Theologians of Salamanca

Managing the World: The Development of 'Jus Gentium' by the Theologians of Salamanca in the Sixteenth Century Author(s): Dominique
de Courcelles Source: Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2005), pp. 1-15 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40238198 . Accessed: 04/12/2013 16:26
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Managing the World: The Development of Jus Gentium by the Theologians of Salamanca in the Sixteenth Century
Dominique de Courcelles In the sixteenth century, Spain, an imperial power and one of the great nations of Christian Europe, discovered and conquered a new world and a new race of men. Spain was, at that moment, a nation that had just achieved political and religious unification. In 1492 the Catholic kings completed their reconquest of the IberianPeninsula from the Moors. The last emir of Granada had definitively crossed the Straits of Gibraltar,taking his followers with him. Granadahad become a Christian city and the mosque had been transformed into a cathedral. A policy of religious education and of converting Muslim inhabitantshad been immediately begun throughoutAndalusia. The same year, 1492, the Jews of Spain were ordered to convert or leave the country. 1492 was also the year ChristopherColumbus discovered the West Indies, soon to be named "America." The political and religious authorities of Spain- that is, the Catholic kings, the bishops of Spain (in particular the powerful archbishops of Toledo and Seville), and the Inquisitionthen began to concentrate on effectively controlling the subjugated men and territories. They would no longer permit the inhabitants of the Spanish empire not to be Christian. In the sixteenth century, Charles V, Catholic king of Spain and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, reigned over Spain, the Netherlands, Franche-Comt, parts of Germany and Italy, and half the American continent. How can the world- from the western Mediterraneanto the Atlantic and the Pacific; from Flanders, Germany, Naples, Barcelona, Madrid, and Seville to Veracruz, Mexico, and the Andes- be managed? This was the question that the Spanish powers had to answer in order to grow and endure.
Philosophyand Rhetoric,Vol. 38, No. 1, 2005. Copyright 2005 The PennsylvaniaState University,UniversityPark,PA. 1
DOMINIQUE DE COURCELLES
1. The theological foundations of globalization: The imposition of universal salvation In the beginning Christianity was a system of beliefs tied to the charismatic personality of a historic founder, the Christ, put to death because he was disrupting Roman and Jewish public order and, according to the affirmations of his disciples, resuscitated, then risen to the heavens, where he waits to returnand judge the world. Although the founder never desired or claimed to be a political leader- "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36) l- Christianity, as developed by those who modeled themselves as the Christ's successors, has given Christian states their doctrinal basis ever since the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century. The justice of kings and princes, powerful and strong, supporting or supportedby the Church (that is, by the religious authorities who stand guard over the interpretationof beliefs and rituals), must consist of guaranteeing, from a Christian perspective, the salvation of every subject. The justice practiced follows a rationality of an eschatological bent. For Charles V, emperor and king of Spain, to manage the world in the sixteenth century was to carry out an eschatological task. Claiming to work on behalf of salvation, humanjustice (as opposed to divine) can translate into a struggle against other humans, and induce or legitimate the effects of subjugation and domination. The political pragmatism of the masters of the Spanish empire grounded itself in the sacred texts of Christianity. In 1493, one year after the arrival of Columbus on the American continent, the Borgia pope Alexander VI defined the respective zones of influence of Spain and Portugal in the New World by the Inter Caetera bull. To the Spanish sovereigns, the "TrulyCatholic Kings" who had shown themselves by the capture of Granada,this bull granted the mission to evangelize the Indians. In two years, from 1519 to 1521, Hernn Cortes conquered Mexico. Over the period between 1530 and 1534, Francisco Pizarro took control of the Inca empire. The evangelist Luke declared: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). Elsewhere Luke relates: A certainman madea greatsupper,and bade many:And sent his servantat suppertime to say to them that were bidden,Come;for all things are now ready.And they all with one [consent]began to make excuse. . . . Then the masterof the house being angrysaid to his servant,Go out quicklyinto the
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streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. (14:16-24)
