scholarly journals Bartolome de Las Casas and the Tradition of Medieval Law

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Steady Flow ◽  
New World ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Medieval Law

As a defender of the Indians and an opponent of the methods used by the Spanish conquistadors, Bartolomé de Las Casas was as controversial a figure in the sixteenth century as he has been in the last four hundred years of historiography. Las Casas' fight to preserve the freedom of the Indians has gained for him not only devoted admirers, but also angry detractors.1Las Casas was not the only Spaniard who defended the Indians, but his efforts are the best known. He labored for fifty years before death finally halted the steady flow of polemics from his pen. However, he was not just a sheltered academician like Vitoria, but he actively championed the rights of the Indians by working and living among them in the New World.

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.

Alonso de Zorita: Early and Last Years

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (04) ◽  
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.

scholarly journals Between Thomism and Roman Civil Law: The Eclectic Concept of Liberty of Bartolomé De Las Casas and his Theoretical Defence of Native Americans during the Sixteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-292
Author(s):  
Manuel Méndez Alonzo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Law Texts

In this paper I present the theory of natural rights and liberty of Bartolomé de Las Casas. I hold that the theoretical foundation of Las Casas is found in juridical texts, only complemented by Thomist authorities. I show that the apparent inconsistencies were a means to make his discourse more effective against those who defended the enslavement of Native Americans. Finally, this eclecticism enabled Las Casas to create an original theory of civil power and liberty by using Canon law texts and terms.

scholarly journals Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ward
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
Human Liberation

This book delves into the inadequately explored, liberative side of Humanism during the late Renaissance. While some long-sixteenth-century thinking anticipates twentieth-century Liberation Theology, a broader description is simply "liberation thinking," which embraces its diverse, timeless, and sometimes nontheological aspects. Two moments frame the treatment of American colonialism’s physical and mental pathways and the liberative response to them, known as liberation thinking. These are St. Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s thousand-page Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, completed one hundred years later. These works and others by Erasmus and Bartolomé de las Casas trace the development of the idea of human liberation in the face of degrading chattel and encomienda slavery as well as the peonage that gave rise to the hacienda system in the Americas. Catholic humanists such as More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma developed arguments, theories, and even theology that attempted to deconstruct those subordinating structures.

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