Travelling the borderline

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Poor ◽  
School Of Salamanca ◽  
The Law ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

This chapter looks at Francisco de Vitoria and his Dominican colleagues at the Spanish School of Salamanca in the middle of the sixteenth century. They are famous for their reconstitution and redeployment of Thomas Aquinas's theory of natural law to address the new problems of the sixteenth century, problems that beset Spain along with the rest of Europe: the power of the crown both within its own commonwealth and in relation to other commonwealths, and these powers both within Europe and overseas. For the School's most celebrated member, Francisco de Vitoria, natural law is the law of reason by which all human beings are naturally governed—the law of humanity as such—and, for him as for Aquinas, it ultimately determines the legitimacy of any subsequent human institutions and laws. The chapter also considers Domingo de Soto's The deliberation in the cause of the poor, which was published in 1545.

On the Artifactual—and Natural— Character of Legal Institutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corrado Roversi
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theory Of Law

Are legal institutions artifacts? If artifacts are conceived as entities whose existence depends on human beings, then yes, legal institutions are, of course, artifacts. But an artifact theory of law makes a stronger claim, namely, that there is actually an explanatory gain to be had by investigating legal institutions as artifacts, or through the features of ordinary artifacts. This is the proposition explored in this chapter: that while this understanding of legal institutions makes it possible to find common ground between legal positivism and legal realism, it does not capture all of the insights offered by these two traditions. An artifact theory of law can therefore be necessary in explaining the law, but it will not suffice to that end. This chapter also posits that legal artifacts bear a relevant connection to certain conceptions of nature, thus vindicating one of the original insights behind natural law theory.

Moses and the Magistrate: a Study in the rise of Protestant Legalism

1975 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. D. L. Avis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civil Laws ◽  
The Church

‘It is now disputed at every table’, declared Whitgift in 1574, ‘whether the magistrate be of necessity bound to the judicials of Moses’. Edwin Sandys told Bullinger of Zürich in the previous year that it was being maintained, to the great trouble of the Church, that ‘The judicial laws of Moses are binding upon Christian princes, and they ought not in the slightest degree to depart from them’. Though often neglected by historians as an important factor in the Reformation, the question of the validity of the Old Testament judicial (as opposed to moral or ceremonial) law frequently arises in the writings of the Reformers, and their various answers made no slight impact on the course of events. It bears directly on Henry VIII's divorce and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; the treatment of heresy and the possibility of toleration; the persecution of witches; usury and iconoclasm; Sabbatarianism and the rise of the ‘puritan’ view of the Bible as a book of precedents, and the corresponding shift to legalism in Protestant theology. The question is also of fundamental relevance to the thought of the Reformers on natural law, the godly prince and magistrate, and the so-called ‘third use of the law’. This article is an attempt to survey, up to the end of the sixteenth century, the various interpretations of the Mosaic penal and civil laws, with particular reference to the development of legalistic tendencies after Luther.

Law, Justice, and Charity in a Divided Christendom: 1500–1625

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria ◽  
Single Set

During the Reformation, new interpretations of Christianity were developed—with important consequences for international relations. Taking the thought of Thomas Aquinas as their starting point, Catholic scholars like Francisco de Vitoria argued for a natural law for all but they insisted that human beings were also obliged by Christian duties and commitments. These duties could only be fulfilled within the Catholic Church. Protestants rejected these claims and argued instead for one single set of ethical obligations, which were the duties of natural law. For them, natural law included both secular and religious principles, and it applied across national and political boundaries. The radical effects of this concept can be seen in the anonymously written Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos. This chapter considers arguments on both sides of the confessional divide before discussing the Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius and his attempt to provide a new synthesis.

scholarly journals Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili on the Juridical Status of Native American Polities

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 910-952
Author(s):  
Daragh Grant
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
European Society ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ius Gentium ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

Over the course of the sixteenth century, Europeans writing about the ius gentium went from treating indigenous American rulers as the juridical equals of Europe's princes to depicting them as little more than savage brutes, incapable of bearing dominium and ineligible for the protections of the law of peoples. This essay examines the writings of Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili to show how this transformation in European perceptions of Native Americans resulted from fundamental changes in European society. The emergence of a novel conception of sovereignty amid the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation was central to this shift and provided a new foundation for Europe's continued imperial expansion into the Americas.

