1 Introduction

What was the reach of the School of Salamanca in 16th-century America? This chapter focuses on a relectio of Alonso de la Vera Cruz, De dominio infidelium et iusto bello, which, as the first relectio to have been written in America, exemplifies the influence of some key writings of the School of Salamanca in 16th-century America. Vera Cruz’s “American” reappraisal of Francisco de Vitoria’s famous writings, especially his Relectio de Indis, indicates that Salmantine ideas were not uncritically received. On the contrary, a detailed comparison of both relectiones reveals that the ramifications of the differences between both approaches to the polemical asuntos de Indias are further reaching than has been understood by current scholarship, for an indirect but clear criticism of some of Vitoria’s positions can be discerned in the works of his student Vera Cruz. This chapter re-evaluates Vera Cruz’s disagreement by examining, in particular, whether it responded to a foundational discourse in the Americas or was already embedded in it and only progressively distanced itself from earlier approaches elaborated by the first generation of Peninsular Salamanca masters, such as Vitoria and Soto.

In recent decades, Alonso de la Vera Cruz has emerged as one of the most important “American” masters of the School of Salamanca. His writings, in particular his treatise De dominio infidelium et iusto bello,¹ have attracted increasing interest,² not least since the publication of a wide – but incomplete – selection of his works by Ernest Burrus (1968–1976).³ While my previous writings on Vera Cruz have focused mainly on his juridical and political thought,⁴ this chapter sets out to make a detailed comparison of Vera Cruz’s De dominio infidelium with Vitoria’s well-known Relectio de Indis. It will then, having made the comparison with the works of Vera Cruz that were written in New Spain, integrate this analysis into a general reflection on the kind of influence that Vitoria and Salamanca exerted over their students.⁵ Vera Cruz presented his first relectio at the recently instituted University of Mexico in 1554,⁶ more than 20 years after concluding his studies at the University of Salamanca’s faculty of theology (1528–1532),⁷ where Vitoria was the leading figure and held the prima chair of theology from 1526.⁸ Despite the lack of documentary evidence, it is possible to assume that they remained in contact after Vera Cruz’s departure for New Spain in 1536.⁹ Through an intermediary, Vera Cruz became acquainted with Vitoria’s relectiones, De Indis and De iure belli. These relectiones had been delivered at the University of Salamanca in 1539 in an attempt to influence the principles guiding the Spanish colonisation of the Western Indies,¹⁰ which had hitherto proved to be erratic, fruitless, and cruel. 15 years later, Vera Cruz paid homage to Vitoria, even as he sought to correct some of Vitoria’s arguments through the empirical data he had gathered from his experiences in New Spain.¹¹ As he opened his brief but interesting career as a university professor in Mexico City with a relectio,¹² Vera Cruz again took up the same issues his teacher had addressed in his American relectiones: the legitimacy of the dominion of indigenous peoples, the just and unjust titles of the Spanish conquest, the claims of universal dominion by the pope and the emperor, etc. His critique of De Indis and other Salmantine writings contributed to an evaluation of the School of Salamanca that could be considered as a case of global knowledge production.¹³ It highlighted the points of agreement and difference between the first generation of Salamanca scholars (Vitoria, Soto, Azpilcueta, et al.) and their students, for, using objective criteria, it also critically evaluated the School’s influence and impact on writings produced in America. As Duve highlights in the opening chapter of this book, some of the School of Salamanca’s methods were followed in other European and colonial American universities, but instead of copying methodologies and content, we can say that Salamanca’s arguments were adapted according to the specific needs of these diverse contexts. The case of Vera Cruz serves to illustrate another one of Duve’s methodological remarks: that the communication between Salamanca and America was not unidirectional. In fact, knowledge and experiences circulated in both directions across the Atlantic, incentivising the production of a scientific and normative knowledge that resulted from the activities of many dispersed actors. It should therefore be stressed that the School of Salamanca was not a static school imposing premises and arguments on theological or juridical matters from a centre to a passive periphery.

As has been established, the methods of teaching and argumentation developed by Vitoria, Soto, and Medina (among other chair holders at Salamanca’s faculty of theology), the topics discussed at Salamanca and the history of Salamanca’s debates on key polemical issues (the legitimacy of the conquest of the Western Indies, clandestine marriage, new commercial practices that were problematically close to hidden forms of usury, etc.) undoubtedly had a global impact on the kingdoms and provinces of the early-modern Spanish empire. This influence also reverberated in regions such as Peru,¹⁴ New Spain,¹⁵ the Philippines,¹⁶ Portugal,¹⁷ Naples,¹⁸ and Central and Northern Europe.¹⁹ Many academics studying Salamanca’s influence in America still assume that American scholastics merely regurgitated the approaches and doctrines taught by well-known Peninsular Salamanca masters (Vitoria, Soto, Cano, etc).²⁰ This chapter raises and examines some of these unanswered questions through an analysis of the works of Vera Cruz. What specific orientations were closely associated with Salmantine jurists and missionary theologians in the Americas? What solutions did they find to resolve the unparalleled dilemmas they confronted in the field? What was the nature and extent of the influence of the School of Salamanca in the Americas? Were those American authors only passive recipients of ideas emerging from their alma mater? Did they manage to “localise” the general doctrines learned in Salamanca and go on to produce normative knowledge that responded to specific American customs and to the challenges posed by their own epochal and regional working contexts? This chapter addresses these broad themes by approaching them more concretely through using a representative text to study how Salamancan methods and teachings were culturally translated for the distant American regions: Vera Cruz’s Relectio de dominio infidelium et iusto bello (1554–1555).

