war and the ethics of evangelization: the great commission in sixteenth-century spanish political...

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War and the Ethics of Evangelization

The Great Commission in Sixteenth-Century SpanishPolitical Thought

David M. Lantigua

At first look, the early modern political culture of the Iberiankingdom of Castile under the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand andIsabel, and later the Spanish King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles(1516-1556), clearly illustrates what John Howard Yoder called“Constantinianism.” The Spanish attempt to reclaim and expand theborders of Latin Christendom through the reconquista of the Moors,the inquisitions of conversos, and the conquests of Amerindian“infidels” in the New World, were all violent assertions of God’srule through the coercive power of empire. These Constantinianpractices typified “what Jesus had rejected” by “seizing godlikeness”and “moving in hoc signo from Golgotha to the battlefield.”1

Yoder was especially attentive to the “fundamental wrongness”

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inherent to Christendom, that is, “its illegitimate takeover of theworld: its ascription of a Christian loyalty or duty to those who havemade no confession and, thereby, its denying to the non-confessingcreation the freedom of unbelief that the nonresistance of God increation gave to a rebellious humanity.”2 The denial of freedomto unbelievers through civil religious establishment appears as theoriginal sin of Christendom.3 The conversion-or-exile mandate ofthe 1492 Alhambra decree directed against Iberian Jews and theconversion-or-enslavement policy toward Amerindians codified inthe 1513 Requerimiento represent notorious examples of the Castiliandenial of freedom in a Constantinian mode.

Despite the rhetorical and normative strength of Yoder’s notionof Constantinianism, his description paints Latin Christendom inmonolithic, and predominantly negative, terms.4 WithChristendom’s fusion of throne and altar, it appears as a static-likeentity evangelically inert and impotent in confessing Christ as victorto the established powers.5 This hermeneutic tends to obstruct therecognition and appreciation of significant theological developmentsfor Gospel social ethics embodied in the Latin church of the SpanishRenaissance. For this reason, the work of Oliver O’Donovan is moreamenable for our inquiry. O’Donovan provides richer analyticresources than Yoder in order to recognize the legacy, rather thanjust the shadow, of Christendom in the West.

O’Donovan’s interpretation of Christendom in The Desire of the

1. John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, IN: Universityof Notre Press, 2001), 145.

2. Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiastical and Ecumenical (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press,1998), 109.

3. Ibid., 245–46.4. Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, 144.5. Yoder, The Royal Priesthood, 246–47. Yoder does give very brief attention to radical Franciscans

and the Waldensians as positive proto-Protestant expressions within Christendom of Gospel-inspired “free church” movements though he does not develop this line of inquiry.

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Nations supplies a more fruitful descriptive starting point: “TheChristendom idea has to be located correctly as an aspect of thechurch’s understanding of mission. . . . It was the missionaryimperative that compelled the church to take the conversion of theempire seriously and to seize the opportunities it offered. These werenot merely opportunities for ‘power.’ They were opportunities forpreaching the Gospel, baptizing believers, curbing the violence andcruelty of empire and, perhaps most important of all, forgiving theirformer persecutors.”6 Significantly, O’Donovan abandons Yoder’sradical suspicion of Christendom by indicating that the church inthe Latin West existed for a missionary purpose committed toproclaiming the truth and love of Christ in order to convert andconstrain the political powers of the world. As William Cavanaughrightly observes, O’Donovan’s work “is helpful not merely becauseit makes a positive account of Christendom possible, but because itmakes the Constantinian shift explicable.”7 Christendom appears thenas “a very complex series of attempts to take seriously the inherentlypolitical nature of the church and its instrumental role in the integralsalvation of the world in Jesus Christ.”8

O’Donovan also adds an important normative dimension to hisdescriptive analysis of Christendom: “Mission is not merely an urgeto expand the scope and sway of the church’s influence. It is to beat the disposal of the Holy Spirit in making Christ’s victory known.It requires, therefore, a discernment of the working of the Spirit andAntichrist. These two discernments must accompany each other: totrace the outline of Christ’s dawning reign on earth requires thatone trace the false pretension too.”9 The Antichrist idea yields self-

6. Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 212.

7. William T. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 128.

8. Ibid., 129.

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critical resources within Christendom’s historical expression of faith.O’Donovan’s account brings into relief a Christendom tradition ofsocial ethics in early modern Spain committed to announcing theGospel’s transformative and liberating power for all peoples underGod’s rule against Satan’s violent oppression through idolatry and theoverreaching worldly assertions of church and empire.

The Social Ethics of the Great Commission in the New World

The Lord’s Great Commission of the apostles provided the scripturallocus for Spanish political thought during the Renaissance. All themajor political actors of Spain between 1492 and 1493 shared acommon vision that Providence had elevated Ferdinand and Isabelto bring the Good News of salvation to the ends of the earth. TheAdmiral Christopher Columbus understood himself as the one chosento ‘take possession’ of the people of the Indies to better serve theCatholic monarchs. And Pope Alexander VI gave the ecclesiasticalseal of approval in his letter Inter caetera (1493) by affirming thepraiseworthy intention of Columbus and the Spanish crown “to takecontrol of these mainlands and aforesaid islands, their natives andinhabitants, and to bring them to the Catholic faith.”10

Of this Gospel imperative to preach everywhere, no early modernSpaniard denied in the least. However, within this colonial matrixof Spain during the first half of the sixteenth century two distinctiveChristian social imaginaries clashed with unprecedented vigor inthe political history of Christendom.11 Each of which regarded thetask of the Great Commission, or the method of evangelization, in

9. O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations, 214.10. Pope Alexander IV, Inter caetera (1493). Cited in W. Eugene Shiels, King and Church: The Rise

and Fall of the Patronato Real (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1961), 79.11. Charles Taylor has used the concept of “social imaginary” as an explanatory device for the

legitimization of social practices distinct from Hegelian idealism and Marxist materialism. SeeModern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), chap. 2.