The School of Salamanca

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Pagden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
School Of Salamanca ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ius Gentium ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

The members of the so-called School of Salamanca (or “Second Scholastic,” as it is sometimes called) were, for the most part, the pupils, and the pupils of the pupils—from Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano to the great Jesuit metaphysicians Luís de Molina and Francisco Suárez—of Francisco de Vitoria, who held the Prime Chair of Theology at Salamanca between 1526 and his death in 1546. Although they are often described vaguely as “theologians and jurists,” they were all, in fact, theologians. In the early modern world, theology, the “mother of sciences,” was considered to be above all other modes of inquiry, and covered everything that belongs to what today is called jurisprudence, as well as most of moral and political philosophy, and what would later become the human sciences. This article focuses on the Salamanca theologians' discussion of the law of nature—the ius naturae—and of the law of nations (ius gentium), for which reason Vitoria has often been referred to (along with Hugo Grotius) as the “father of international law.”

The New Testament, Mosaic Law and Ecclesiastical Law Today

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (36) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
Anthony Bash
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ecclesiastical Law ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
Mosaic Law ◽  
Common Misconceptions

This article explores the New Testament's critique of Old Testament law, a genus of positive law. It looks at the applicability of that critique to modern ecclesiastical law: The article identifies three common misconceptions about the view of the New Testament concerning Old Testament law, and then sets out what the New Testament does say about Old Testament law, principally from the writings of St Paul. The principles underlying the New Testament's critique are established. The critique is made not on natural law grounds but on pragmatic and utilitarian grounds. The grounds of the critique are (i) the efficacy of the law to achieve its true intent; and (ii) the extent to which human beings exaggerate the usefulness of Old Testament law.

Pufendorf, Samuel (1632–94)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.D. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Science ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
University Professor ◽  
The Law

Pufendorf was the first university professor of the law of nature and nations. His De iure naturae et gentium (On the Law of Nature and Nations) (1672) and De officio hominis et civis iuxta legem naturalem (On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law) (1673) greatly influenced the handling of that subject in the eighteenth century. As a result Pufendorf has been recognized as an important figure in the development of the conception of international law as a body of norms commonly agreed to have universal validity by sovereign states. He regarded himself as an exponent of a new moral science founded by Hugo Grotius which transformed the natural law tradition by starting from identifiable traits of human nature rather than ideas about what human beings ought to be.

THE IMAGE OF GOD, CHRISTIAN RIGHTS TALK, AND THE SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lantigua
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
School Of Salamanca ◽  
Theological Challenge ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria ◽  
The Image Of God

AbstractThe salience of rights talk in Western cultures has generated constructive responses from various religious traditions. This article contributes to this religious hermeneutic by turning to the first-generation Spanish theologians of the sixteenth-century School of Salamanca, Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto, as important resources for Christian rights talk. These late scholastic thinkers made the image of God doctrine, as transmitted by Thomas Aquinas, the basis for affirming the worth and human natural rights of Amerindian peoples. To highlight the contemporary relevance of the school, the article engages Nicholas Wolterstorff's recent work on rights and his twofold critique of a capacities approach to human dignity and a virtues approach to justice. The School of Salamanca not only addresses the important concerns raised by Wolterstorff but uniquely offers a view of rights inextricably linked to human capacities and Christian virtue that highlights both the patient and agential dimensions of justice. They provide a critical theological challenge to the dominant secular liberal view of rights in a way that Wolterstorff's account does not.

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