The School of Salamanca

Ever since Pope John Paul II’s 1987 social encyclical, Sollicitudo rei socialis (On Social Concern), the term “solidarity” has become a key principle of Catholic social doctrine. In paragraph 40, the pope writes:

“Solidarity is undoubtedly a Christian virtue… In light of faith, solidarity seeks to go beyond itself, to take on the specifically Christian dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness, and reconciliation. One’s neighbor is then not only a human being with his or her own rights and a fundamental equality with everyone else, but becomes the living image of God the Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit. One’s neighbor must therefore be loved, even if an enemy, with the same love with which the Lord loves him or her; and for that person’s sake one must be ready for sacrifice, even the ultimate one: to lay down one’s life for the brethren (cf. 1 John 3:16).”

There is nothing new to the pope’s teaching on solidarity whereby one offers his or her life for the sake of another or for one’s community. When the Babylonian Jews turned to the God of Israel, they were told: “Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.” (Jeremiah 29:7) Jesus makes it a central message of his preaching and passion to extend this desire especially towards his enemies. St. Paul beautifully highlights the continuity and difference between the old and the new, the God of the philosophers and the God of Israel, when he teaches: “Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find the courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8)

In the context of modern human rights discussions, this teaching provides a theological vision of rights that goes beyond mere restitution and justice as the guiding principles for securing rights for everyone to include the higher principles and virtues of solidarity and love. Much of the literature on rights, when it is not overly abstract, focuses on addressing the structural and institutional dimensions of the question. This is certainly a necessary component. John Paul II speaks about this in terms of “structures of sin” and “evil mechanisms.” However, the personal or individual dimension of the question should not be overlooked in the effort to rectify political and social arrangements. In fact, the personal dimension is the foundation to the discussion from a Christian perspective because it begins with the real event of conversion from sin. This is why the attitude or virtue of solidarity is so important to the discussion; it is indicative of a heart being turned from stone to flesh that “is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortuntes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and preserving determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we really are all really responsible for all.” (par. 38)

The conversion leading to solidarity turns away from the desire for profit and power by seeking “the good of one’s neighbor with the readiness, in the gospel sense, to “lose oneself” for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to “serve him” instead of oppressing him for one’s own advantage.” The late pope goes so far as to say that the influential and wealthy have a duty to the weaker in society in that they should “be ready to share with them all they possess.” This last claim is clearly an illustration of what a Christian vision of human rights looks like. It entails sacrifice.

"It is better to renounce one's own right than to violate another."

It is no surprise then that this same teaching appears on the walls of the cloister at the Dominican priory of San Esteban in Salamanca.  The great theologians who first began a serious discussion of natural rights for all persons, regardless of creed, did so from a thoroughly Christian perspective. In the case of those engaged in a licit war, which should always be constrained by Christian values, Vitoria writes: “They must always be prepared to forego some part of their rights rather than risk trespassing on some unlawful thing, and always direct their plans to the benefit of the barbarians rather than their own profit, bearing constantly in mind the saying of St. Paul: ‘all things are lawful  unto me, but all things are not expedient’ (1 Cor. 6:12).” (Relectio de Indis q.3, 2)

Vitoria presents this teaching under his second possible legitimate title for waging war–the spreading of the Christian religion. What is significant is that he departs here from a long-standing tradition within Latin Christendom that legitimated the right of preaching over and against that which obstructed it; namely, the idolatry and rites of unbelievers. In a reflexive move, Vitoria turns the issue back to Christians by stating that “it may happen that the resulting war, with its massacres and pillage, obstructs the conversion of the barbarians instead of encouraging it.” There is no doubt that Francisco Pizzaro’s conquest of Peru would have been fresh on his mind here as an example of such an obstruction.