The choice of text might strike the reader as odd for this task because the quaestiones, structure and order of De dominio infidelium seem to have been influenced by Vitoria, particularly the manner in which he first addressed these topics in his monumental Relectio de Indis that later became commonplace in the debates over asuntos de Indias. However, despite the assumption that Vera Cruz had written his own relectio with De Indis in mind – of which Vera Cruz might have acquired a manuscript copy before 1554 – Vitoria was not quoted once in De dominio infidelium et iusto bello.

The following pages detail the salient features of Vera Cruz’s writings in order to challenge the assumption that his relectio was merely a transplant or an acritical adaptation of Vitoria’s De Indis for the Mexican context.²¹ His writings drew not only on the works of Salamanca scholars but also on the experiences he himself had gained over a period of almost 20 years in New Spain, where he wrote his De dominio infidelium. A detailed comparison of De Indis and De dominio infidelium in the last sections of my contribution will serve to prove this hypothesis. Before analysing these texts however, it is necessary to first examine the authors and trends in philosophical, theological, and juridical thinking in 15th-century Salamanca, which exerted a deep and long-term influence on 16th-century scholastics like Vera Cruz.

2 Beyond Vitoria: “El Tostado” (1410–1455), Martínez Silíceo (1477–1557), and Other Salamanca Masters behind the Writings of Alonso de la Vera Cruz

Many experts of the history of the University of Salamanca during the Middle Ages consider Alonso Fernández de Madrigal, “El Tostado” (1410–1455), a key figure in Spanish intellectual history for founding the kind of practical and proto-rationalist theology that distinguished Salamanca scholasticism in the early modern period. Delgado Jara has proved how his biblical exegesis of many books of the Old Testament and the Gospel of Saint Matthew, which remained unfinished,²² went beyond Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine about the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture (STh, Prima Pars, q. 1, arts. 9–10) and the exegetical methods adopted by 14th-century authors like Nicolas de Lyre. El Tostado “argumenta menos con autoridades que con razones”. He also contrasted previous scriptural commentaries with a repertoire of theological, philosophical, and juridical authorities not seen hitherto. Putting aside sterile and futile disputes on speculative subtleties and the logical and rhetorical interests of early scholastics, El Tostado focused on “la problemática y las preocupaciones de su tiempo (la Guerra, el derecho de gentes, las ideas políticas, la renovación moral, […])”.²³ He was, in this sense, a forerunner of the 16th-century practical theology found in Vitoria, Soto, and Vera Cruz, as well as many other Iberian scholastics.

By the mid-15th century, El Tostado was an active and decisive member of the corporation of the University of Salamanca in theoretical and practical matters,²⁴ as well as the key “intellectual” who introduced new approaches to Aristotelianism in the faculties of arts and theology, which diverged significantly from the previous Arabic reading methods such as that of Averroes. El Tostado had held the chairs of moral philosophy and rhetoric from the late 1430s in the faculty of arts, and he was also appointed chair of the Holy Scripture in the 1440s, and later of vespers in the faculty of theology.²⁵ He went on to reform the arts and theology curricula, extending the authority of Aristotle to an important part of the disciplines then studied at the university.²⁶

El Tostado, who had studied arts and theology and held a bachelor’s degree in law, exemplifies the increasing importance of theologians and of a multinormative perspective on social regulation in the Castilian royal administration. Promoted simultaneously to the offices of chancellor (canciller del sello, 1444), judge (oidor) of the Real Audiencia, and member of the Royal Council (1553) during the last years of the reign of Juan ii,²⁷ he introduced normative theological and moral-philosophical criteria to processes devoted to navigating the fraught relationship of the kings with the nobility, the difficult convivencia of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in contemporary multicultural Castile, and the recurring frictions between pontifical and royal jurisdictions. The case of El Tostado – similar to those of other contemporary theologian-counsellors such as Lope de Barrientos, a Dominican friar who held the prima chair of theology at Salamanca together with the most important juridical offices during the reigns of Juan ii and Enrique iv and different bishoprics²⁸ – thus represented an important milestone in a prolific dynamic of normative knowledge production which had started with the creation of the faculty of theology at the University of Salamanca in 1411,²⁹ until then clearly focused on juridical studies. This led to the continuous requests for counsel and opinions that we find during the era of Charles v and Vitoria, when Vitoria and other Salamanca theologians intervened in delicate matters such as the wars of conquest and the evangelisation of the Americas, the divorce of Henry viii and Catherine of Aragon, and the writings of Erasmus.

Recent studies on Alonso Fernández de Madrigal’s political and juridical thought have pointed to a diffusion of theological and moral normativity into the courtly atmosphere as much as to a progressive incorporation of courtly debates (interaction between different social estates, moral evaluation of the ambitions of many clergymen, the need and importance of advice and counsel, etc.) into scholastic reflection to explain these developments. This was articulated through the conceptual frameworks of Aquinas and the original works of Aristotle – whose most important writings were recovered during the course of the 15th century by Italian scholars, Leonardo Bruni being the most important one, in close dialogue with El Tostado, Alonso de Cartagena, and other Salamanca masters.³⁰ These examined social life and its organisation through notions of concord and friendship in politics.³¹ Apart from the continuous evaluation of key political and juridical quaestiones in an innovative exercise of biblical exegesis articulated through utrum questions, Fernández de Madrigal wrote various political treatises in both Latin and vernacular Castilian, some of which have been preserved (De optima politia,³² Breviloquio de amor e amiciçia, Tratado de cómo es necesario al hombre amar).³³

El Tostado’s approach was not isolated and without consequence because his disciple, Pedro Martínez de Osma – prima chair of theology in later decades –, and his disciple’s disciple, Fernando de Roa, continued privileging lectures on Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics to explain the nature of the different forms of rule and government, the limits of any true royal dominion that stopped short of tyranny, the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, etc.³⁴ Writing in the period when conciliarism had achieved important victories over papal aspirations of absolute control of the Church, El Tostado, Osma, and Roa agreed that the pope could not only be mistaken about faith and human matters, but also about accusations of heresy if, despite being persuaded of his errors by the council, he obstinately persisted in propagating his incorrect opinions.³⁵ All those positions, the result of long and harsh debates between Salamanca theologians before the arrival of Vitoria, appeared frequently in the writings of Vera Cruz. For example, in his Speculum coniugiorum – where El Tostado was quoted numerous times, second only to Aquinas in terms of frequency –,³⁶ the idea that the pope and pontifical canons (only in the argumentative part and not in the resolutive one, which always had to be obeyed) could be wrong and did not have to be obeyed when the authority of many doctors and biblical paragraphs could be alleged to defend a contrary or different position.³⁷ Vera Cruz resorted to the authority of El Tostado’s (Abulensis) Defensorium to uphold this particular position, which had obviously become very problematic in the new context of confessionalisation following the Reformation.