With this text and the now-famous expression "compelle intrare,"later interpretations attempted to justify forced conversion; what is to be found herein most of all is an insistent host. The evangelist Matthew, from whom Luke borrows, recounts the story of the lost sheep whom his master seeks untiringlyuntil finding him; immediately afterwardshe mentions the needed fraternal correction: "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 18:18). Thus the master of the house who gives a great supper, like the shepherd who goes in search of the sheep, can use compelling force to control other people as one controls inert objects, because both effectively have the power to do so and consider that their cause is just. These texts are fundamental, inasmuch as it is the founder of Christianity who seems to authorize the conquest of the New World and the conversion of the Indians who have become subjects of the Spanish king. The discoverers of the New World and the theoreticians of monarchical imperial power invoked the philosophy of Saint Augustine as support for this authorization. As Catholic bishop of Hippo, wielding powers both to preach and to deliver justice in a land still frequently pagan or heretical, Augustine used these same texts to justify his activities of political and religious conversion and standardization, notably in the struggle against the Donatists in the year 408: "One must not consider the obligation in itself, but rather consider the purpose of the obligation, if it is towards good or evil" (1898, 461, 3).2In Sermon 46, Augustine glosses the parable of the lost sheep, blending in the theme of the guests who must be forced to enter the master's house (1865, 278). In this manner he develops the concept oijusta persecutio, the Latin persecutio not having the sense of "violent and unjust pursuit" as it does in the Romance languages or in English: "There is a just persecution which is that which the church of Christ carries out against the wicked" (1911, 10, 8 ).3 There is clearly a regression into violence here, inasmuch as the Bishop of Hippo enjoys the backing of political power. Love for sinners and the wayward and the relentless desire for their salvation emerge as brutal byproducts of the savagery of the struggle against the Donatists. Every action caused by love of divine justice is just. But what is a divine justice proclaimed by men?
In De Civitate Dei, Augustine develops the notion of the "just war": "For the iniquity of those with whom just wars are carried on favours the growth of a kingdom" (1993, 123; 4:15). Thus "just wars" seem to favor the emergence of a Roman empire in which there would be a standardization of national cultures. Augustine further explains: "The families which live by faith look for those eternal blessings which are promised, and use as pilgrims such advantages of time and of earth. . . . This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages, not scrupling about diversities in the manners, laws, and institutions" (1993, 123-24; 19:17). Globalization is most certainly to be found in this growing integration of the constituent parts of the whole of the world population into the celestial city. This growing integration is what gives men their particulardynamism and vivacity, escaping from the control of sovereign states defined by customs, laws, and institutions, and thereby undermining specific sovereignties. In this manner a new planetary order might be established, thanks to the mosaic of the celestial city exiled on earth. However with the question of the celestial city comes the risk of sliding into utopia. Thomas Aquinas gave an essential role to the virtue of justice in his theological project. For the most part, he borrows the elements of his reflections from Aristotle and from book 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics. Justice orients and rectifies the actions of individuals and is imperative to the relations and institutions of social life as an objective requirementof rectitude. Justice has the distinction of an ultimate value that determines norms and measures in accordance with truth; right4is the end of justice and of just actions. One part of right is given by the naturallaw that reflects man's participation in divine, eternal law: this is natural right. Another part of right is laid out simultaneously by divine law, divine reason, which is necessarily unknown to us; or by the human, which has for its goal to articulate and put into practice naturallaw: this is positive right. Thejus gentium, or right of the people, emerges as a derivative of the right of nature,just as is said that human law derives from natural law: this is a right of custom, supposed to be universal, embracing the habits and practices common to different peoples. All men are subject to it; however, while the will of the virtuous and the just agrees with it, that of the wicked opposes it.5 Infidels can only be punished and subjugated if their government does not respect naturallaw, and is thus tyrannical, and if they show themselves aggressive against Christians.