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radically opposed ways. Luis Rivera Pagán has identified these twosocial imaginaries in the following sense: “The first could be calledevangelizing conquest, and it proposes to achieve, by force if necessary,dominion over the aborigines as a necessary condition to facilitatetheir evangelization. The second can be called missionary action, andit consists of reasonable persuasion through convincing argumentsand adherence of the will through attraction.”12 The clarity of thesetwo social imaginaries was evident in the strategic use of scripture,chronicles, symbols, exemplars, and ecclesiastical practice to carry outsharply divergent ethics or norms of evangelization. Evangelization

by conquest represented an extension of the medieval-crusader socialethic across the Atlantic. From this perspective, the Spanish conquistas

were a continuation of the reconquista, whose origins weresynonymous with the crusades. The primary aim of Spanish conquestwas to advance imperial Catholic sovereignty through the mutuallyreinforcing social practices of war and enslavement. In directcontrast, the method of peaceful missionary action generated anapostolic social ethic capable of providing a reflexive critical voicetowards the crown and the church. Vocal proponents of this view inthe first half of the sixteenth century (mostly Dominicans) consideredit a categorical mistake to identify Amerindians residing in their ownnative lands with Muslims who had taken over formerly Christianlands like Moorish Spain, the Holy Land, and, most recently,Constantinople in 1453.13

When the sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Francisco Lópezde Gómara wrote his General History of the Indies, which he dedicated

12. Luis N. Rivera Pagán, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 226.

13. This categorical distinction came from the Master General of the Order of Preachers Tomassode (Vio) Cajetan’s Commentary on the Summa theologiae. See Charles Cardinal Journet, TheChurch of the Word Incarnate: An Essay in Speculative Theology, trans. A. H. C. Downes, vol. 1(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 226–27.


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to Emperor Charles V, he began with a telling claim: “The conquestof the Indies began once the conquests of the Moors ended, andthat is because the Spaniards should always wage war with infidels.”14

The conceptual link between reconquista and conquista was not merelyrhetorical, but an intractable ideological rationale for holy war. Thereconquista impressed itself as a “fundamental memory of everySpaniard.”15 Consider, for example, the Spanish conquistador ofMexico and the Aztec empire, Hernán Cortés, who reportedly hadthe Constantinian inscription “By this sign we shall conquer” (in hoc

signo vincemus) on the cross of his banner. Cortés’s devotion to holywar and its worldly and eternal benefits emerge from his diary: “[A]sChristians we were obliged to fight against the enemies of our faith,and that we would as a result earn glory in the next life, and in thisone such great honor and fame as no other generation has meriteduntil now.”16

The legal justification for Spanish conquest was outlined in theRequerimiento, which stipulated that the Catholic monarchs had beenentrusted by Pope Alexander VI to convert and control the newlydiscovered territory across the Atlantic. The Requerimiento was usedboth by Cortés in Mexico and Francisco Pizarro in Peru. Read aloudin an incomprehensible language, the legal document gave nativelisteners a “choice” of either recognizing Spanish sovereignty ordenying it with disastrous consequences. A key biblical narrative tojustify the conquests was Joshua’s seizing of Canaan, beginning with

14. Francisco López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias (Barcelona: Linkgua Ediciones, 2008),19: “Comenzaron las conquistas acabadas la de moros, porque siempre guerreasen españoles contrainfieles” (All translations of Spanish and Latin texts are author’s own unless indicated otherwise).

15. Shiels, King and Church, 30.16. Cited in Rivera Pagán, A Violent Evangelism, 56.


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Jericho, by force of arms.17 The Indies were the new Promised Land(la tierra de Promisión) overflowing with silver and gold.

The lawyer and purported author of the Requerimiento, Juan Lópezde Palacios Rubios (1450-1524), had also composed a treatiseestablishing the papal and imperial foundations for Spanish conquestof the Indies called De las Islas del Mar Océano (Libellus de insulisoceanis). De las Islas provided the biblical, philosophical, and canonlegal support for the Requerimiento. Palacios Rubios appealed to Deut.20:10-12, which allegedly presented the divine sanction for conquestaccording to the Mosaic law: “When you draw near to a town, beforeanything offer it peace. If they accept it and open their doors to you,everyone in the town shall be spared as your subjects and forcedlaborers. But if they do not surrender but resist you with force, thenyou shall conquer them.”18 For Palacios Rubios, scripture justified theforced labor system (or the encomienda) in the New World, whichexacted tributes to the crown through Amerindian services in miningand agriculture in exchange for protection and instruction in thefaith. As the Book of Joshua 16:10 indicated, certain Canaaniteslived as tributaries, or forced laborers, within Israelite lands.19 TheAmerindians, just like the Canaanites of old, would be spared fromwar and death if they submitted to Spanish rule as its subjects andlaborers.