Another significant influence in Vera Cruz’s life and thought was, without doubt, his teacher at Salamanca, Juan Martínez Silíceo. Contrary to the historiography on Vera Cruz, which, on the basis of unverified assumptions, has enthusiastically emphasised the filiation between the great Vitoria and his Augustinian disciple and exaggerated it to increase the prestige of both Vitoria and Vera Cruz,³⁸ the archives at the University of Salamanca reveal a different reality. As Clara Inés Ramírez has proved in a noteworthy article – which aimed to challenge the depiction of Vera Cruz in traditional historiography as a kind, loyal, and uncritical replicator of Vitoria’s legacy –, after concluding his bachelor’s degree in theology (1528–1532), the Augustinian friar chose Juan Martínez Silíceo, the chair of natural philosophy and a great representative of nominalism in contemporary Spain, as the padrino who conferred his bachelor degree in theology on him.³⁹

Vera Cruz’s free election of Martínez Silíceo as his padrino de grado reveals its full meaning when comparing the nominalist approach of Silíceo’s writings on logic with those Vera Cruz published in Mexico some years later.⁴⁰ Even the relatively free fluctuation between the three traditional theological viae (Thomist, nominalist, Scotist) that distinguished Vera Cruz’s theological writings – a topic that will be addressed in the following section – could be related to the deep knowledge inherent in the different theological traditions that derived from Silíceo and other non-Thomist scholars. His election as padrino de grado by Vera Cruz clearly implied the recognition of Martínez Silíceo as his intellectual mentor.

Martínez Silíceo held the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Salamanca from 1522. Despite his all-round talent in the disciplines of logic, natural philosophy, theology, canon law, and navigation, he is remembered above all for his decisive role in adopting the estatutos de limpieza de sangre when he became the archbishop of Toledo in 1546.⁴¹ Given the prominent position of the archbishop of Toledo as primate of Spain, Silíceo’s measure had a ripple effect on other institutions and led, in the mid-term, to the exclusion of converts from the Spanish church and royal offices, among other things.

Silíceo’s formation closely resembled the one received almost contemporaneously by Vitoria. He had studied arts and theology at the University of Paris (Collège de Beauvais) in the 1510s and arrived at the University of Salamanca as a renowned scholastic author. He took over as the teacher of nominal logics at Salamanca during the academic year of 1518–1519.⁴² As a student of Jean Dullaert, one of the most important translators and interpreters of Aristotle’s logical and philosophical writings in the early 16th century, Silíceo played an important role in the deep restructuring of Salamanca’s arts faculty in the 1520s.⁴³ It has become clear that, driven by a strong commitment to emulating the innovative Paris curricula and keeping abreast of the methodological reform in the arts at different European universities, the university senate (claustro) commissioned two members to travel to Paris in 1516 to convince Silíceo to return to Spain and lead the efforts to restructure the arts faculty at Salamanca.⁴⁴ An important part of Silíceo’s mission was to write and print the new manuals on Logic for the arts students. It is known that Silíceo invested his time well and soon after his arrival at Salamanca, he managed to publish Dullaert’s commentaries on the logical writings of Aristotle with the local Salmantine printers. Silíceo added his own remarks to the extant teaching materials in order to adapt them to the specific cultural and philosophical background of the students of Salamanca.⁴⁵

It is no surprise that four decades later, when the chairs of the arts faculty at the recently founded University of Mexico were established (1554–1555), his student Vera Cruz engaged in a similar operation. Benefitting from various extant materials and inspired by the nominalist perspectives of Martínez Silíceo, Vera Cruz managed to publish the first books on logics and physics in Mexico that were – so to speak – “made in America”: Recognitio summularum (1554), Dialectica resolutio (1554), and Physica speculatio (1557). Following his padrino’s example, his writings on logic were published “cum textu Aristotelis” [with the text of Aristotle] and were humbly conceived of as an easy and quick method to assimilate the complex logical thinking of the Greek philosopher. Given that Mexican students were trained to undertake missionary tasks above all,⁴⁶ Vera Cruz believed that many of Aristotle’s abstract speculations which had no practical ends could be omitted or summarised.

A hypothesis that still needs to be evaluated is whether Silíceo’s mistrust and intransigence towards the converso minority, who he believed should always be closely monitored by Old Christians, influenced Vera Cruz. As the detailed analysis of De dominio infidelium below demonstrates, Vera Cruz continued to argue that the conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity (voluntary or forced) and keeping them in the “true faith” were the strongest and most genuine arguments that Spaniards could invoke to justify their actions in the Western Indies. A close reading of De dominio infidelium et iusto bello shows the influence of different, pre-Vitorian authorities who were part of this intellectual movement that was vaguely referred to as the Primera Escuela de Salamanca. Links to the nominalist and Scotist schools of thought repeatedly appeared in Vera Cruz’s writings, entering into dialogue – and sometimes conflict – with positions that could be attributed to Vitoria, Soto, Covarrubias, and other 16th-century Salamanca scholars. Contrary to what is usually said and written about Vitoria’s students, Vera Cruz privileged more ancient authorities in most cases, choosing to cite El Tostado over Vitoria. In all likelihood, Vera Cruz could have compared and contrasted their positions using a manuscript version of De Indis he had at his disposal.

