Catholic Faith against the errors of the Anglican sect 1613) was the strongest defense in this period of popular sovereignty. Men are born free by their nature and not as slaves of another man, and can disobey even to the point of deposing an unjust government. As with de Molina, he affirms that political power does not reside in any one concrete person, but he differs subtly in that he considers that the recipient of that power is the people as a whole, not a collection of sovereign individuals.
For Suárez, the political power of society is contractual in origin because the community forms by consensus of free wills (see social contract). The consequence of this contractualist theory is the the natural form of government is democracy, while oligarchy or monarchy arise as secondary institution, whose claim to justice is based on being forms chosen (or at least consented to) by the people.
Francisco de Vitoria was perhaps the first to develop a theory of ius gentium (the rights of peoples), and thus is an important figure in the transition to modernity. He extrapolated his ideas of legitimate sovereign power to society at the international level, concluding that this scope as well ought to be ruled by just forms respectable of the rights of all. The common good of the world is of a category superior to the good of each state. This meant that relations between states ought to pass from being justified by force to being justified by law and justice. Francisco de Vitoria essentially invented international law.
Francisco Suárez subdivided the concept of ius gentium. Working with already well-formed categories, he distinguished between ius inter gentes and ius intra gentes. Ius inter gentes corresponded to modern international law, and was something common to the majority of countries (although being positive law , not natural law, it was not necessarily universal); ius intra gentes or civil law is specific to each nation.
Given that war is one of the worst evils suffered by mankind, the adherents of the School reasoned that it ought to be resorted to only when it was necessary in order to prevent a greater evil. A diplomatic agreement is preferable, even for the more powerful party, before a war is started. Examples of just war are:
A war is not legitimate or illegitimate simply based on its original motivation: it must comply also to a series of additional requisites:
Under this doctrine, expansionist wars, wars of pillage, wars to convert infidels or pagans, and wars for glory are all inherently unjust.
In this period, in which colonialism began, Spain was the only European nation in which a group of intellectuals questioned the legitimacy of conquest rather than simply trying to justify it by traditional means.
Francisco de Vitoria began his analysis of conquest by rejecting "illegitimate titles". He was the first to dare to question whether the bulls de Alexander VI known collectively as the Bulls of Donation were a valid title of dominion over the newly discovered territories. In this matter he did not accept the universal primacy of the emperor, the authority of the Pope (because the Pope, according to him, lacked temporal power), nor the claim of voluntary submission or conversion of the Native Americans. One could not consider them sinners or lacking in intelligence: they were free people by nature, with legitimate property rights. When the Spanish arrived in America they brought no legitimate title to occupy those lands and become their master.
Vitoria also analyzed whether there were legitimate claims of title over discovered lands. He elaborated up to eight legitimate titles of dominion. The first and perhaps most fundamental relates to communication between people, who jointly constitute a universal society. Ius peregrinandi et degendi is the right of every human being to travel and do commerce in all parts of the earth, independently of who governs or what is the religion of the territory. For him, if the "Indians" of the Americas would not permit free transit, the aggrieved parties had the right to defend themselves and to remain in land obtained in such a war of self-defense.
The second form of legitimate title over discovered lands also referred back to a human right whose obstruction is a cause for a just war. The Indians could voluntarily refuse conversion, but could not impede the right of the Spanish to preach, in which case the matter would be analogous to the first case. Nonetheless, Vitoria noted that although this can be grounds for a just war, it is not necessarily appropriate to make such a war, because of the resulting death and destruction.
The other cases are:
This doctrine of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" titles was not agreeable to Emperor Charles V, then ruler of Spain, in that they meant that Spain had no special right; he tried without success to stop these theologians from expressing their opinions in these matters.
Much attention has been drawn to the economic thought of the School of Salamanca by Joseph Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis (1954). It did not coin, but certainly consolidated, the use of the term School of Salamanca in economics. Schumpeter studied scholastic doctrine in general and Spanish scholastic doctrine in particular, and praised the high level of economic science in Spain in the 16th centure. He argued that the School of Salamanca most deserve to be considered the founders of economics as a science. The School did not elaborate a complete doctrine of economics, but they established the first modern economic theories to address the new economic problems that had arisen with the end of the medieval order. Unfortunately, there was no continuation of their work until the end of the 17th century and many of their contributions were forgotten, only to be rediscovered later by others.
Although there does not appear to be any direct influence the economic thought of the School of Salamanca is in many ways similar to that of the Austrian School.
In 1517, de Vitoria, then at the Sorbonne, was consulted by Spanish merchants based in Antwerp about the moral legitimacy of engaging in commerce to increase one's personal wealth. From today's point of view, one would say they were asking for a consultation about the enterprising spirit. Beginning at that time, Vitoria and other theologians looked at economic matters. They moved away from views that they found to be obsolete, adopting instead new ideas based on principles of natural law.
According to these views, the natural order is base in the "freedom of circulation" of people, goods, and ideas, allowing people to know one another and increase their sentiments of brotherhood. This implies that merchantry is not merely not reprehensible, but that it actually serves the general good.
The growth of the mendicant orders in the 13th century began a movement that, with ever more force, insisted on poverty and the brotherhood of man, deploring the accumulation of wealth in the Church. The mendicant orders considered the possession of goods and private property as, at least, morally objectionable. In contrast, the Dominicans in general and Thomas Aquinas in particular, defended private property as a morally neutral human institution.