Palacios Rubios even employed Aristotle’s Politics to explain whysome of the native peoples were “so inept and incapable of governingthemselves.” He stated that “they could be considered slaves, born toserve rather than command (according to the Philosopher in Book 1of the Politics); therefore, as a result of their ignorance, they should

17. Rolena Adorno, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2007), 265–66.

18. Juan López de Palacios Rubios, De las Islas del Mar Océano (Libellus de insulis oceanis), trans.Paulino Castañeda Delgado et. al. (Navarra: EUNSA, 2013), 116–18.

19. Ibid., 384.


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submit to the wiser, as servants to their lords.”20 Despite the usefulnessof Aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery to justify Spanish colonialinterests, Palacios Rubios was thoroughly papal monarchical, as weremany of the Spanish royalists during the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies. The pope’s fullness of power, founded on Christ’s supremelordship, justified a worldwide sovereignty (dominium totius orbis)extending to the temporal affairs of non-Christians. This hierocratic-papalist view was the sine qua non for the logic of the Requerimiento.Conversely, the appeal to ecclesiastical power as superior to secularauthority—a legacy of the medieval church reforms beginning withPope Gregory VII—also proved to be the fissure point by which thesocial ethics of the Gospel could work reflexively to unmask andcritique the anti-Christian elements of the imperial crusader ethic ofevangelization by conquest.

The general position toward the relationship between spiritual andtemporal powers could be summarized in the moderate Dominicanpolitical view presented by Juan de Torquemada (d. 1468) andCardinal Cajetan (d. 1534) that the church has temporal power onlyregarding spiritual things (in ordine ad spiritualia).21 This moderateview was neither an endorsement of worldwide papal sovereigntyseen among Spanish papalist-royalists, nor a radical subordinationof church politics to secular power as seen in Marsilius of Paduaand Niccolò Machiavelli. Rather, it upheld the belief that in certainegregious cases where secular law or authority has drastically failed toprotect what is necessary for salvation, then it belongs to the church

20. Ibid., 118: “aliqui eorum ita sunt inepti et imbecilles, quod se nullo modo gubernare sciunt, quapropter,largo modo, possunt dici servi, quasi nati ad serviendum non autem ad imperandum, ut traditPhilosophus, Politicorum, lib. 1, et hoc modo, insipientes, servire debent prudentibus, vel subditidominis.”

21. For an overview of the influence of the Spanish Dominican Juan de Torquemada on themoderate view relevant to the affair of the Indies, especially in the arguments of Vitoria, seeThomas M. Izbicki, “An Argument from Authority in the Indies Debate,” The Americas (Jan.1978): 400–406.


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to intervene in temporal matters. Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546),the theologian and pioneer of what was later known as the School ofSalamanca, imparted the moderate Dominican position to a vibrantgeneration of scholastic thinkers including his student Domingo deSoto, and the renowned “Protector of the Indians,” Bartolomé de lasCasas (1484-1566).

It is precisely among these Dominicans during the rule of EmperorCharles that we find a clear, principled theopolitical opposition andresistance to the crusader ethic of evangelization by conquest. Theirexplicit appeals to scripture for promoting the salvation of bothSpaniards and Amerindians by condemning the political andeconomic excesses of the former in order to promote greater justiceand freedom for the latter will occupy the remainder of our analysis.In Las Casas’s classic and definitive defense of the Amerindians (theApologia) presented before the Council of the Indies in 1550 forfive days in Valladolid, Spain, he contrasted the pagan and evensatanic elements of Spanish conquest with the apostolic ethic ofevangelization:

Christ seeks souls, not property. He who alone is the immortal kingof kings thirsts not for riches, not for ease and pleasures, but for thesalvation of mankind, for which, fastened to the wood of the cross, heoffered his life. He who wants a large part of mankind to be such that,following Aristotle’s teachings, he may act like a ferocious executionertoward them, press them into slavery, and through them grow rich, is adespotic master, not a Christian; a son of Satan, not of God; a plunderer,not a shepherd; a person who is led by the spirit of the devil, not heaven.If you seek Indians so that gently, mildly, quietly, humanely, and in aChristian manner you may instruct them in the word of God and byyour labor bring them to Christ’s flock, imprinting the gentle Christon their minds, you perform the work of an apostle and will receive animperishable crown of glory from our sacrificed lamb. But if it be in inorder that by sword, fire, massacre, trickery, violence, tyranny, cruelty,and an inhumanity that is worse than barbaric you may destroy andplunder utterly harmless peoples who are ready to renounce evil and


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receive the word of God, you are children of the devil and the mosthorrible plunderers of all.22

Let us now turn to the topic of war in the New World, whichdemonstrated how the power of God’s word entrusted to the churchcould intervene in political debate to expel falsehood and idolatry,promote Amerindian natural rights, and liberate souls from injustice.Scripture supplied these Dominican thinkers with religious moralnorms for carrying out distinct political acts related to constrainingwar and identifying the Christian parameters of intervention inAmerindian affairs in accordance with a Gospel social ethic.

“Why Should I Judge Outsiders?”