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The protective function of the Church and Christian princes toward society proves to be proportionalto their coercive power. Violence emerges as a necessary and acceptable means that guarantees the absolute nature of the spiritual and temporal powers in Christendom and their justice. Hence the concept of the "just war"emerges. A war is just by "the authorityof the prince," by the "justness of his cause," by "righteous intention"; that is, according to divine will, not by "the might that makes right." Thomas Aquinas is the first to introduce the question of war and of the just war into theology. Although he classifies war as a sin, he establishes moral principles regarding it. It is not sufficient that a war aims to achieve peace and the common good; it is also necessary that the war itself, that is, the means employed, be legitimate. The hegemony of the Christian princes over the whole of the world would bring about respect for the jus gentium and the submission to natural right, mankind's participation in eternal or divine law. A world culture would then emerge, resulting in the domination of a Christian state or an assembly of Christian states, which would then lead to Christian unity, the "celestial city" finally encompassing the world. In this manner the theologian calls for a way of thinking about the event to come, the reason yet to come and- why not- the democracy to come. These are the religious presuppositionsbehind every rhetoricof power in a Christian regime. The foundational and doctrinal texts, inasmuch as every subject of the Christian states adheres to them, allow princes to make their domination recognized. They are symbolic; they constitute veritable transitional objects, capable of making known an experience common to all the subjects of an empire. They will soon inspire certain subjects of the Spanish empire to express a new conception of the liberty and the dignity of man.
2. Human dignity and the writing of history The "destruction of the Indies" conquered by the Spanish- that incalculable and exceptional event- provoked amazement and terrorin Spain and in the other Christian nations. It is noteworthy that within the superpower that the Spanish empire then was there were men capable of standing up against the injuries dealt to the souls and bodies of other men. The Dominican Bartolome de Las Casas (1474-1566) is famous for his uncommon political engagement. He denounced the betrayalof the Gospels' words
about the sheep and the wolves, or about the guests whom one forces to enter the house of the Father. He denounced the abuses and the cruelties committed by the Spaniards. He put the concept of natural right to use in the service of a radical demand for the liberty of all men and, in particular, of the Indians (cf. Mchoulan 1979, 98-100). Las Casas made himself at once judge and historian in order to consider the "crimes" committed by the Spanish conquistadors against the Indians. From the archives, key evidence in the proceedings, to the scholarly use he makes of them, interpretation proves to have the same scope as the quest for truth. Here moral judgment intersects with historical judgment, without Las Casas ever being intimidated as an inhabitant of the New World and scholar of the history of the Spanish empire, without him ever being brought to censure himself. His moral judgment develops from the base of a critical vigilance that is always wakeful, a vigilance over reason. Indeed, the Dominican Las Casas holds the conviction that in order to exist as a nation, Spain and the vice-royalty of New Spain need a just and reasonable history, a history worthy of the economy of salvation, a plural history in which each man has the rights and responsibilities of salvation. If the history of Spain is a sacred history- as the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula proved across centuries- if the history of Spain is the definitive site for the construction of national and Christian identity, then it must be possible to write- to fix in writing- a history of the Spanish empire which gives proper place to its glorious diversity, its glorious multiplicity, to its cosmopolitanism. The enslavement of the Indians and the destruction of the Indies unavoidably elicit "reprobacin"6 and thus the loss of Spaniards and of Spain. How could a power that kills and destroys its subjects and its lands, which does not know how to manage the world, secure and maintain its sovereignty? The historiographie treatmentof the unacceptable implies, in time, the end of Spain's history. In order to save Spain and to save its history- and this is true for every state power- it is necessary to clearly and absolutely condemn the illegitimate forms of violence that are harmful to its memory and to its very existence, and to reform the political and social administration of the New World. Theory and practice intertwine. Las Casas denounced the exceptionalness of the harm done in the New World to an oppressed part of the population in the name of a sovereign who nonetheless owed that population protection and security. He explained that this harmhad been perpetratedby an administrationwithout morals, tolerated without significant objections by the leading Spanish elite, and endured without major resistance by the Indians. All of this is unjusti-