Unfortunately, Vitoria did not go far enough in his implementation of the solidarity principle with regard to the right of preaching. His recognition of the rights of natives to receive the Gospel freely was not absolute but conditional. Earlier in that same discussion, he says that the Spaniards “may preach and work for the conversion of that people even against their will.” On this point, disciples of Vitoria such as Domingo de Soto, Melchor Cano, and Bartolomé de Carranza were not in agreement. Instead, they followed Las Casas in recognizing that every single right of Christians, even the most important one given by Christ to preach, should be renounced if it entails violating the rights of another. Of course, this teaching came from Christ himself when he commissioned the twelve: “Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words–go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet.” (Matt. 10:14) Who better to teach perfect solidarity than the Lord himself by showing his disciples in word and deed that the greatest right of all may need to be renounced, even for the sake of one’s enemies.

Blaming Scotus for the origin of voluntarism, or the separation of morality from happiness, or the rejection of the moral precepts of the Decalogue (the second table) as permanent natural norms, are all reasons why moral theologians (often with Thomistic loyalties) have loved to hate him over the centuries. Some of these narratives are more interesting than others. But as Charles Taylor notes in the epilogue of A Secular Age, such narratives of “intellectual deviation” presume that the world is really driven by ideas among the elite more than it is shaped by social processes or what he calls social imaginaries. In considering the use of the Subtle Doctor in sixteenth-century debates regarding forcible baptism for my research, I have come across a real and palpable reason to blame Scotus, along with numerous other theologians, Church officials, and Christian rulers throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period, who defended the religious coercion of unbelievers to effect conversion. I focus on Scotus here.

John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) lived in a period of Christendom marked by the crusades against both external enemies like the Saracens and internal ones such as Jews and heretics. The consensus among canon lawyers and scholastic theologians following the aftermath of the destruction of Jews at Mainz and elsewhere during the First Crusade and the Albigensian Crusade was that heretics were to be treated differently from non-baptized unbelievers. Coercive force such as imprisonment and even death could be used in the former case as a disciplinary measure to maintain the vow of the baptized but no punishment was to be extended to coerce baptism in the case of Jews or pagans under Christian rule, at least not in a direct way. The bottom line, according to the long-standing custom of the Church and the teachings of Augustine and Gregory the Great, was that faith can never be forced but is a gift accepted willingly and freely.

Scotus entered the theological discussion on this topic as did most commentators on Book Four of the Lombard’s Sentences. His innovation lies in the fact that he gave praise and justification to the anti-Jewish policies of the seventh-century Visigothic king Sisebut, who initiated a statewide policy of forcible baptism among adults and children for the sake of Catholic unity. Even though the Fourth Council of Toledo (633) praised Sisebut’s zeal, it rejected the manner in which he forced conversion. The council taught that force in conversion was contrary to the “form of justice.” Nevertheless, the council appeared to keep the door open to such a practice by recognizing that following a case of forced baptism, the “convert” must be required to keep the faith so as not to cause scandal.

The Subtle Doctor made opportune use of the Visigothic case. His argument in support of Sisebut was a kind of thought-experiment unrestrained by negative norms. If infidels remain in their unbelief within a Christian society, they are guilty of a greater sin than forcing them to convert. The primary reason Toledo and subsequent Church policy had rejected this practice, at least up until Aquinas made robust theological arguments from the natural form of justice, was that it would bring scandal to the faith due to the likely result of the forced convert’s apostasy. Scotus held that even if the convert apostasized, their children at least three or four generations down the line would accept the faith voluntarily and without question. Again, the greater sin was to let infidels remain in their unbelief. The ruler has the power and authority to compel his subjects toward what is good and nothing is better for them or their descendants than salvation. The right of the Christian ruler comes from God whereas the right of the parents to raise their children in unbelief is an abuse that merits punishment.

Although Scotus had his followers on this issue like Gabriel Biel in the following centuries, his arguments were mostly unconvincing to Christians. That is until the ‘affairs of the Indies’ surfaced in the sixteenth century. Although it is more than expected to find the Subtle Doctor’s arguments employed in Sepúlveda’s defense of war and conquest of the Amerindians, it is disheartening to see Vitoria flirt with his arguments as well. In the commentary on the Secunda secundae (see Appendix 2 of his Political Writings, ed. Lawrence and Pagden), Vitoria entertains Scotus, to a point, by arguing that it is not altogether untenable or unlawful for a Christian ruler to coerce his unbelieving citizens in religious matters, if it can be certain that no undesirable consequences like social disorder would follow. His reason came from a Thomistic principle of ordering all human affairs in a commonwealth to what is most beneficial for its citizens. While he did emphatically hold the traditional teaching that coercion in baptism is evil, Vitoria’s position ended up being too ambiguous because of its preoccupation with logical niceties characteristic of Scotus’ thought and yet weak and mute in the face of gross injustices against human dignity perpetrated by Christians.