The Pauline Constraint on Holy War

The fissure point of Spanish political thought concerning the affair ofthe Indies broke open through the preaching of the first Dominicanson the island of Hispaniola in 1511. These friars from Salamancawere the first to condemn the abuses of the Amerindians underthe forced labor system and wars of conquest by affirming theirhumanity and rationality. As the conquests, slaving expeditions, andforced labor continued in the New World, the critical moral voiceof resistance to evil on behalf of Amerindian claims of justice andfreedom was carried on by the intellectual and political efforts ofSpanish Dominican theologians such as Vitoria, Soto, and Las Casasduring the reign of Charles.

Although there were certain differences in how these thinkersreflected on the affair of the Indies, and what actions should be takenby the crown, it is important to highlight their shared theologicalcommitment to scripture as a critical resource for curbing Spanish

22. Bartolomé de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, trans. Stafford Poole (DeKalb, IL: NorthernIllinois University Press, 1992), 40.


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abuses against Amerindian peoples with respect to war, intervention,and evangelization. As friars of the Order of Preachers they firmlybelieved that the primary purpose of Spanish presence in the NewWorld was to carry out the Great Commission assigned by Christ.Therefore, Spanish activity in the Indies must avoid making theGospel scandalous to its hearers. Their moderate Dominican positionrejected the dominant papalist-royalist view on the grounds of bothscripture and their scholastic theological convictions.

The Dominicans denied the common legal opinion stemmingfrom Pope Innocent IV, and later the canonist Hostiensis, that thepope and Christian rulers under papal guidance could directlyintervene in pagan temporal affairs to judge and punish sinful actsconsidered contrary to natural law when respective rulers failed to doso.23 With Genesis 19 providing the biblical warrant, Palacios Rubiossupported the view of the medieval canonists: “The pope is able topunish gentiles—who have nothing except the natural law—if they dowhat is contrary to the precepts of nature, just like the Lord punishedthe Sodomites who sinned against the natural law.”24 Among the sinsmost opposed to natural law is the practice of idolatry, because “it isnaturally self-evident to worship the one creator God, and not thecreature.”25

It is revealing that Innocent IV’s commentary on a crusade letterserved as the basis for this canonistic teaching on Christian-infidelrelations justifying nothing short of a holy war to abolish idolatry.From the papalist-royalist Palacios Rubios to the imperial-humanistJuan Ginés de Sepúlveda (d. 1573), the common rationale for Spanish

23. For an in-depth treatment of this common opinion among the canonists tracing its influenceto the early modern period, see the unparalleled study in English by James Muldoon, Popes,Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250–1550 (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979).

24. Palacios Rubios, De las islas, 276: “poterit papa punire gentilem qui non habet nisi legem naturae, sicontra naturae praecepta fecerit, sicut Dominus punivit Sodomitas qui contra legem naturae peccabant.”

25. Ibid., 278.


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Christian intervention in the political life of unbelievers during thefirst half of the sixteenth century rested on the legal title of removingidolatry to allow for effective evangelization. In the famous debate atValladolid, Spain (1550-1551) between Sepúlveda and Las Casas, theformer argued that the Amerindians “can be conquered and punishedby this cause alone of not abiding by the natural law or for beingidolaters.”26 This common justification of holy war first supplied byInnocent IV provided the ideological armature for early modernimperialism.27

The Spanish Dominicans resisted this opinion principally on twogrounds: one canonistic-legal and the other scholastic-theological.The speculative theological views of St. Thomas Aquinas asappropriated by Cajetan were of monumental importance to theSpanish Dominican defense of Amerindian political authorityindependent of imperial claims to the contrary. In particular, the mostrelevant teaching of Aquinas from the Summa theologiae was that“divine law, which is from grace, does not abolish human law, whichis from natural reason.”28 Commenting on this Thomistic dictum,Thomas O’Meara notes: “Indian political structures emerged out ofnatural law and not from a humanity corrupted by the fall. . . .Neither the fact that the Indians were not Christians nor theirinvolvement in questionable forms of cult or immorality arguedfor the employment of violence against them.”29 A discourse ofAmerindian natural rights emerged out of this scholastic-theologicalcontext.30

26. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Aqui se contiene una disputa o contoversia, in Tratados de Fray Bartoloméde las Casas I (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), Objeción séptima, 310–11.

27. Jonathan Boyarin, The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 46.

28. Summa theologiae 2a-2ae q. 10 ad. 10: “Ius autem divinum, quod est ex gratia, non tollit iushumanum, quod est ex naturali ratione.”

29. Thomas F. O’Meara, OP, “The Dominican School of Salamanca and the Spanish Conquest ofAmerica: Some Bibliographic Notes,” The Thomist 56, no. 4 (Oct 1992): 555-82, (571–72).


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The Spanish Dominicans were also quite conversant in the canonlegal tradition, by which they retrieved important and neglectedjuridical principles for critiquing violent colonial practices, especiallyholy wars of conquest. The scriptural teaching that provided the legaland political constraint on wars of idolatry came from St. Paul’s FirstLetter to the Corinthians. Paul taught Christians that they shouldavoid associating with other brothers and sisters who exhibit sexualmisconduct, robbery, and idolatry. Believers can make a judgmentof those who are within the Christian community, but not thoseoutside. As the Apostle indicated, “For what have I to do withjudging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are tojudge? God will judge those outside.”31

Medieval scholar of Judaism Solomon Grayzel referred to thisPauline teaching concerning the scope of judgment as the foris

principle.32 Gratian, the pioneer of medieval canon law, incorporatedthe principle into the medieval Decretum to refer specifically to thoseunbelievers outside the Church, who belong to divine judgmentrather than human judgment. Grayzel noted that the foris principleestablished boundaries in medieval society so that Christians couldnot interfere with Jews in their spiritual matters.33 In the context ofthe New World, the foris principle provided a traditional juridicalconstraint protecting Amerindian unbelievers in their spiritual andpolitical affairs from overreaching ecclesiastical power and Christianpolitical authority.