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fiable. In order to survive, Spain must take back its glorious history by allowing all its subjects in the New World- Indians and conquistadorsand in the Old World to have access to a shared and collective memory of the discovery of the New World. Las Casas believed in the original goodness of man, in the necessity of a life in accordance with nature, and in the liberty and equality of all men. Being himself a humanist and an admirerof Greek and Latin antiquity, he was convinced that the Indians were particularly susceptible to receiving the evangelical message because they are reasonable, because they are men still, and more like Christians than the Christians themselves. The history written by Las Casas is by no means a desperate enterprise; it seeks to bridge the gap between the representative capacity of discourse and the demands of intolerable events; it is conscious of having a beneficial influence on the elaboration of new social norms, on the one hand, and on collective memory, on the other. To manage the world thus consists of ensuring the conditions which make it possible to write one's history. At the edges of this historiographieanxiety, the question of the "good government" of the Spanish empire, which is also perhaps that of the democracy to come, could take shape. What is "living together"?And especially, "what is a fellow man"? Can one, should one, live together only with a fellow man? The accredited or recognized supremacy of a power or force is implied, enforced, even in the act of positing other beings as equals. The writing of history would thus consist of putting and thinking together the values of assembly, of likeness and of making alike, including in simulation and assimilation. "Pureethics, if such a thing exists," wrote Jacques " Derrida, begins with the dignity of the other respectable as the absolute 7 unalike, recognized as not recognizable" (2003, 90). The discovery of the New World favored the circulation of goods and services, capital and men. In this way, it contributed to a certain extent to the expansion of criminality.The zone of operations broadenedfor smugglers; already in the sixteenth century one observes a financial globalization that enables the launderingof money derived from trafficking or blatant thefts. This globalization avant la lettre augmented the inequalities and the poverty within the Spanish empire and throughout the world. The literature called "picaresque," which originated in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is very representative of the increase in poverty and of the emergence of the social phenomenon of the picaros, crooks and bandits of all sorts. This globalization was also not without effects on the external security of Spain and its empire. The "destruction of the Indies"
provoked the "Black Legend," a work of violent anti-Spanish propaganda, and caused problems for Spain in Europe and throughout the world. The strengthening of the royal functions of the Spanish monarchical state was thus legitimated, against the conquistadors, who appeared as vassals dangerous to royal power, and against dissidents of every sort, who promote disorder. Amongst the successive requests made by Las Casas, the Leyes Nuevas (New Laws) of November 1542 ordered the suppression of the system of the encomienda, which maintainedthe Indians in a dependency close to slavery (Leyes Nuevas de Indias 1975, 776-77.). The word "conquista" was replaced in official texts by that of "discovery." The enslaved Indians were liberated in 1530, then again in 1542. They were replaced by black slaves brought from Africa, which also shows the limits of Las Casas's reflections. The monarchic power of Spain primarily wanted to strengthen, with the support of the Church, its administrative control over the conquered lands; it was a question of limiting the negative effects of the conquistadors' poor management of the discovery of America. Las Casas's plea in favor of the Indians takes an essentially apologetic and pastoral view: evangelization, the physical and ethnic integrity of the Indians, and the interests of the Spanish monarchy must be reconciled. At the beginning of his Historia de las Indias, Las Casas cites the sermon given by another Dominican, FrayAntonio de Montesino on the last Sunday of Advent, 1511. This sermon has been rightly considered a foundational manifesto of what Lewis Hanke has called "the Spanish struggle for justice in the conquest of America" (Hanke 1948):
^Con que derecho y con que justicia tenis en tan cruel y horrible servidumbre aquestos Indios? iCon que autoridad habis hecho tan dtestables guerras a estas gentes que estaban en sus tierras mansas y pacificas, donde tan infinitas dlias, con muerte y estragos nunca oidos, habis consumido? . . . ^Estos no son hombres? ^No tienen animas racionales? ^No sois obligados a amallos corno a vosotros mismos? . . . Tened por cierto que en el estado que estais no os podis mas salvar que los moros turcos que carecen y no quieren la fe de Jesucristo. (Sermon cited in Las Casas 1957, 176) [With what right and with what justice did you keep those Indians in such cruel and horrible slavery? Under whose authority did you start such detestable wars with those people in their peaceful and pacific lands, where you have destroyed so many of them with death and ravages never imagined? Are they not men? Do they not have rational spirits? Are you not obligated to love them as you love yourselves? Be assured that in your current state you will
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not be able to save more than the Moors or the Turks who lack and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ.]