This definition is problematic because it ignores the juridical, economic, and philosophical interests of many chair holders at the faculties of theology, law, and arts and restricts the lens through which contributions of the School of Salamanca are analysed. It also seems to conceive of Vitoria’s work at Salamanca as emerging on a blank slate using a totally new language. This narrow, traditional definition gives rise to confusion because it excludes the important achievements of the so-called Primera Escuela de Salamanca, Martínez Silíceo and other central figures who were involved in the intense debates between nominalist and Thomist masters at the university long before the arrival of Vitoria.

As has been mentioned, the 15th and the early 16th centuries were extremely rich and momentous for the history of the University of Salamanca. Ideological controversies and disputes about the value of different philosophical and theological authorities (Aristotle, Aquinas, Scotus, etc.) had practical effects and led to important reforms in the curricula. In light of this, various experts have recently retraced the first steps of the dynamics initiated in 15th century Salamanca, from the full integration of the rediscovered and newly translated texts of Aristotle into many of the disciplines studied at Salamanca to the increased interest in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Both elements are clearly noticeable in the works of El Tostado, Osma, Roa, and other Salamanca masters who all paved the way for the later systematic commentaries on the Summa theologiae, such as that undertaken by Vitoria in the 1520s.⁴⁸

The juridical, political, and philosophical reflections of those pre-Columbian Salamanca masters are a key element in the revision of an extremely Vitoria-centred historiography on the School of Salamanca’s projection and influence in America. As Egío underlines in the next chapter, where he also takes El Tostado’s influence on Vera Cruz into account, the integration of the Primera Escuela de Salamanca in this historiography is an essential project that must be undertaken by future researchers because:

(1) It would allow us to move beyond the traditional theological focus and to study the cultural translation of a rich patrimony of knowledge that emerged from the Salmantine faculties of law and the arts. When considering such a brilliant Salamancan figure in America as Vera Cruz – who wrote theological treatises such as Speculum coniugiorum, juridical-political relectiones such as De dominio infidelium and De decimis, and an entire Cursus in the arts for the Augustinian colleges and the recently founded University of Mexico while also actively delving into other disciplines – it is impossible to get an adequate perspective of his contributions without taking into account the late medieval evolution of the Salamanca curricula, teaching methods, and approaches to raising and solving problematic practical cases.

(2) It would help us to better understand the debates over the authority of Aristotle that took place between different Salamanca masters and contemporary humanists such as Sepúlveda. This is a crucial point, given that those debates were highly relevant to the process of constructing the Salmantine argumentation on such topics as the infidels’ dominion, slavery, conversion, and just war in the Americas. An important philosophical restructuring was underway in 15th century Salamanca when El Tostado, Osma, Roa, and other scholars entered into an intense debate about the political and ethical writings of Aristotle. This implies that when Vitoria, Sepúlveda, and Las Casas invoked Aristotle’s authority to evaluate the political and juridical condition of the “barbaric” inhabitants of the Western Indies, they did not invent or establish something completely new, but rather were tilling an already fertile field within an established Castilian tradition.

(3) Innovations and re-evaluations in the hitherto unconnected fields of knowledge of theology, law, and the arts could finally be studied in tandem within the more ambitious and solid context of the history of knowledge production. For example, it has been proven that Leonardo Bruni’s translations of Aristotle’s writings were known and debated by Cartagena and El Tostado and officially used as teaching materials at Salamanca since Pedro de Osma’s appointment as chair of moral philosophy in 1457.⁴⁹ This innovation led to a progressive abandonment of Boetius’s translations of Aristotle. In the continuous process of revision undertaken by his students, Bruni’s materials were supplemented with new Latin translations of humanists like John Argyropoulos, who was also working on the Florentine Aristotelian studium at that time. Argyropoulos’s translations were also consulted by Juan Martínez Silíceo, Domingo de Soto, and Vera Cruz when writing their own works on logic and physics.⁵⁰

The Florentine translations and interpretation of Aristotle have been said to have represented a methodological revolution, initiating a period in which a newer and more authentic “Aristóteles humanista”, different from “el de la vieja Escolástica”, could finally be envisaged and appreciated in his intellectual complexity.⁵¹ Nevertheless, the historiography on these and other important methodological issues – critical for distinguishing the stages in the history of knowledge production in Salamanca and beyond – did not go too far and instead simply regurgitated general statements. Was this progressive abandonment of Boetius’s translations of Aristotle and the incorporation of Florentine humanist translations in the Salmantine – and later, American – curricula only a philological matter? How important were those changes which were first introduced in the arts curricula for the faculties of theology, law, and medicine? Did the new translations also contribute to a deep renewal of juridical and political thought? Unfortunately, the existing literature on the School of Salamanca does not provide answers to these matters or other important methodological issues located at the intersections of the disciplines, which, as Thomas Duve states in the opening chapter of this volume, deserve more attention than has been afforded by traditional historiography. In this, I follow Duve’s idea that the School of Salamanca should not be defined as a purely theological or juridical school, but as a school that produced knowledge globally and in many different areas. Folch’s chapter illustrates this point well, showing the common interests of “Mexican” Augustinians who trained at Salamanca (Vera Cruz and Rada) not only in theology, law, and politics, but also in disciplines such as astronomy, cosmography, and architecture; it also demonstrates that the kind of universal interest which distinguished the Renaissance “intellectual” (among whom Florentine figures such as Leonardo Bruni have been better studied) was present in Salamanca and Mexico.