Although the Spanish lawyers employed other biblical examples

30. For a longer treatment of the political significance of St. Thomas’s teaching in the context ofNew World debates over Amerindians, see the author’s “The Freedom of the Gospel: Aquinas,Subversive Natural Law, and the Spanish Wars of Religion,” Modern Theology 31, no 2 (April2015): 312-37.

31. 1 Cor. 5:12–13.32. Solomon Grayzel, “Introduction” to The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century (Detroit:

Wayne State University, 1989), 3-45, (12).33. Ibid., 12.


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such as Genesis 19 and the Israelite conquest of Canaan to justifythe punishment of Amerindians, the Dominican theologians reliedon the foris principle to prohibit holy wars of conquests. The well-known Relectio de Indis of Francisco de Vitoria delivered at theUniversity of Salamanca in January of 1539, which began with theLord’s Great Commission in Matt. 28:19 as its hermeneutical startingpoint, was significant in this regard. Vitoria explicitly identified thePauline foris teaching in order to reject two common justifications forthe Spanish conquests on the basis of papal power and punishing sinsagainst the natural law.

With respect to the first justification, which was utilized in theRequerimiento, Vitoria’s first relectio on ecclesiastical power deliveredin 1532 had already ruled out such a title:

[T]he pope has no dominium in the lands of the infidel, since he haspower only within the Church; as the Apostle said, what has he to do tojudge them also that are without? (1 Cor. 5:12). Unbelievers possess truedominion, since the Apostle teaches that even the faithful must pay themtribute (Rom. 13:6), and says that their power is ordained of God andthat their laws must be obeyed. But they do not have their dominionfrom the pope, since it is clear he would rather they not have it – andindeed make efforts to overthrow pagan empires. Therefore the pope isnot lord of the whole world.34

In one full sweep against the “obsequious flattery” of the papacyby Roman sycophants, Vitoria employed St. Paul to deny Christianjurisdiction over infidels (1 Cor. 5:12) and affirm infidel politicalrule (Rom. 13:6). When Vitoria returned to the question in De Indis,he restated his argument that because Jesus Christ had no temporalrule, much less does the pope as the Vicar of Christ.35 Vitoria’smoderate Dominican position held that the papacy only has temporal

34. Francisco de Vitoria, “On the Power of the Church,” in Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagdenand Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 47-108, (84).

35. Ibid., “On the American Indians,” 260.


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power in so much as it is necessary for the administration of spiritualmatters. However, since “1 Cor. 5:12 shows that he has no spiritualpower over the barbarians, it follows that he can have no temporalpower over them either.”36

The Requerimiento supplied no legitimate basis for war againstinfidels or the confiscation of their goods since it was founded ona contrived title. In contrast to the Requerimiento, Vitoria absolutelyprohibited infidel refusal to convert to the Christian faith as a titlefor war. As he tersely put it, “war is no argument for the truth ofthe Christian faith.” The theologian had heard “only of provocations,savage crimes, and multitudes of unholy acts.” But even if theSpaniards were performing miracles and exemplary acts as signs ofthe true religion and the Indians still refused to convert, “this was stillno reason to declare war on them and despoil them of their goods.”37

That is because religious belief, which is a matter of free will, isgreatly diminished by the use of fear and threats and would only leadto a servile faith that is nothing less than sacrilege.

Relatedly, the title for war on the basis of punishing unbelieversfor their sins against natural law was also precluded under the foris

principle. Without proper jurisdiction there is no ground forpunishing unbelievers either. For Vitoria, the view of Innocent IVand Palacios Rubios supporting intervention and war to punish pagansins ignores St. Paul’s point “that the judgment of unbelievers,whether they be fornicators or idolaters, is none of his business.”38

Vitoria refused to read the Old Testament narrative of the Israelitetaking of Canaan in Spanish colonial terms. Instead, he explicitlystated that “the people of Israel never occupied lands of theunbelievers either on the grounds that they were infidels or idolaters

36. Ibid., 263.37. Ibid., 271–72.38. Ibid., 274.


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or because they were sinners against nature. . . .” Echoing Cajetan,Vitoria concluded that God allowed conquest in this biblical instanceas a singular “special gift,” or, perhaps according to traditional justwar criteria.39

The foris principle was arguably the central point of contention atthe Valladolid junta between Las Casas and Sepúlveda in their debateover the religious coercion of Amerindians. Las Casas’s Apologia

relied extensively on the principle to reject both the immodest claimsof papal jurisdiction and, following the newer imperial-humanistarguments of Sepúlveda, the universal claims of punishing violationsof natural law upon which the royal title allegedly rested independentof papal authorization. Las Casas, a bishop of Chiapas trained incanon law, applied the teachings of Augustine, Gratian, and Aquinason the Pauline principle to the Amerindian case.40 He presented hisargument supporting the immunity of infidel outsiders on the basisof their free will and the apostolic ethic of evangelization. Las Casassaw it as a rule and principle that the church has no jurisdiction overunbelievers and that “it has no power at all to uproot idolatry againstthe will of idolaters.”41