And in 1542, in the Octavo Remedio contra la encomienda, Las Casas again asserted, with anguish, "From what I have read in the Sacred Scripture, God will punish those sins with horrible punishments, he will perhaps destroy all of Spain" (1958, 119).8 It is noteworthy that the first questioning of human rights is theological and comes from not an abstract pretension to the universal but the very fleshly refusal of the intolerable by a Spanish man, from his desire for a just memory to be shared by all the subjects of the king of Spain. This is how the Spanish empire must be managed; this is how the world must be managed, in view of the dignity of every man- in view of a just and collective memory. "hombrescon animas racionales" What is altogether remarkablein this is that the recognition of the dignity of man, of every human subject, appears tied to the writing of history as the perpetuation of the sovereign state. The notion of "humanity"constitutes the anthropological presupposition necessary to any writing of history in the context of what, already in the sixteenth century, constitutes globalization. The writing of history is thus, in an unexpected manner,paradoxical, and serves to regulate the "logic" of sovereignty, which cannot but abuse its power, since it tends to reign without sharing power, assigning right based on might. The philosopher Hannah Arendt was particularly interested in the writing of history as the condition that renders possible the mastery of the past and the management of humanity "if humanity is not to be reduced to an empty phrase or a Phantom." She wrote in Men in Dark Times, of the past is possible, it consists in telling what Insofaras any "mastering" but such narration, too, which shapeshistory,solves no problems happened; and assuagesno suffering.. . . The questionis how much reality must be if humanity is not to be reducedto retained even in a worldbecomeinhuman an emptyphraseor a Phantom. (1955, 21-22) Writing history is the proper work of critical vigilance in a given time and place in human history. "Truth,"wrote Arendt, paraphrasingLessing, "can only exist where it is humanizedby discourse, only where each [man speaks not] what just happens to occur to him at the moment, but what he deems 'truth.' But such speech ...belongs to an area in which there are many voices and where the announcement of what each deems truth both links and separates men which together comprise the world." And she defines
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this world as that "which can form only in the interspaces between men in all their variety" (1955, 30-31). To manage the world is to manage the intervals, to create a history in many voices, a space of many voices.
3. The doctrinal and juridical foundations of Spanish imperial power: The jus gentium It was therefore necessary to give Spanish imperial power a well-defined doctrinal andjuridical framework in order to protect what could already be called its ongoing expansion. It is accurate to speak of an attempt by the Spanish theologians of Salamanca to provide a just framework for globalization along the lines of some of the convictions held by Las Casas. Theologians, like Thomas Aquinas and those after him, know that theological discourses and projects also have the task of applying to all that pertains to man and the world: "The profession of theologian is so wide, that no argument, no discussion, no issue can be considered out of his scope" (Vitoria 1986, 122).9There is no world without law. It was the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546), theologian and jurist at the University of Salamanca, teacher in Paris from 1509 to 1523, connected to humanist circles and perhaps to Erasmus, who would establish the juridical statute of the conquered people and give them access not only to human existence but to political existence, for the glory of Spain, its empire, and its king. Profoundly shocked by the brutality of his compatriots in the New World, Vitoria questioned Spanish domination. In 1539, with his Relectiones de Indis and De Jure Belli, he confronted, as theologian and jurist, the violence contemporaryto the discovery and conquest of America (1989). What is a people? How can the right of a people to be recognized as such be defined? Vitoria based his reflection on three principles already put forward by Thomas Aquinas. The first was that civil authority belongs to natural right and derives immediately from society, even if its first origin comes from God: neither the emperor nor the pope has universal sovereignty. The second principle was that of the communitatis orbis, the universal community, in which all people, whether Christians, infidels, or pagans, have similar rights and duties proceeding from natural law. The third principle consisted of the restriction of the autonomy of civil society, national and international. The Church must incite princes to serve spiritual interests