This line of interpretation should be pursued in future research against the fixed and reductionist approaches that prevail in the classical literature about the School.

3 De Indis and De dominio infidelium Confronted: Similar Methods and Questions, Different Authorities and Answers

The contrast between the juridical treatises of Vera Cruz and Vitoria allows us to show the employment of a similar argumentative methodology and the sharing of some important epistemic premises as remarked upon by Duve as the basis of an epistemic community. Beyond those similarities however, Vera Cruz paid much more attention than Vitoria to the specific characteristics and needs of indigenous peoples. This meant that, despite sharing important assessment criteria, Vera Cruz argued in a way that was more empathetic to the specific cultures of the natives of New Spain and to local practices.

When comparing De dominio infidelium et iusto bello, the lesser-known relectio of Vera Cruz, and De Indis, Vitoria’s famous relectio, the reader is struck by the great similarity between the formal structures of the two texts. From the beginning, it is clear that Vera Cruz based the organisation of his argument on Vitoria’s method: both began with an overview of the dubia/quaestiones and these were then evaluated with an axiom or general thesis from a well-known and authoritative biblical quotation, expressing a clear biblical imperative. Vitoria began by focusing on the universal obligation to preach the Gospel in Matthew 28:19 (“Docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti” [Teach all the peoples, baptising them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit]), whereas Vera Cruz focused on the equally important and well-known imperative of Matthew 22:21 to obey secular and divine authorities (“Reddite Caesaris Caesari et quae Dei sunt Deo” [Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s]).

Almost one-third of Vera Cruz’s relectio addressed very specific practical matters related to the concrete way in which Spaniards effectively exerted the dominium they had acquired over the natives after the wars and conquests of the 1520s. In this way, doubts i to v and question vi raised a set of problems that had otherwise been almost completely absent from Vitoria’s pioneering evaluation of Spanish dominium over American peoples. Doubt I detailed the legal and in foro conscientiae conditions that had to be fulfilled by any Spaniard who took tributes from the natives. In doubt ii, as has already been mentioned, Vera Cruz underlined the encomenderos’ obligation to instruct the natives in the Christian faith and complained bitterly about the spiritual neglect of many Spaniards who were totally indifferent to their salvation. In doubt iii, Vera Cruz examined whether encomenderos could occupy the lands of the natives through an exhaustive analysis of the royal legislation concerning agricultural fields, farms, ranches, and uncultivated and communal lands. The precision with which Vera Cruz analysed this juridical topic inspired the famous Mexican legal historian Silvio Zavala to call him the “primer maestro de derecho agrario en México”.⁵⁵ It is clear that such a profound legal and practical insight could only be achieved through direct familiarity with the people and practices of the place and by living there for a number of years. Vera Cruz entered into a similar technical discussion in doubt iv in an attempt to stipulate the legal and moral criteria encomenderos had to respect when they fixed the taxes that were to be levied in different places.

In doubt v, the abstract approach of Vitoria and the practical outlook of Vera Cruz began to interact when the Augustinian friar raised the question of whether the Indians could be considered true owners of the land. The hypothetical impediments of infidelity and sins against natural law were discarded by Vera Cruz just as they had been by Vitoria. The biggest difference between them was the empirical knowledge and experience Vera Cruz had amassed vis-à-vis native political institutions and customs, which provided him with the means to discard some arguments of other Spanish jurists that invalidated any possible native claims to private and jurisdictional dominium. Vera Cruz particularly rejected the alleged inability of the natives to organise true republics by explaining in rich detail what he had learned from the oldest inhabitants of Michoacán about the complex and prudent practices of the Purépecha people for electing their local rulers or carachaca pati.⁵⁶ The use of native political terminology showed how well-acquainted Vera Cruz was with the pre-Hispanic institutions and customs of the region.

Finally, in question vi, Vera Cruz presented some tricky legal subtleties, many of which were practiced by the Spanish settlers to buy or obtain lands belonging to native communities, and assessed them according to royal laws and the prevailing moral-theological normativity. It is not until question vii that De dominio infidelium takes a more Vitorian format, examining the classical quaestiones of whether the emperor could be considered the lord of the world and the owner of his vassals’ goods in questions vii and viii. The pontifical ambitions to a supreme and uncontested dominium were discarded in question ix and, employing a clearly Salmantine perspective, the valid and invalid titles to wage war against the natives of Mexico were discussed in questions x and xi.

Each of these doubts and questions were raised and resolved by Vera Cruz according to the same scholastic for and against method that had been employed by Vitoria and such great medieval masters as Thomas Aquinas. Before analysing the heart of the question under discussion, he made some preliminary observations or distinctions that were not only important but also helped the author to frame and contextualise the issue he was resolving. These elements were introduced in the relectiones of Vitoria and Vera Cruz through expressions like “ante omnia videtur” [before all seems],⁵⁷ “pro solutione huius quaestionis est considerandum” [must be considered to resolve this question],⁵⁸ “pro solutione breviter notandum” [to quickly note the solution],⁵⁹ “secundum est considerandum” [must be considered accordingly].⁶⁰

The author made use of biblical excerpts, theological and juridical authorities, and reasonable considerations – among other strategies – in the second step, and presented arguments in favour of an opinion contrary to the one he ultimately defended in the third step of his argumentative exercise, which he did by appealing to more authorities and citing more convincing arguments. The proposition the author defended was always divided into major and minor parts that were substantiated separately. These parts, which were individually examined, allowed a series of conclusions to be drawn in turn. Such a complex structure became even more intricate with the introduction of one or more corollaries, in which specific cases or issues indirectly related to the question initially raised were also evaluated. The objective of this argumentative approach was to clarify beyond doubt if the solution offered was valid and/or just.