The general rule that Las Casas derived from the foris principlewas stated summarily in the Apologia, which illustrated the Christianfaith’s commitment to a people’s natural immunity from coercionin religious matters: “[I]f against their wills we should completelyabolish their ceremonies, they would have, in addition to the greatnumber of other resulting abuses, only an apparent adherence tothe Christian faith and the Christian religion, and we would appearto be openly compelling them to embrace the faith—and this isforbidden.”42 The use of force and violent coercion to punish

39. Ibid., 275.40. Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, chaps. 7–10.41. Ibid., 66.


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idolaters, who have not freely embraced the faith—so contrary toChrist’s example—presented a most serious obstacle to the genuinereception of the Gospel.

Defending and Liberating the Innocent from Death

Although the foris principle prohibited the crusader ethic of war toabolish idolatry, the Spanish Dominicans were not pacifists and stillhad to address the legitimacy of war in the context of the Indies.But they did so under the shared belief that all human beings, asrational creatures made in God’s image, possess moral freedom and,by extension, control (or dominium) over their possessions andpolitical affairs. A whole ensemble of legal rights was applicableuniversally to both Christians and infidels on the basis of natural law,which prioritized the right to life (or self-preservation) and the rightof defending oneself or others (ius defendendi).

Before his death in 1546, Vitoria taught in De Indis that theremight be possible or arguable titles for just war in the Americas on thebasis of a “law of nations” (ius gentium), having the sanction of popularsupport from the whole world and natural law. For this reason, “Nokingdom may choose to ignore this law of nations.”43 Vitoria, as amatter of debate rather than certainty, considered possible titles forSpanish rule overseas involving armed conflict with the Amerindians.He did so on the basis of protecting and defending Spanishambassadors and missionaries whose rights to travel and preach wereviolated (just titles one and two). He also believed that if Amerindianswere violently hindered from converting (just title three); or held intyranny and bondage as either Christians or unbelievers (just titlesfour and five); or if they required necessary assistance from a foreign

42. Ibid., 70.43. Vitoria, “On Civil Power,” in Political Writings, 3-44, (40).


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ally (seventh title), then it might be legitimate to exercise the rightsof war.44

With respect to the possible title of defending allies against unjustaggressors, Vitoria proposed that this was the legal justification for theexpansion of the Roman Empire.45 On this point, Soto and Las Casasdiverged from Vitoria’s uncritical portrayal of Roman imperialism.46

Soto’s Relectio de dominio delivered in 1535 claimed that the Romanimperial title for war was “their right in force of arms” by which “theysubjugated many unwilling nations through no other title than thatthey were more powerful.”47 In the defense at Valladolid, Las Casasdeclared “the Roman Empire did not arise through justice but wasacquired by tyranny and violence.”48

Vitoria’s turn to the law of nations for thinking about just warshould not detract from recognizing the theological and biblicalfoundations of his Christian worldview. His argument for a rightof traveling (ius peregrinandi) served as the cosmopolitan basis forsocial communication, hospitality, trade, and even preaching the faithto non-Christians. And although he found congruity here with theRoman legal concept of the ius gentium, he established this right moresecurely in nature and scripture: “‘I was a stranger and ye took menot in’ (Matt. 25:43), from which it is clear that, since it is a law ofnature to welcome strangers, this judgment of Christ is to be decreedamongst all men.”49 The Samaritan story (Luke 10:29-37) enabled

44. Perhaps most controversially, Vitoria even considered “for the sake of argument” thehypothetical case of barbarian peoples unsuited to govern themselves due to their mentaldeficiency. Despite the strange fact that Vitoria already excluded the Amerindians from thiscategory in the first part of the relectio, Vitoria makes it clear that this benevolent paternalismmust be done in conformity with the precepts of Christian charity and love of neighbor.

45. Vitoria, “On the American Indians,” 289.46. David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), chap. 2.47. Cited in ibid., 65.48. Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, 321.49. Vitoria, “On the American Indians,” 279.


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him to argue that foreigners must treat Spaniards as their neighborsand are obliged to love and welcome them so long as the Spaniardsdo no wrong or harm.

De Indis should be understood alongside Vitoria’s follow-up lectureon the right of war (Relectio de iure belli) offered in the summerof 1539. In that posterior lecture, Vitoria dismissed “difference ofreligion” and “enlargement of empire” as legitimate causes for warand reduced his argument to a single cause: war can only followfrom a serious injury.50 It can be said then that “the only such rightthat Vitoria recognized unreservedly was a right to protect innocenthuman life.”51 The category of innocence was precisely what gaveVitoria’s arguments such moral force. When the theologian wroteto the Spanish provincial of the Dominicans concerning Pizarro’sconquest of Peru, he was adamant that the natives had not committedthe slightest injury nor was there any ground for war resulting in thecapture and execution of the Inca Atahualpa. Since these Amerindianpeoples were fellow humans and neighbors, the conquerors wereguilty of “utter impiety and tyranny” as seen in the pillaging of Cuzcoand the sacred burial sites (or guacas) of the Incas.52

However, Vitoria’s analysis cut both ways. Though well aware ofthe Spanish atrocities and acts of avarice under the cloak of religion,he was also eminently concerned with addressing the problem ofinnocent Amerindians who were oppressed by their own rulers andlaws. In this context, the notorious practice of human sacrificeattracted his attention. Again, scripture informed his moral judgment.The biblical ethic of neighbor-love as seen in the Prov. 24:11mandate to “Rescue those who are being dragged to death” was

50. Ibid., “On the Law of War,” 302–4.51. Brian Tierney, “Vitoria and Suarez on ius gentium, natural law, and custom,” in The Nature

of Customary Law, ed. Amanda Perreau-Saussine and James Bernard Murphy (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2007), 108.