When the generation of the School of Salamanca after Vitoria wrestled with this question (e.g. Peña, Luis de León, and Mancio de Corpus Christi), they turned to Domingo de Soto, whose arguments on this question depended on the commentaries of Cardinal Vio Cajetan. The first outright rejection of the Scotian position on forcible baptism in the context of New World debates was first put forward by this Superior General of the Dominicans who was responsible for sending the first prophetic missionaries of the order to Santo Domingo. Cajetan wrote that Scotus supported the Council’s praise of Sisebut, which meant for Scotus that they were not opposed to his intention. Scotus concluded then that even something good such as Catholic uniformity and orientation to the supernatural life can arise from a bad intention to coerce. Cajetan’s Pauline response, unlike the Subtle Doctor, was quite simple: one cannot bring about good from evil.

Subtlety is a good thing so long as it is not an excuse to evade a case of serious moral wrongdoing or even worse, to tacitly endorse one. Cajetan’s resolve for defending the freedom of unbelievers across the Atlantic was only matched by his commitment to preaching the Gospel. As superior, his message to the Dominican Vicar General of Spain in 1508 was clear:  send preachers at once to the New World “under threat of grave sin.” A resounding love to preach the Good News mixed with an uncompromising respect for the freedom of one’s interlocutor is a rare combination these days, as in any age. Thankfully, we have the living examples of Montesinos, Mendoza, and Córdoba from five hundred years ago.

Anthropologists have Tylor and Frazer. But are there armchair theologians? This term very often has a bad connotation in an academy that constantly strives to be relevant to the public. When considering the sixteenth-century School of Salamanca and theologians such as Vitoria, Cano, and Peña, armchair theology seems to be applicable. They have received criticism from some for being so removed from the reality and praxis regarding how to deal with the actual conditions of the Amerindians in the New World.  These Dominicans never set foot on tierra firme like Las Casas or Pedro de Córdoba did so they had to rely entirely on chronicles and eye-witness testimony for their theological and political judgments regarding the affairs of the Americas. Furthermore, their relectiones, which were a series of lectures given for a few weeks or months on a pressing social or religious problem facing the Church in Spain, demanded it.

Of course, there was no shortage of reports for these theologians as they had everyone from Cristobal Colón to their very own friar from San Esteban, Tomás de la Torre, and his chronicle of the journey along with fifteen other Dominicans to the Americas with Bishop Las Casas. But with all the reports, often contrasting, coming into the Peninsula from missionaries, emissaries, conquistadores, and travelers who had all experienced different Amerindian cultures in distinct locales, whose account should be trusted? We know that Vitoria based his judgment and subsequent opposition to Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Atahaulpa in Peru from the report of the missionary Vicente de Valverde who came back to Spain in 1534. But it is especially interesting to consider how Las Casas specifically advised his close friend Domingo de Soto on this matter.

From his first relectio De Dominio given in the aulas of the Univeristy of Salamanca in 1535, Soto remained deeply suspicious of the entire Spanish imperial enterprise in the New World. In that relectio Soto claimed he did not know by what title Spain waged its expansionary program. He says quite bluntly, “Re vera ego nescio.” The only thing he did claim to know and continued to maintain the rest of his intellectual life was that there was both a right of preaching (ius praedicandi) given by Christ and a right of defense (ius defendi) intrinsic to nature that could serve as the principles of judgment over the controversy.  Nevertheless, one still needs empirical evidence and expert testimony to apply these basic freedoms to properly assess a concrete situation.