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and must make sure that the common good, which is the purpose of civil authority, allows man to achieve salvation, which is his supernaturalend. In this mannertheology undertookto think about the changing of the world, to think about the management of the world by the political power of imperial Spain. Beginning with these principles, Vitoria condemned the violent conquest of the West Indies. He argued that the infidels retain ownership of their lands. The jus gentium is a positive right resting on universal consent by all civilized peoples or by a group of Christian nations; it is taken from human unity; it is justified and prescribed totius orbis auctoritate, "by the authority of the world." Vitoria's goal, which was not that of Thomas Aquinas, was the invention of an international law composed of positive, specific, and stable rules. According to this law, which justified the conquest of Mexico by Spain, it is naturalto intervene to liberate the innocent from tyranny, human sacrifices, and cannibalism, considered not as sins but serious failures before natural law. These are the "just causes" of the conquest. In the communitas orbis, there is a universal bond between sovereignties within a world henceforth fundamentally open to the circulation of men and riches. Vitoria's discourse renders possible the passage from an archaic imperialism, of religious origin but emptied of every spiritualmeaning, to a modern imperialism of a mercantile and capitalist spirit, which could only please the emperor Charles V. Here the alternative to violence is not only justice in relation to naturallaw, but moreover the regulation of exchanges. The pragmatism of the Spanish empire thus finds its symbolic basis. The Spanish empire can survive as a world economic power. con los indios(sin perjuicio, claroest, de Es licito a los espanolescomerciar su patria)exportando,por ejemplo, alla mercanciasque ellos no tienen Y los cade alii oro, piata u otrascosas en que ellos abundan. importando ciques indios no pueden prohibira sus subditos que comercien con los a los espanolescon los indios. (Vitoria1989, 101) espanolesni, al contrario, [It is legal for the Spanishto do commercewith the Indians(they are not theirown country) there,for example,merchandises they exporting damaging fromtheregold, silver andotherthingstheyhavein do not haveor importing with The chiefs cannotprohibittheirsubjectsfromcommercing abundance. withthe the Spanishfromdoingcommerce the Spanish,norcan theyprohibit Indians.] The free exchange of merchandise allows each group to have access to more products: thus there is, avant la lettre, a theory of the increase of
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real world revenues. This free exchange affects emergent products from different areas. However, it takes place essentially within the Spanish empire between the different groups which form it, and is thus regulated by the imperatives fixed by imperial political power. The existence of an important internal market is hereby indicated by Vitoria, and supposes a demand for goods and for a variety of products whose volume and structure are tied to a standardof living. In time, free exchange would have the status of an instrumentof domination for the richest over the poorest. International commerce cannot necessarily be beneficial to all the participants in an exchange. The growth of exchanges provoked an increase in production, for example of gold or silver, which reinforced both state control and the exploitation of Indian labor. "Throughthe gold he buys or through the still that kills him, one does not approach others face on; the trade targets the anonymous market,"wrote Emmanuel Lvinas (1990, 253). 10 The last "just cause" evoked by Vitoria is fairly ambiguous, since it concerns the right of the civilized to guardianship over peoples: "These Indians, as has been said before, are somewhat insane; but although they are not entirely sane, they are far from being capable of establishing and managing an organized legitimate republic within humane and political boundaries"(Vitoria 1989, 111). n If Vitoria laid the juridical basis of an international community and of globalization, he also justified European colonial expansion. He gave the Spanish empire the doctrinal basis that allowed it to maintain its existence. Thus the world is henceforth perceived in it globalness. Naturalright authorizes every man to travel, do business, and live in any part of the universe. The world is a trade zone for men and merchandise. If this natural right is not recognized by the Indians of the Spanish empire, then recourse to violence against them is legitimate. Violence is not, therefore, excluded from the political sphere. The jus gentium is a guarantee of justice, but the "justice" in question is essentially mercantile, pragmatic. The theological theory of natural right seems to meet up with Machiavellian realism. Does justice not exceed the juridical and the political? Can justice be reduced to calculating reason, to legal distribution, to the norms and rules which determine right, even in its recourse to coercive force, to the force of power which Kant noted was inscribed and justified by the purest concept of law [droit]V2It is also true that it is in this economic regulation, in this free circulation of goods and persons within the Spanish empire and in the whole of the world, that people can lean toward a state of mutual love, of discussion, of loving and respectful polemic. In his 1539 Carta