52. Vitoria, “Letter to Miguel de Arcos, OP,” 333.


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paramount to this discussion in Spanish political thought. Vitoriawas careful to point out—consistent with the foris principle—thatforceful intervention and even war in such cases was not in orderto punish sins against natural law, but to protect the innocent fromsuffering injury.53 Yet, in presenting this scenario as a possible titleto war in De Indis, he made the significant point “that in lawfuldefense of the innocent from unjust death, even without the pope’sauthority, the Spaniards may prohibit the barbarians from practicingany nefarious custom or rite. . . . The barbarians are all our neighbors,and therefore anyone, and especially princes, may defend them fromsuch tyranny and oppression.”54 Vitoria intimated a rather modern-sounding rational justification here to restrict violent religiouspractices without the need to resort to papal authority.

After citing the Proverbs mandate, he further remarked: “thisapplies not only to the actual moment when they are being draggedto death; they may also force the barbarians to give up their ritesaltogether. If they refuse to do so, war may be declared upon them,and the laws of war enforced upon them; and if there is no othermeans of putting an end to these sacrilegious rites, their masters maybe changed and new princes set up.”55 Under this arguable just title todefend the innocent from gravely immoral religious practices, Vitorialeft open the possibility of complete regime change through war.This claim demonstrates an important tension in Vitoria’s analysiswhereby his prohibition of waging war against those who refuse toconvert (and by extension their idolatrous practices) runs up againstthe duty to protect innocent unbelievers, which may includeabolishing any pagan religious practices that might harm them.

When Las Casas turned to the issue of human sacrifice, he was

53. Ibid., “On Self-Restraint,” 225.54. Ibid., “On the American Indians,” 288.55. Ibid.


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confronted with the same moral claims from scripture as Vitoria. Inthis “new case” involving Indian cases of human sacrifice Las Casashad to address Sepúlveda’s imperial-humanist argument justifyingwar and conquest to prevent the alleged thousands of deathsannually.56 In opposition, he aptly stated in the Apologia that “waragainst the Indians, which we call in Spanish conquistas, is evil andessentially anti-Christian,” not to mention unlawful.57 This point hadalready been made in his earliest treatise on the peaceful method ofevangelization, which was the “only way” that Christ taught to theapostles when he sent them out as sheep among wolves.58 The Indianswere the only ones who had a lawful right of self-defense against theSpaniards, as evident in the native rebellion led by Enriquillo.59

Notwithstanding the moral and rhetorical strength of Las Casas’scritique of the conquistas, he could not simply turn a blind eye tothe death of innocent Amerindians even if their oppressors werenot Spaniards. After all, “the Indians are our brothers, and Christhas given his life for them.”60 Stopping human sacrifice to protectthe innocent was gaining support from imperial humanists likeSepúlveda bent on subjugating and civilizing Amerindians. Itdemanded a Christian response grounded in the Gospel ethic. Onthis point, Las Casas agreed with and diverged from Vitoria. LikeVitoria, Las Casas allowed for the possibility of intervening in aforeign society in order to liberate innocent persons from oppression.Furthermore, both of them agreed, contrary to Sepúlveda, that thisintervention was not for punishing sins against natural law, but strictly

for the protection of the innocent from death.

56. Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, 185.57. Ibid., 355.58. Bartolomé de las Casas: The Only Way, ed. Helen Rand Parish (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992).59. Francis Patrick Sullivan, Indian Freedom: The Cause of Bartolomé de las Casas, 1484–1566 (Kansas

City: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 191–92.60. Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, 362.


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Unlike Vitoria’s appeal to the universal law of nations, Las Casasviewed the protection innocent persons as an ecclesial activityinseparable from the ethic of evangelization. He increased theecclesial and papal role while limiting its abuse under the foris

principle, as seen in the following passage:

It is the concern of the Church and the Pope, to whom the pastoralcare of the whole world has been entrusted by Christ, to prevent theslaughter of such innocent persons lest their souls, whose salvationshould be of special concern, should perish forever. It is the business,then, of the Church and the Vicar of Christ, as the universal pastorand curate of the whole world, to exercise jurisdiction authoritativelyand in Christ’s name in this case, not in order to punish or subjugateunbelievers by reason of their crime, since it is not the business of theChurch “to pass judgment on those outside . . . but of those who areoutside, God is the judge”. . . but in order to take the steps necessary toprevent slaughter of such innocent persons.61

Las Casas, in contrast to Vitoria’s proto-modern internationalthinking, identified “the rulers of the world” as private persons inthe juridical sense meaning that “they cannot pronounce judgmentoutside the boundaries of each individual kingdom.” However, thisdid not rule out the possibility that the church might appoint someChristian ruler or private person to liberate the oppressed.62 Las Casasthereby strengthened, rather than attenuated, the inherently politicalnature of the church by viewing innocent persons outside the visiblebody of Christ as potential adopted members of the church, followingtheir free consent. Although this expanded the range of papal powerbeyond Vitoria’s view, it did so only to the extent that the Vicar ofChrist as the leader of the universal church can intervene to protectthe defenseless innocent among outsiders who may ultimately lose

61. Ibid., 186.62. Ibid., 186–87.


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the gift of hearing the Good News of salvation because of the greatinjustice of state-sanctioned murder.