It is here that Las Casas enters the discussion to advise his friend. The following analysis is indebted to Padre Ramón Hernández. More than ten years after De dominio, Las Casas writes a letter to Soto who is troubled by all the conflicting accounts of what is actually going on across the Atlantic. Las Casas proposes a criterion for discerning the truth that is as brilliant as it is deceptively simple: the interest or disinterest of the informers. This is not far from what Gustavo Gutiérrez refers to as “la perspectiva del poder.” Those who profit from the conquest and stealing support the encomienda system whereas those who defend the Amerindians are critical of it. The latter, according to Las Casas, were typically those under religious vows since they were less prone to the things of this world.

The encomienda and all its real, oppressive structural features was “intrinsically evil” in the eyes of Las Casas. Nearing the end of his life in Spain, Las Casas wrote to his Dominican brothers back in Chiapas that he still considered it as such. The category of evil ultimately served as his criterion for gauging interest-disinterest or power-oppression relations. Theologians, especially those belonging to the Catholic moral tradition, know all to well the rhetorical force of intrinsic evil in ethical debates. Often, when it is employed it becomes a conversation-stopper for not only the addressee but also the speaker. “I’m right and you’re wrong.” But here is why Las Casas’ criterion is deceptively simple. Although he thought the encomienda was evil semper et ad semper and most certainly thought he was speaking the truth, his application of this criterion compelled him to debate and engage his opponents rather than turn away and dismiss them.

If one examines his moral analysis closely it is evident how much he depends on an Aristotelian account of practical reason and induction derived from Book VI of the Ethics. This is not the place to delve into these matters except to say that Las Casas had no interest in drawing self-evident conclusions about pre-existing terms denoting evil from an abstract metaphysical account of nature. Of course, a thoroughly modern natural law thinker might respond that his world was different than ours. He didn’t have to appeal to abstract nature because he lived in a world that already shared a conception of nature. This ignores the fact, however, that Las Casas’ opponents fundamentally challenged  his basic descriptions  about what constitutes freedom and what is true faith. Perhaps it was not all that different from us today.

The bottom line to his moral inquiry is that he arrived at his conclusions about intrinsic evil through a thick engagement with the reality of Amerindian suffering under the encomienda and its relationship to the explicit ends defined by the institution and the people who supported it. He concluded, following a letter he wrote to Bartolomé de Carranza, that the three root evils perpetuated by the encomienda here and everywhere were: loss of natural freedom, loss of dominium and jurisdiction, and obstruction of faith. Unlike most who invoke the language of intrinsic evil, Las Casas dealt with such a troubling reality prophetically, pastorally, and penitentially. He recognized it was an evil and never feared debating his opponents by using their analytic tools and concpetual frameworks (his mostly self-educated canon law arguments attest to this). As a bishop and pastor, he cared deeply about preserving genuine faith and sought the salvation of those in his flock who mistreated the Amerindians (this is evident in his withholding absolution to self-professed slaveowners until restitution was made). Lastly, Las Casas never forgot his roots and that his penance and conversion was a gift that opened his eyes to the reality of suffering among the conquered.

All in all, Las Casas’ advice to Soto should be considered a serious contribution to moral analysis for theologians for its ability to complicate and clarify simultaneously. His conversation with Soto testifies to the nonnegotiable importance that theologians today must place on accurate sources derived from the natural and social sciences. But what of Soto? Is there such a thing as armchair theology? Sadly, there is, yet Soto was far from guilty of this. As a prior of San Esteban in charge of administering souls, he never failed to care for those under him. He never forgot the poor in his community and around Spain. In an age where poor laws were being advanced by humanists (e.g. Juan Luis Vives) and aristocrats alike prohibiting begging and restricting social charity, Soto challenged them head on by fighting for the rights of the poor to beg and travel freely (just like mendicants) both academically (see his relección Deliberación en la causa de los pobres) and socially. Not unlike Las Casas, it was his religious vows and commitment to God that enabled him to be in solidarity with the victims rather than their oppressor. An armchair theologian doesn’t recognize this difference.