The adherents of the School of Salamanca all agreed that property has the beneficial effect of stimulating economic activity, which, in turn, contributed to the general wellbeing. Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva ( 1512– 1577) considered that people had not only the right to own property but — again, a specifically modern idea — they had the exclusive right to the benefit from that property, although the community might also benefit. Nonetheless, in times of great necessity, there all goods become a commons.
Luis de Molina argued that individual owners take better care of their goods than is taken of common property.
The most complete and methodical development of a Salamancan theory of value were Martín de Azpilcueta ( 1493– 1586) and Luis de Molina. Interested in the effect of precious metals arriving from the Americas, de Azpilcueta proved that in the countries where precious metals were scarce, prices were lower than in those where they were abundant. Precious metals, like any other mercantile good, gained at least some of their value from their scarcity. This scarcity theory of value was a precursor of the quanititative theory of money put forward slightly later by Jean Bodin ( 1530– 1596).
Up until that time, the predominant theory of value had been the medieval theory based on the cost of production as the sole determinant of a just price. Diego de Covarrubias y Luis de Molina developed a subjective theory of value and prices, which asserted that the usefulness of a good varied from person to person, so just prices would arise from mutual decisions in free commerce, barring the distorting effects of monopoly, fraud, or government intervention. Expressing this in today's terms, the adherents of the School defended the free market, where the fair price of a good would be determined by supply and demand.
In the Renaissance era, greater mobility of people facilitated an increase in commerce and the appearance of appropriate conditions for entrepreneurs to start new, lucrative businesses. Given that borrowed money was no longer for strictly for consumption but for production as well, it could not be viewed in the same manner. The School of Salamanca elaborated various reasons that justifified the charging of interest. The person who received a loan benefited; one could consider interest as a premium paid for the risk taken by the loaning party. There was also the question of opportunity cost, in that the loaning party lost other possibilities of utilizing the loaned money. Finally, and perhaps most originally, was the consideration of money itself as a merchandise, and the use of one's money as something for which one should receive a benefit in the form of interest.
Martín de Azpilcueta also considered the effect of time. All things being equal, one would prefer to receive a given good now rather than in the future. This preference indicates greater value. Interest, under this theory, is the payment for the time the loaning individual is deprived of the money.
In the Renaissance era, theology was generally declining in the face of the rise of humanism, with scholasticism becoming nothing more than an empty and routine methodology. Under Francisco de Vitoria, the University of Salamanca led a period of intense activity in theology, especially a renaissance of Thomism, whose influence extended to European culture in general, but especially to other European universities. Perhaps the fundamental contribution of the School of Salamanca to theology is the study of problems much closer to humanity, which had previously been ignored, and the opening of questions that had previously not been posed. The term positive theology is sometimes used to distinguish this new, more practical, theology from the earlier scholastic theology.
In an era when religion (whether Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, Islam, or others) permeated everything, to analyze the morality of the acts was considered the most practical and useful study one could undertake to serve society. The novel contributions of the School in law and economics were rooted in concrete challenges and moral problems which confronted society under new conditions.
It was a revolutionary idea to assert that Christian believers could behave in an evil manner and people entirely ignorant of Christianity could do good. That is to say, morality did not depend on the divine. This was particularly important in terms of behavior toward pagans, who could not be presupposed to be evil merely because they were not Christians.
Over the years a casuistry, a fixed set of answers to moral dilemmas, had been developed. However, by its nature, a casuistry can never be complete, leading to a search for more general rules or principles. From this developed Probabilism, where the ultimate criterion was not truth, but the certainty of not choosing evil. Developed principally by Bartolomé de Medina and continued by Gabriel Vázquez y Francisco Suárez, Probabilism became the most important school of moral thought in the coming centuries..
The polemic De auxiliis was a dispute between Jesuits and Dominicans which occurred at the end of the 16th century. The topic of the controversy was grace and predestination, that is to say how one could reconcile the liberty or free will of humans with divine omniscience. In 1582 the Jesuit Prudencio Montemayor and fray Luis de León spoke publicly about human liberty. Domingo Báñez considered that they gave free will too great a weight and that the used terminology that sounded heretical; he denounced them to the Spanish Inquisition, accusing them of Pelagianism, a belief in human free will to the detriment of the doctrine of original sin and the grace granted by God. Montemayor and de León were banned from teaching and prohibited from defending such ideas.
Báñez was then denounced to the Holy Office by Leon, who accused him of "committing the error of Lutheranism", that is of following the doctrines of Martin Luther. Under Lutheran doctrine, and at the base of Protestantism, man is corrupted as a consequence of original sin and cannot save himself by his own merit; only God can concede grace. Báñez was acquitted.
Nonetheless, this did not end the dispute, which Luis de Molina continued with his Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis ( 1588). This is considered the best expression of the Jesuit position. The polemic continued over the course of years, including an attempt by the Jesuits to get Pope Clement VIII to condemn the Concordia of de Molina. Finally Paul V in 1607 recognized the liberty of Dominicans and Jesuits to defend their ideas, prohibiting that either side of this disagreement be characterized as heresy.
The existence of evil in a world created and ruled by an infinitely good and powerful God has long been viewed as paradoxical. Vitoria reconciled the paradox by arguing first that free will is a gift from God to each person. It is impossible that each person will always freely choose only the good. Thus, evil results as a necessary consequence of human free will.
This article draws heavily on the in the Spanish-language Wikipedia.
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