More than aware of the conceits of illegitimate claims of papalpower to justify violence against unbelievers, Las Casas did not referto the Pope as “lord of the world,” but as a “steward” or servant ofthe Supreme Prince and Universal Lord of all—Jesus Christ.63 Thoughthis interpretation of church politics (or coercive jurisdiction) seemsless than appealing to modern minds, we must highlight what wasat stake here for Las Casas. In his view, the defense of the innocentabroad under the express approval of the church and the papacyafforded the best chance of allowing the word of God to exercisea reflexive disciplinary power on political activity without licensingChristian political powers to use force in foreign intervention (orconquest) on the basis of an independent imperial-humanistcivilizing agenda as proposed by Sepúlveda.

The purpose of Las Casas’s ecclesial turn regarding interventionwas not to turn the church into a war-mongering band of robbersas the conquistadors had done; rather, it was to identify the limitsof using force in necessary situations and to increase commitmentto people most in need. After evil has been effectively stopped, thechurch “must go further” by caring “unceasingly for the salvationof souls, so that all peoples in the world may attain salvation.” Eventhough it is the church’s concern to prevent the murder of innocentpersons, “it nevertheless must do this with such discretion as not togive rise to some greater evil to the other peoples that would bea hindrance to their salvation and would thereby frustrate the fruitand purpose of Christ’s passion.”64 In other words, if interventionbecomes a scandal to the Gospel and an obstacle to evangelization,then it must be abandoned.

63. Ibid., 260.64. Ibid., 187.


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War, according to Las Casas, was simply not an acceptableChristian response to human sacrifice in the Indies. It had led toimmeasurable innocent deaths and instilled hatred of the faith.Furthermore, the direct attack against pagan religious customs bymeans of war—no matter how shockingly violent and objectivelyevil such customs were—would be seen by unbelievers as a Christian

attack on their society’s sacred way of life. Citing Pope Gregory theGreat’s policy toward Jews in late antiquity, Las Casas concluded:“Of what use is it when and if their practices of long standing areforbidden to them? It contributes not at all to their conversion to thefaith.”65

From Las Casas’s perspective, a prince’s war against a paganreligion outside of his political jurisdiction would appear as nothingless than forced conversion to another religion or civilization. Insteadof war, Las Casas proposed a gradual approach patiently committedto long-term preaching of the Gospel supported by virtuous conductand teaching about grave evils as the best antidote to human sacrifice.If that were achievable but did not yield the desired results, then somerestrained force could be used only to stop the killing of innocentpeople.66 What that intervention with moderate force short ofwarfare finally looks like and entails, Las Casas never says. However,it was for him a necessary alternative to violent conquest within thesocial ethics of Christendom.

Conclusion

Yoder portrayed the social ethics of Christendom as the “illegitimatetakeover of the world,” a denial of freedom to unbelievers. Thoughthis was evident in the crusader ethic of evangelization by conquest,

65. Ibid., 188.66. Bartolomé de las Casas, De thesauris, in Obras completas 11.1, ed. Paulino Castañeda Delgado

and Antonio García de Moral (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988–1990), 434–35.


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there is a far more interesting story in Christendom about theGospel’s ability to speak truth to imperial and ecclesiastical power anddefend the immunity and natural rights of unbelievers. The criticalvoice of Gospel social ethics as seen among the Spanish Dominicanswas reflected in Pope Paul III’s famous letter Sublimis Deus (1537),which condemned missionary wars as satanic and defended theliberty and possessions of Amerindians. Relatedly, the 1542 “NewLaws” of Emperor Charles eliminating wars of conquest andabolishing the forced labor institution was the most powerfulexpression, albeit short-lived, of the influence of Gospel social ethicson royal policy.

“The last and greatest of the legal accomplishments ofChristendom,” O’Donovan writes, “was the conception that thereexists, not merely as an ideal but in fact, an international law,dependent on no regime and no statute, but on the Natural Lawimplanted in human minds by God, and given effect by internationalcustom and convention.”67 Vitoria’s turn to the ius gentium as astrategy for expanding the rule of law between “nations,” whichcontributed to the development of universal natural rights in theChristian tradition, highlights a remarkable legacy of Christendomon the church’s social ethics. But so too does Las Casas’s ecclesial turnto the papal guardianship of freedom and the natural rights of thewhole world under Christ’s rule. Both strategies of carrying out theethic of evangelization and love of one’s neighbor remained viableChristian alternatives to the demonic crusader ethic of evangelizationby conquest in the early modern colonial world.

67. O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations, 236.


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war and the ethics of evangelization: the great commission in sixteenth-century spanish political...

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