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Magna de los Indios, Vitoria affirmed that the Indians were men and had to be treated as free beings, that every people had the right to its own sovereignty, and that the world had to be ruled by peace and international solidarity. The Spanish crown had rights and duties towards all its subjects, in particularthe duty to restore goods and lands unjustly occupied to the conquered Indians. If justice exceeds law, it is also what motivates the movement and history of reasonable theological and juridical, political thought. of law. There is no justice without appealto juridicalrulingsandto the strength In this manner the theologians of the Spanish empire in the middle of the sixteenth century strived, despite all the ambiguities inherent to their times and to their history, and more generally to the sovereignty and government of men, to reconcile political efficacy and respect for human dignity. They elaborated the first principles of globalization and of sustainable development, of a certain liberalization of trade which, as the political and economic events in the history of Spain and of the New World that would follow would show, was not exempt from danger. These first attempts to provide a framework for globalization, however approximate, had as their principal merit that of defining the rights of peoples and the rights of individuals. The spaces of reference for individuals had been enlarged. It is interesting to note that, in the thought of the theologians of Salamanca, as in that of Saint Augustine in De Civitate Dei, it was a matter of bringing every man to the salvation offered by Christianity; in no case was it a question of realizing a cultural standardization, the abandonment by different groups of their specific cultural traits. Here economic globalization does not necessarily imply the standardizationof cultures or the emergence of a world culture, even if it is clear that the conversion of the world to Christianity was the goal. A community of values was the intellectual basis that enabled the birth of the right of the people. The responsibility in the reasoning of the theologians of Salamanca lies in this oscillation between the particularand the universal, in the aporia surroundingthe impossible transaction between the conditional and the unconditional, the calculable and the incalculable. A little later, the Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), another theologian from Salamanca, would express this admirably in his Tractatus de Legibus:
La totalidad de los hombres no ha llegado a integrarse en un solo cuerpo politico, sino que mas bien se ha dividido en varios Estados. Pero para que stos pudieran ayudarse mutuamente y conservar la paz y la justicia en sus mutuas relaciones, que es esencial para el bienestar universal de todos los
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DE COURCELLES DOMINIQUE pueblos, fue conveniente que en sus mutuas relaciones pusieran en vigor, com por acuerdo y comun consentimiento, algunas leyes comunes. Es lo que se llama derecho de gentes. (1986, 786) [The people have not integrated into just one political body, they have divided themselves into separate States. To mutually help one another to conserve peace and justice for the good of their relations, which is essential for the universal well-being of all of the villages, it was convenient for them to vigorously pursue with mutual agreement, some common laws. These laws are called the rights of the people.]
Thus Spain, called upon to manage a good part of the world after the discovery of the West Indies, gave itself symbolic foundations for its economic and political pragmatism.If the sacred texts of the Christiantradition participated in its rhetoric of power, the impact of the incalculable and exceptional event of the discovery and conquest imposed an anthropological presupposition on this rhetoric: the signifier, however floating, "humanity." Thanks to this historic crisis, men were able to show themselves fully and confront the reality of globalization, were capable of judgment and initiative. They understood that Spain could not continue its existence as a powerful and sovereign state except through the appropriatewriting of its history, joining the interpretationof sacred texts and the possible interpretation of events in a space of many voices. Every pragmatism has symbolic foundations. In this context, the paradoxical elaboration of the jus gentium by the theologians of Salamanca remains one of the major contributions of history to our own contemporary moment, emergent from one of those beginnings that constitute what Arendt qualified as a "miracle of liberty" (1995, 52). Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Collge International de Philosophie, Paris, France
Notes
Professor Dominique de Courcelles of the Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueCollge International de Philosophie, Paris, France, presented this paper at the International conference, "About an African Athens," held at the University of Cape Town to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the South African democracy. The paper was translated into English by Irit Kleiman. The Spanish passages were translated into English by Linda Scholz. -Ed. 1. All Bible quotations are taken from the King James Version. 2. "Vides itaque jam, ut opinor, non esse considerandum quod quisque cogitur, sed quale sit illud quo cogitur, utrum bonum an malum" (Augustine 1898).
