scholarly journals Civilization and barbarism

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 249-262
Author(s):  
Carlo Ginzburg
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
The Status ◽  
Civilization And Barbarism ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda

The reflections on civilization, barbarism, and their intricate relationship, which were put forward in ancient Greece, from Herodotus to Aristotle, had a longterm impact. In the mid-16th century debate which took place in Valladolid, between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de Las Casas, about the status of the native populations of the New World, the Latin translations of Aristotle’s Politics, and its comment by St. Thomas Aquinas, proved to be especially relevant for both opponents. Were Indian natives comparable to Aristotle’s “natural slaves”? Was the war against them comparable to hunting wild beasts? The paper focuses on the debate and its contemporary implications.

Church and Commonwealth in the Catholic World

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
New World ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda ◽  
The Church

Early in 1532, the Catholic professor Fransisco de Vitoria lectured his students ‘On the Power of the Church’ at the University of Salamanca. Efforts like this to defend the status of the Church led, perhaps paradoxically, to a new appreciation of the state’s foundations and its basis in the order of nature. Vitoria was anxious to protect the authority of the universal Church, he also believed that there should exist a multiplicity of civil powers, each with its own integrity and degree of autonomy. While there could only be one true Church, there could and should be many commonwealths; he, like many others, was sceptical of imperial ambitions in the temporal sphere. His thinking, and that of other Catholics like Bartolomé de Las Casas, generated a critique of political or temporal empire that would gather momentum as reports of Spanish cruelty in the New World began to circulate. Yet there were also Catholics, like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who embraced the pursuit of empire and sought to defend it, often using classical ideas but adapting them to current circumstances. As this clash of beliefs unfolded, it came to include lengthy reflection on power, natural rights and authority, including the influential work of Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca. At the heart of the debate was a question about the relationship between a universal natural law and the particular rules and commands of specific communities, be they the Catholic Church or localized political communities.

scholarly journals Domingo de Soto contra o direito de submeter os infiéis por idolatria, sodomia ou antropofagia / Domingo de Soto Against the Right of Submission the Unbelievers Due to Idolatry, Sodomy or Anthropophagy

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
José MEIRINHOS
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Religious Polemic ◽  
The Right ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda

Among the manuscripts containing works by the dominican Domingo de Soto (1494-1560) we find the acephalous and mutilated fragment Relectio an liceat civetate infidelium seu gentium expugnare ob idolatriam, titled by a later hand. Soto’s argument belongs to the context of the juridical, political and religious polemic on alleged rights to subdue unbelievers, staged by the junta gathered in Valladolid, in August and September 1550, to hear the arguments in favour, by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and arguments against, by Bartolomé de las Casas, whose meeting Summary was written by Domingo de Soto himself. In the fragment An liceat, Soto unwaveringly takes upon himself the refutation of each argument deployed by proponents of the right to subdue and punish natives in the New World, asserting their state of non subjection to Christian norms before their convert. Bearing in mind its structure and arguments, it is conjectured that the text may have been written for the De iustitia et iure, published in 1554, and again in 1556, though, for unknown reasons, was not included in that work.

Alonso de Zorita: Early and Last Years

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-513
Author(s):  
Ralph H. Vigil
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
New World ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
The Masses

Alonso De Zorita’s career as a Spanish judge in the Indies in the years 1548–1556, though not as well known as the career of Bartolomé de las Casas and other pro-Indian reformers, merits serious study. The arrival of Zorita and his subsequent actions as an administrator and legist represent one example of the serious efforts of the Crown in the 1540’s to impose royal control over a quasi-feudal class of conquerors and pobladores which had from the early sixteenth century entrenched itself in the New World. Moreover, Zorita was not only a jurist who attempted to implement the New Laws of 1542–43, but an inspired humanitarian who took an active interest in the native civilizations of the New World and questioned the relations that had evolved and created “a Hispano-Indian society characterized by the domination of the masses by a small privileged minority…” His ardent defense of the Indians against the charge that they were “barbarians” included a relativist line of argument that anticipated Michel de Montaigne’s celebrated comment that “everyone calls barbarian what is not his own usage.” In addition, his inquiries into native history, land tenure and inheritance laws may be considered “in effect exercises in applied anthropology, capable of yielding a vast amount of information about native customs and society” and is an example of what Europe saw or failed to see in the sixteenth century when confronted with a strange new world.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on the Nature of the American Indians

1975 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Fernández-Santamaria
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Composite Nature ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda ◽  
Rule Out

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda epitomizes in many ways, both personally and intellectually, the cosmopolitanism of Spanish political thought in the sixteenth century. Educated in Italy, disciple of Pomponazzi, translator of Aristotle, chronicler of the Emperor and mentor of his son Philip, Sepúlveda is best known—and often misunderstood as the defender of the more unsavory aspects of the Spanish conquest and colonization in America—for his bitter controversy with Bartolomé de las Casas. To that debate Sepúlveda brought a humanist's training and outlook anchored in his devotion to Aristotle, but strongly tempered by his attachment to Saint Augustine. It is the purpose of this paper to examine Sepúlveda's ideas on the nature of the American natives, particularly the question of whether the Indians are natural slaves. Considerations of space, of course, rule out the possibility of undertaking here a detailed scrutiny of the foundations upon which those ideas rest. It can be said, however, that they are typically Renaissance views, a blend of traditions characteristic of the composite nature of the age's intellectual milieu.

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