This method of argumentation to resolve doubts and cases was not only deeply related to the logical, propaedeutic education received by both Vitoria and Vera Cruz in Paris and Salamanca, but also to the classic Aristotelian concept of justice, in which the concrete exercise of justice or impartial judgment resulted from positioning oneself between two extremes.⁶¹ Even in cases where someone’s personal judgment coincided with an opposing view, a thorough discussion of the arguments in favour of that contrary position was expected in the evaluation. The willingness to make concessions to contrary positions was also welcomed because it showed the magnanimity that distinguished a prudent and wise man from a merely erudite one.

Vitoria and Vera Cruz, along with most members of the School of Salamanca – theologians and jurists –, applied a concept of justice that went beyond the simple application of the letter of the law. The attitude of Epikie – i. e. upholding the ideals of preserving and interpreting the spirit of the law –,⁶² was far more important to those entrusted with the task of imparting justice than the universal application of norms or criteria in any given case. The latter attitude was difficult, even inadequate, given the differences that prevailed in a world with great diversity of traditions, customs, and peoples. The sic et non [yes and no] argumentative method on the other hand perfectly corresponded to that idea of justice: the evaluation of different approaches to a certain problem, related preliminary distinctions, doubts, tentative answers, refutations, and provisional conclusions aimed at avoiding absolute solutions in the administration of justice, a virtue whose practice was considered necessarily relational, prudential, and casuistic.⁶³

This method nevertheless had an important counterpart which must be examined in order to understand Salamanca’s philosophical, juridical, and theological discursive community: given that the application of the general criteria of justice differed according to time, regions, person (especially quality of person), custom, and other circumstances, the results of distinct argumentative exercises could be dissimilar, even if the same methods were applied and similar issues addressed. That was precisely the case when Vera Cruz wrote from the distant Augustinian missions in Mexico and re-examined the very same questions – in a more practical and specific manner – that Vitoria had answered in a theoretical and erudite way 15 years previously, speaking before the Salmantine academic community.

In a different context, some of the positions and authorities rejected by Vitoria regained a certain legitimacy or were seen in a different light. The issue of forced conversion is perhaps the clearest example of a split in opinion between the Salamanca masters and their missionary students. In fact, while the use of coercive measures to fulfil the evangelical precept “compelle eos intrare”⁶⁴ [force them to enter] was categorically rejected by Vitoria and other scholars in a Salmantine academic context where the authority of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae, ii^a-ii^ae, q. 10, arts. 8–9)⁶⁵ prevailed, it was often considered differently in the missionary context overseas. For example, the Jesuit José de Acosta, who drew on Vitoria, Soto, and other Salamanca masters on many issues, distanced himself from them over the debates on missionary methods in the Americas. The absolute rejection of forced conversion, which Vitoria had considered to be a common conclusion that civil and canon lawyers would have drawn,⁶⁶ had to be re-evaluated or implemented in a circumscribed manner in the new context where many long-planned and onerous preaching initiatives – aimed at converting indigenous people to Christianity – encountered the fierce resistance of hostile populations or culminated in the abrupt and inexplicable departure of the instructed “infidels” and “neophytes”. Explaining the different approach of the Society’s missionaries in the late 1580s with such examples, Acosta justified the implementation of some coercive conversion measures on the most fierce “bárbaros” – like the ones inhabiting Florida, Brazil, southern Chile, or the northern regions of Mexico (Chichimeca) –, arguing that they were “gentes acostumbradas a vivir como bestias, sin pactos y sin compasion” and could not be instructed in the same way as true “hombres de razón”.⁶⁷

A lot could be said about Vera Cruz’s prescription of indirect coercion in the Mexican context.⁷⁴ Indeed, it was the legitimate title for waging war against the natives to which the Augustinian friar dedicated his longest explanation in doubt xi, which was the section in his relectio that listed and assessed the different, valid motives for conquest. The justification of indirect coercion made up a quarter of the doubt’s length. For the purposes of our analysis of De dominio infidelium, which in many ways characterises the influence of Vitoria and the better known masters of the School of Salamanca in America, it is important to note that forced conversion was only one of the friction points in the problematic cultural translation of teachings that had previously been studied in Salamanca.

Tribute was as controversial a matter as it was important to the administration of the Spanish empire, as can be seen in the differing approaches of Vitoria and Vera Cruz. Conscious of the fierce clash that could result from his meddling in these delicate matters – which cut to the very heart of ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction –, Vitoria did not dare to address taxation issues in his relectiones over asuntos de Indias. In De Indis, the famous Salmantine master merely stated that the kind of jurisdictional dominium held by the emperor in the Indies did not make him the owner of the possessions – goods and lands (praedia) – of his new vassals, and that just like his Iberian subjects, indigenous people in the Americas held dominium over their goods (dominium rerum suis), which could not be arbitrarily expropriated to enrich the Spanish settlers.⁷⁵

We know that Vitoria added other details to that short and general prescription in the courses he dedicated to Aquinas’s ii^a-ii^ae between 1527–1529 and 1534–1537.⁷⁶ In all likelihood, Vera Cruz heard the first systematic review of the ii^a-ii^ae from 1527 to 1529 where he probably learned that, for Vitoria, the over-taxation of “infidel vassals” who were subjects of Christian princes was not only legitimate but even prescribed as a sound policy for fostering voluntary conversions.⁷⁷ Writing from Mexico where he could directly see the pernicious effects of the imposition of such unfair rates of taxation, forcing the natives to bear the heavy burden of the royal fisc, Vera Cruz rejected the a priori pious recommendation of his teacher. In his opinion, all native vassals should always have a lighter tax burden under their new Christian rulers than they had under their former natural lords so that both neophyte and infidel subjects could appreciate the justice and magnanimity of the Spanish kings.⁷⁸