MANAGING THE WORLD
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3. "Est persecutio justa quam faciunt impiis ecclesiae Christi" (Augustine 1911). 4. Translator's note: Except where otherwise indicated, the words droit and loi have been rendered as right and law, respectively. 5. See Aquinas (1985, la 2ae, q. 95, a. 2, 4; 2a 2ae, q. 57; 2:618-19; 3:361-66). 6. This word, chosen by Las Casas, holds a terrible connotation of the supreme punishment, damnation. 7. "L'thiquepure, s'il y en a, commence la dignit respectable de l'autre comme l'absolu dissemblable, reconnu comme non reconnaissable" (Derrida 2003, 90). 8. "Por aquellos pecados, por lo que leo en la Sagrada Escritura, Dios ha de castigar con horribles castigos e quiz totalmente destruir toda Espana" (Las Casas 1958, 119). 9. "El oficio del telogo es tan vasto, que ningun argumento, ninguna disputa, ninguna materia, parecen ajenos a su profesin" (Vitoria 1986, 122). 10. "Mais travers l'or qui l'achte ou l'acier qui le tue, on n'aborde pas autrui de face; le commerce vise le march anonyme" (Lvinas 1990, 253). 11. "Estos indios, aunque, corno se ha dicho antes, no sean del todo dmentes, distan, sin embargo, tan poco de los dmentes, que no son capaces de fundar administraruna republica lgitima y ordenada dentro de limites humanos y politicos" (Vitoria 1989, 111). 12. Cf. Kant's Mtaphysique des murs, premiers principes mtaphysiques de la doctrine du droit, introduction la doctrine du droit (1917, 25).
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. 1955. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt, Brace. . 1995. Introduction la politique II, fragment 3a: La politique a-t-elle finalement encore un sens? Washington, DC, Library of Congress, Division of Manuscripts, cont. 92: German text ed. Ursula Ludz; French trans. Sylvie Courtine-Denamy. Paris: d. du Seuil. Aquinas, Thomas. 1985. Summa Theologiae. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cnstianos. Augustine. 1993. The City of God. Trans. Marcus Dods. New York: Modern Library. . 1865. Sermo 46. In Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 278. . 1898. Epistola Ad Vincentium 93, 5 (16). In Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, voi. 34, 2, 461, 3. . 1911. Epistola 185, 2 (11). In Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, voi. 57, 10, 8. Derrida, Jacques. 2003. Voyous. Paris: Galile. Hanke, Lewis. 1948. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P. Kant, Emmanuel. 1917. Mtaphysique des murs, premiers principes mtaphysiques de la doctrine du droit, introduction la doctrine du droit. Paris: La Renaissance du Livre. Las Casas, Bartolom de. 1957. Historia de las lndias. Ed. Juan Prez de Tudela and Emilio Lopez Oto. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles. . Entre los Remedios. 1958. Ed. Juan Prez de Tudela. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles. Lvinas, Emmanuel. 1990. Totalit et infini, essai sur Vextriorit . Pans: Livre de Poche. Leyes Nuevas de lndias. 1975. Ed. Alberto Garcia Gallo, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Coll. Antologia de fuentes del antiguo Derecho. Mchoulan, Henri. 1979. Le sang de Vautre ou Vhonneur de Dieu. Pans: Fayard. Suarez, Francisco, 1986. Tratadode las Leyes. Libro 2, cap. 20. In Losfilsofos escolsticos de los sighs XVIy XVII, seleccin de textos, ed. Clemente Fernandez, 73 1-809. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. Vitoria, Francisco de. 1986. "De la potestad civil." In Losfilsofos escolsticos de los siglos XVIy XVII, seleccin de textos, ed. Clemente Fernandez, 121-38. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos. . 1989. Relectio de Indis, Carta magna de los Indios. Facsimile edition of the Palencia codex. Spanish trans, by Luciano Perena, Carlos Baciero, and Francisco Maseda. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas.

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Managing the World: The Development of 'Jus Gentium' by the Theologians of Salamanca in the Sixteenth Century Author(s): Dominique

MANAGING THE WORLD

MANAGING THE WORLD

MANAGING THE WORLD

MANAGING THE WORLD

MANAGING THE WORLD

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