{"id":72,"date":"2011-02-03T02:34:26","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T01:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/?p=72"},"modified":"2011-02-15T08:08:15","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T07:08:15","slug":"cano-the-theologian-versus-sepulveda-the-humanist-a-neglected-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/2011\/02\/03\/cano-the-theologian-versus-sepulveda-the-humanist-a-neglected-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Cano the theologian versus Sep\u00falveda the humanist: a neglected debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

One only needs to take a glance at Spanish political history to be aware of the\u00a0famous debate over the\u00a0(in)justice of conquest in the New World, which unfolded between the bishop from Chiapas, Las Casas, and his great rival, Juan Gin\u00e9s de Sep\u00falveda, at Valladolid in August of 1550. Less known, however, was the intellectual\u00a0dispute through letters that took place between\u00a0\u00a0Sep\u00falveda\u00a0 and Melchor Cano two years before the great debate at Valladolid. Cano\u00a0became Prima chair in theology at Salamanca following the death of his teacher, Vitoria, in 1546.\u00a0He contributed to the Amerindian debate through his De dominio Indorum <\/em>(1546),\u00a0and was chosen to participate in\u00a0the Council of Trent. He organized support for the hungry in the city and he was also Prior at San Esteban.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cano was\u00a0in charge of\u00a0commissioning the University of Salamanca to read and judge Sep\u00falveda’s Democrates secundus<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

Only four letters remain of the actual exchange\u00a0from 1548 to 1549, but that does not \u00a0rule out the possibility that there could have been more, as has been noted in an excellent\u00a0article by J.J.\u00a0Valverde in the journal Florentia Iliberritana<\/em> (2006). The\u00a0main topic\u00a0of the letters\u00a0regards a dispute over\u00a0how to interpret St. Paul’s anger toward the Sanhedrin in Acts 23 after being persecuted by them. Sep\u00falveda employs this passage at the beginning of Democrates<\/em> to\u00a0indicate 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. \u00a0His 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.<\/p>\n

Having read and opposed the imperialist-humanist doctrine of Sep\u00falveda’s Democrates<\/em>, Cano patiently corresponded with\u00a0him 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 Sep\u00falveda 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<\/em>) that Christian ethics are perfectly consistent with, and even demand,\u00a0a warrior code, then the possibility of even questioning the conquest is off-limits.<\/p>\n

Cano’s main point is that Sep\u00falveda’s political doctrine is contrary to that of Vitoria, who taught that\u00a0sins against the natural law could never\u00a0be a legitimate cause\u00a0for 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, Sep\u00falveda 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 Sep\u00falveda’s part but he\u00a0makes a very persuasive case in the Democrates secundus<\/em> for a violent evangelism that does not always equivocate but draws on\u00a0traditional, Christian political doctrines.<\/p>\n

Sep\u00falveda 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,\u00a0Francisco’s brother Diego de Vitoria and\u00a0Dominican Miguel de Arcos, the one whom Vitoria wrote in 1534 when his blood froze at the hearing of Pizarro’s\u00a0violent spoiling\u00a0in 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\u00a0Alcal\u00e1.<\/p>\n

What is fascinating is that Cano, prior to this exchange, had already written on the Amerindian question and composed his treatise De dominio Indorum<\/em> as a point by point refutation of Sep\u00falveda’s thesis (a keen observation by\u00a0Luciano Pere\u00f1a). In this concrete case, we can see what the real cost\u00a0could be in\u00a0not censoring such a volatile diatribe catering to the conceits of Spanish pride and glory. Sep\u00falveda finished his debate with Cano, for the moment, by applauding him for the modesty he exercised in his exchange. Such modesty was not received, Sep\u00falveda noted, by the likes of the bishop from Chiapas. This bishop, none other than Las Casas, would later represent Cano at the Valladolid debate.\u00a0Sep\u00falveda complained that his\u00a0responses were injurious to him and, ironically, more in accord with natural law. I guess there really is something to that saying, “truth hurts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One only needs to take a glance at Spanish political history to be aware of the\u00a0famous debate over the\u00a0(in)justice of conquest in the New World, which unfolded between the bishop from Chiapas, Las Casas, and his great rival, Juan Gin\u00e9s de Sep\u00falveda, at Valladolid in August of 1550. Less known, however, was the intellectual\u00a0dispute through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":236,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/236"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/schoolofsalamanca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}