In his commentaries on Aquinas’s ii^a-ii^ae, Vitoria used an approach to property and taxation – which both Aquinas and his commentators considered as a way of transferring the dominium of certain goods from the original owner to another – that also left the emperor, the kings, and other public authorities much room for manoeuvre to seize the property of their subjects if a certain necessity or rational cause – linked to the common good of the republic – could be used to justify the expropriation.⁷⁹ Vera Cruz had witnessed the depredations in Mexico that resulted from such an arbitrary regulatory framework: under the guise of necessity, the common good, or the protection of the land, different authorities introduced new tributes alongside increasing the ones that already existed. Therefore, he tried to circumscribe Vitoria’s appeal to necessity – tenable in theory but inappropriate in practice for a region such as the one he was evangelising – to the sole potestas of higher authorities (such as emperors, kings, popes, and councils), denying minor authorities the ability to make a similar claim.⁸⁰ Curiously, in his approach to taxation, Vera Cruz appealed to the authority of a more ancient Salamanca master, El Tostado – whose influence is evident in all Vera Cruz’s writings –, to correct or introduce some nuances in Vitoria’s Thomistic approach.

Vera Cruz referred to El Tostado’s (Abulensis) extensive commentary on 1 Kings, 8:11–17. This biblical passage had been invoked throughout the history of Christianity, and particularly in the Thomist tradition, to justify the adoption of typically tyrannical measures – such as the forced levy of taxes and recruitment – under the guise of exceptional circumstances, extreme need, or common good. 1 Kings, 8: 11–17, as interpreted in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae⁸¹ and in the influential exegetical writings of Nicolas de Lyre, was elaborated by the mid-14th century in precisely that manner. With the characteristic Aristotelian and republican tone that distinguished both his political treatises and biblical commentaries,⁸² El Tostado protested against this line of interpretation, claiming that there was no basis to treat vassals as servants or slaves or for expropriating their goods and disposing of their bodies by force.⁸³ A clear distinction should thus always be made between a perverse and intolerable tyrannical regime and proper royal kingship (principatum regale). Vera Cruz firmly adhered to this line of biblical exegesis and republican political thought in his De dominio infidelium, appealing to the authority of El Tostado from the distant Viceroyalty of New Spain to criticise the usual seizure of native lands and goods which were then transferred to Spanish settlers under the pretext of necessity. For Vera Cruz, considering that most of those Spaniards did not contribute to the common good but, on the contrary, inflicted economic and moral damages on the natives and prevented them from converting to the faith, such expropriations of private and communal lands – along with the forced labour of the natives as a kind of tribute – could never be justified without the “expressa voluntate” [express will] of the local inhabitants.

It also follows that if the Spaniards continued presence in the New World proved detrimental and scandalous to its natives and hindered their conversion to the faith because of the bad example which the Spaniards give, or for any other just reason, it follows, I say, that in such a case there could be no justification of a gift made from the communal property without the express consent of the natives themselves. Rebuttal to the arguments presented. Answer to the first arguments. There have not been wanting jurists who, convinced by the passage cited from Scripture [Kings, 8: 11–17], hold that the emperor is the lord of the world and has power over all in the kingdom not only on jurisdiction but even on ownership, and, accordingly, may at will dispose of everything […]. Nicholas de Lyre in the commentary to the passage cited says that certain powers of the king are considered in the light of some necessity and others prescinding from it, and adds that in case of necessity these powers are extended to include everything just as the part naturally sacrifices itself for the good of the whole. But, nonetheless, this opinion does not please all, for the Avilan on the same passage, question 17, says that there are certain limitations to his power, inasmuch as it is by no means permissible for the king ever to force a person into slavery – no necessity can exist by which it would be allowed for the king to do this. Hence the Avilan holds that such are granted not as a right of the king but as certain evils which the king can effect in regard to his subjects due to the extent of this power.⁸⁴

4 “Localising” Vitoria: The Emergence of the Facts and the Inapplicability of Vitoria’s Secular Titles for Just War

As Jose Luis Egío argues in his comparison between Alonso de la Vera Cruz’s Speculum coniugiorum and the writings of Vitoria or Soto on the sacraments in the next chapter, it is clear that, as a result of his experience in New Spain, Vera Cruz tended to deal with doubts and problematic matters with a higher degree of flexibility, avoiding excessive severity against many local indigenous customs and sexual practices that would not have been tolerated in Europe (from repudiation to masturbation) as far as possible. The same occurred in De dominio infidelium, discussed here.

Following the same experiential criteria, Vera Cruz evaluated the main titles claimed by Vitoria to justify the war against the Indians in question xi of his De dominio infidelium. Notwithstanding how the affinities and differences between the approaches of Vitoria and Vera Cruz have been determined and explained in more recent studies, the key question should not simply relate to whether Vera Cruz agreed with his teacher or abruptly broke with his approach.⁸⁷ By and large, Vera Cruz’s relectio continuously balanced the for and against arguments with a battery of other, seemingly contradictory arguments that, if removed from their proper place in the logical exposition of the relectio, could give rise to a myriad of erroneous interpretations, as can be observed from the conflicting interpretations of De dominio infidelium.

In general terms, it is possible to say that, apart from the delicate matter of the legitimacy of forced conversions (see previous section), Vera Cruz arrived at the same juridical and theological conclusions as Vitoria in his evaluation of the legitimate titles of just war. In doubt xi of De dominio infidelium, the war against indigenous peoples was considered just if: 1) a certain pagan people refused to adhere to the preaching of Christian missionaries about the Gospel in a peaceful and adequate manner, or impeded the churchmen from travelling and establishing contact with other “infidel populations”; 2) the natives were converted to Christianity but there was a well-founded fear that those neophytes would not keep their Christian faith, especially if their natural pagan lords were not removed from office and replaced by Christian authorities; 3) tyrannical native rulers oppressed their vassals in an intolerable manner; 4) anthropophagy, ritual cannibalism, or human sacrifice were practiced by those infidel populations; 5) an allied people, waging just war against its offenders, asked the Spaniards for help; 6) a certain community or nation was voluntarily subjected to the Spaniards, recognising the king as their own supreme lord, to that extent that the previous sovereign could legitimately effect such a transfer of dominium if his vassals freely consented or if that native ruler renounced his throne and freely handed it over to a Christian monarch, looking to the greater good of his own community which he himself was unable to achieve; 7) the natives, who had not been harmed by the Spaniards, prevented them from travelling to their lands, engaging in trade, or establishing mines.