One only needs to take a glance at Spanish political history to be aware of the famous debate over the (in)justice of conquest in the New World, which unfolded between the bishop from Chiapas, Las Casas, and his great rival, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, at Valladolid in August of 1550. Less known, however, was the intellectual dispute through letters that took place between  Sepúlveda  and Melchor Cano two years before the great debate at Valladolid. Cano became Prima chair in theology at Salamanca following the death of his teacher, Vitoria, in 1546. He contributed to the Amerindian debate through his De dominio Indorum (1546), and was chosen to participate in the Council of Trent. He organized support for the hungry in the city and he was also Prior at San Esteban.

Cano was in charge of commissioning the University of Salamanca to read and judge Sepúlveda’s Democrates secundus, a treatise justifying the use of force and war to civilize and Christianize the barbarians of the New World using Scriptural, theological, philosophical and juristic authorities. Although Cano was not responsible for the final decision to reject the publication of it due to its heretical doctrine, he certainly supported the decision of the committee.

Only four letters remain of the actual exchange from 1548 to 1549, but that does not  rule out the possibility that there could have been more, as has been noted in an excellent article by J.J. Valverde in the journal Florentia Iliberritana (2006). The main topic of the letters regards a dispute over how to interpret St. Paul’s anger toward the Sanhedrin in Acts 23 after being persecuted by them. Sepúlveda employs this passage at the beginning of Democrates to indicate the use of anger and vengeance within the New Testament and even in the life of Christ, who does not abolish the (natural) law, but fulfills it.  His larger aim, of course, is to make the case for war against the Amerindians on the basis of punishing and disciplining them to follow the natural law that is immutable and knowable to all.

Having read and opposed the imperialist-humanist doctrine of Sepúlveda’s Democrates, Cano patiently corresponded with him by arguing that even though justified anger is sometimes used in Scripture to denote painful recognition of injustice, it should not be confused with rage and hatred. Cano knows exactly where Sepúlveda is going with his sophistry and wants to cut it off at the root. If the rhetorician can show (as he tried to do in his Democrates primus) that Christian ethics are perfectly consistent with, and even demand, a warrior code, then the possibility of even questioning the conquest is off-limits.

Cano’s main point is that Sepúlveda’s political doctrine is contrary to that of Vitoria, who taught that sins against the natural law could never be a legitimate cause for war. Only deliberate wrongdoing against the innocent, and their defense, could provide such a ground. And this was anything but the case in the Spanish conquests as Vitoria himself knew. Likening theologians to barbarians stuck in their Neoscholastic guild, Sepúlveda replies that they can go on citing Vitoria and Cardinal Cajetan, while he employs the real masters for his aim of missionary-civilizing warfare: Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and Aquinas. I wish this were mere rhetoric on Sepúlveda’s part but he makes a very persuasive case in the Democrates secundus for a violent evangelism that does not always equivocate but draws on traditional, Christian political doctrines.

Sepúlveda assures Cano that he has the support of the rest of Spain, even if the theologians are in disagreement. His book was even approved by two people very close to Cano’s master, Vitoria; that is, Francisco’s brother Diego de Vitoria and Dominican Miguel de Arcos, the one whom Vitoria wrote in 1534 when his blood froze at the hearing of Pizarro’s violent spoiling in Peru. Vitoria died never once supporting the actual conquest. Cano sided with his master in this early dispute and had the support of both Salamanca and the university where he first taught in Alcalá.

What is fascinating is that Cano, prior to this exchange, had already written on the Amerindian question and composed his treatise De dominio Indorum as a point by point refutation of Sepúlveda’s thesis (a keen observation by Luciano Pereña). In this concrete case, we can see what the real cost could be in not censoring such a volatile diatribe catering to the conceits of Spanish pride and glory. Sepúlveda finished his debate with Cano, for the moment, by applauding him for the modesty he exercised in his exchange. Such modesty was not received, Sepúlveda noted, by the likes of the bishop from Chiapas. This bishop, none other than Las Casas, would later represent Cano at the Valladolid debate. Sepúlveda complained that his responses were injurious to him and, ironically, more in accord with natural law. I guess there really is something to that saying, “truth hurts.”

Bienvenidos to the School of Salamanca blog– a site dedicated to the intellectual heritage of the sixteenth-century theologians and jurists concerned with the Amerindian question in the New World. Stay posted for updates over the coming months.