Vitoria also considered all these motives legitimate and the titles of just war and appropriation of the natives’ dominium adequate, but he defended them in a different order in De Indis. The right of Spaniards to travel and undertake economic activities in America, slightly weakened by Vera Cruz, appeared as his first cause of just war. Other titles appeared in the following order: 2) the right to preach the Gospel; 3) the danger of apostasy of Christianised natives; 4) the right of the pope to transfer the dominium iurisdictionis of native lords to a certain Christian ruler if a significant portion of the native population had embraced the Christian faith; 5) the obligation to fight against tyrannical rulers and to eradicate anthropophagy, ritual cannibalism, and human sacrifice; 6) the free choice of a certain native community or free acceptance of the transfer of dominium iurisdictionis of the native lords to a more competent Christian ruler; 7) the obligation to assist allies taking part in a just war.

The Relectio de dominio infidelium seems to be a mere rephrasing of De Indis until this point, except for Vera Cruz’s justification of forced conversion and his categorical refusal of the amentia of the Indians, which Vitoria had considered a hypothesis that needed to be corroborated by greater knowledge of the native populations. Nevertheless, the conclusions of this preliminary superficial reading, which most academic writings on Vera Cruz’s ideas on war and conquest are, need to be substantially revised through a closer reading of both relectiones. More attention must especially be given to the small but significant markers that indicate the nuances in different arguments, contrasting facts and ideas, and implications that weaken some of Vitoria’s de iure conclusions.

It is important to take into account that there was a distinction between a de iure and a de facto level of discourse in both Vitoria and Vera Cruz, that is to say that the titles or causes that could justify a war against indigenous populations were evaluated according to two criteria. Firstly, in an abstract manner whereby the proofs that support elements of the titles were mostly traditional juridical and theological authorities from the long tradition of Christian exchanges with infidels, and other reasonable arguments. Secondly, those abstract suppositions were “localised”, that is to say, their a priori validity was examined in light of the concrete circumstances of the evangelisation process in Western Indies (in the case of Vitoria’s relectio) and in the central and northern regions of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (in the case of Vera Cruz’s De dominio infidelium).

It is not by chance that both Vitoria and Vera Cruz formulated these titles of just war in a conditional way: “si in aliqua civitate maior pars esset christianorum et illi in favorem fidei et pro bono communi vellent habere principem christianum” [if, in some political community, the greater part is Christian and they want to have a Christian prince in order to favour the faith and for the common good],⁸⁸ “si istis barbaris insulanis sufficienter fuerit proposita fides” [if the faith was sufficiently explained to those barbarian islanders],⁸⁹ “si aliter tolli non potest sacrilegus ritus” [if sacrilegious rites cannot be removed otherwise],⁹⁰ “si aliqui barbarorum iustum habebant bellum cum aliis ex eisdem” [if some of those barbarians have a just war with others].⁹¹ Despite a similar point of departure in the examination of the per se or de iure validity of some traditional just war titles, Vitoria and Vera Cruz arrived at very different de facto conclusions, owing to the particular contexts and circumstances (ex circunstantia) they considered.

We find the same kind of refutation on a factual basis of the titles derived from, among other things, indigenous practices of human sacrifice, anthropophagy, and ritual cannibalism (title 4 in De dominio infidelium), which no longer represented a current casus belli for Vera Cruz in the 1550s.⁹⁶ The assistance the Spaniards had given to their allies from Tlaxcala (title 5) was also judged an invalid title because the justice of that war had not been factually proven by Tlaxcalans,⁹⁷ just as the impediments that natives would have imposed on Spaniards – hindering their rights of free travel, commerce, and mining from the very beginning of their problematic relationship (title 6) – was not proven. In this last case, Vera Cruz claimed to ignore what had really happened at the very beginning of the Euro-American encounters, also holding in abeyance the validity of this de iure title.⁹⁸

Having rejected many hypothetical causes with factual complexities, only the obligation to obey Christian preachers and convert to Christianity once the “true faith” had been properly and thoroughly explained (titles 1 and 2, which also underpinned title 6) could be considered sufficient to justify a war against the natives. From Vera Cruz’s perspective, violence was only legitimate if it was undertaken in response to a previous iniuria [injury] or with a clear pious motivation to evangelise, convert, or prevent the apostasy of the Mexican neophytes.

All the secular arguments offered by Vitoria to justify wars in the Indies which derived from the ius gentium rights to travel and undertake economic activities and obligations towards the oppressed and allies, fell apart. Ironically, what has been seen as the most valuable contribution of Vitoria and the School of Salamanca to modernity⁹⁹ did not seem as solid and important for Vera Cruz, who, as this chapter has demonstrated, deviated from Salamanca teachings on many crucial issues.

In his concluding remarks in the introduction to this volume, Thomas Duve states that, when speaking or writing about the School of Salamanca as a case of global knowledge production, we have to consider that “normative knowledge was produced under very specific practical conditions, localised, and translated into the context of each individual case”.¹⁰⁰ That is precisely how Vera Cruz revisited the debate on the just titles 15 years after De Indis, re-evaluating and localising the normative criteria that Vitoria – and before him, the long scholastic tradition – had considered as legitimate casus belli in the interrelations between Christians and infidels.