The hinc et nunc of moral theology: Francisco de Vitoria’s lesson and the missionary experience^*

* This paper was originally presented at the colloquium The Advancement of Knowledge and Religious Identity: Institutions of Higher Learning in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Beyond at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies of the University of Notre Dame, 4–5 October 2007.

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, as moral theology was being consolidated as an autonomous academic discipline, theologians at the University of Salamanca, including the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, began to incorporate current moral and political issues into their teaching agendas. Prominent among these issues were those arising out of the conquest of the Americas. Their students, a generation of university-trained missionaries, then went to work in Spanish possessions in the Americas and the Philippines. These missionaries and men of learning included the Augustinians Alonso de la Veracruz (in Mexico) and Martín de Rada (in the Philippines and China). As their world expanded, Vitoria's teachings were rendered fully intelligible in the confusing reality of the colonial enterprise, and these missionaries struggled to apply his lessons to the questions of conscience they encountered. The result can be considered a new chapter in the relationship between theological knowledge, the production of facts, and moral certainty, all against the backdrop of the territorial and economic expansion of Spain.

Keywords:

• Francisco de Vitoria
• Alonso de la Veracruz
• Martín de Rada
• theologians
• moral theology
• missionaries

Notes

* This paper was originally presented at the colloquium The Advancement of Knowledge and Religious Identity: Institutions of Higher Learning in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Beyond at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies of the University of Notre Dame, 4–5 October 2007.

1 On the Jesuits and their contribution to moral theology and the development of casuistry, see Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, chapters 7 and 8; Keenan 2004, 461–82.

2 In the sixteenth century, the only moral theology taught at the University of Mexico was that included in courses on dogmatic theology and canon law (Decorme 1941, 191).

3 Vereecke has noted that this shift may have caused an ‘appauvrisement’ of the discipline (1986, 50). Mahoney has made a similar assessment (1987, 34). On the historical consequences of the new focus on interior discipline, see Bossy 1985, 126–33.

4 Similar developments in the relationship between curriculum and world affairs were taking place in legal education. The study of law at Spanish universities during the early modern period has traditionally been faulted for its detachment from contemporary issues and legal practices and contrasted with the vitality of theology classrooms. This misconception is beginning to be dispelled. See, for example, Alonso Romero 2000 (republished in Alonso Romero 2012).

5 The growing influence of the Jesuits in society and at court encouraged students to pursue theological studies at the different orders’ conventual schools in the seventeenth century, a shift that weakened ties between the orders and universities and diminished the status of theology in universities across Catholic Europe (Pena González 2007, 534–37 and 543–45).

6 The statutes of the University of New Spain were modeled on those of Salamanca. On the links between the two institutions, see Rodríguez Cruz 1977–1978, 1:241–313; Montanos Ferrín 2010; and Abadie-Aicardi 1992.

7 Fr. Luis de León never fulfilled this obligation and was fined accordingly (Barrientos García 1996b, 923).

8 ‘In quem locum movetur quaestio, an liceat baptizare filios infidelium, invitis parentibus. Quae quaestio tractatur a doctoribus (Quarto <Sententiarum>, dist. 4) et a Thomas (Secunda Secundae, quaest. 10, art. 12, et Tertia Parte, quaest. 68, art. 10).’

9 From the beginning of his tenure as prima chair of theology in Salamanca, Vitoria opted to teach Aquinas’s Summa rather than Lombard’s Sentences. By the time of his death both the prima and vesper courses of theology, in a departure from university statutes, were based exclusively on the Summa. The official adoption of Aquinas’s Summa took place in 1562 (Barrientos García 2003, 214–16).

10 Vitoria lectured on the Summa during his first course in 1526 (Villoslada 1938, 304).

11 On the different kinds of quaestiones applied to juridical thought, see Bellomo 1996; on their place in the teaching of law, see Bellomo 2008. For a succinct account of the development of the quaestio in European university classrooms, see Teeuwen 2003, 322–25; for ‘disputatio,’ see Teeuwen 2003, 256–59. Also of interest is Lawn 1993, especially 6–17.

12 For a brief but useful essay on the role of opinion and doubt in theology as a discipline, see Evans 1995.

13 To Pierre Legendre, the works of the so-called Second Scholastic demonstrate a crucial re-engagement of theology and law that recalls the blurred boundaries between the two spheres before Gratian (1980, 446).

14 On conscience as it relates to moral theology and confession, see Kirk 1999. Originally published in 1927, this work remains a useful introduction to the topic. See also McNeill 1951.

15 Over the last two decades, historical scholarship on royal confessors in early modern Spain has exploded. Martínez Peñas’s (2007) comprehensive account of the transformation of the king’s confessor from an informal advisor in the Middle Ages to a prominent political office may very well be considered definitive. Charles V counted ‘maestros de teología’ from the Dominican order among his confessors. The academic career of one of them, Domingo de Soto, closely followed that of Vitoria, with whom he lived in San Esteban for many years. De Soto studied under Crockaert in Paris before he was appointed to a chair in Salamanca (Martínez Peñas 2007, 255–57). For a useful introduction to the study of royal confessors in Spain, see Poutrin 2005; see also Braun 2004. For a comparative study of the political function of confessors at Spanish and French courts, see Reinhardt 2016. For Portugal, see Marques 1996.

16 ‘De aqui se infiere como deve ser entendida una regla moral muy practicada por el padre Victoria, como me lo certifico el padre Alcocer. El qual quando le yvan a preguntar algun caso perteneciente al derecho civil o canonico o concerniente a la medicina respondia: Andad y preguntad a los Iuristas, y a los Medicos, lo que ordena el derecho civil y canonico sobre esse caso, y la recepta que da su arte de medicina, porque lo que ellos dixeren segun sus leyes, y segun su arte, esso mismo respondo yo.’

17 Vitoria described theology’s vast field of inquiry in the first lines of his 1528 relection De potestate civile: ‘The office and calling of a theologian is so wide, that no argument or controversy on any subject can be considered foreign to his profession’ (1991, 3). Vitoria went on to contrast theology’s almost inexhaustible scope with the unavoidable limitations of theologians, who could be experts in only one particular aspect of social reality. This acknowledgment had cognitive and political implications for the nature of the issues under the theologian’s purview, as Vitoria expressed in a letter to Pedro Fernández de Velasco, Constable of Castile, that contained a carefully phrased dissent on matters of war: ‘Yo algunas vezes pienso cuan grande desvarío es uno de nosotros no solo fablar pero ni pensar en las cosas publicas y y de gobernaçion, que me paresce es mas fuera de terminos que sy los señores fablasen en nuestras filosofías’ (quoted in Getino 1930, 362).

18 For a concise account of the transformation of the production, understanding, and dissemination of knowledge in early modern Europe, see Burke 2000, 35–44. On the status of history in the Western educational tradition, including its late arrival as a discipline in European universities, see Momigliano 1983. On the place of history and geography in Jesuit schools, see Dainville 1978.

19 In his original Spanish, Vitoria emphasized the relationship between conscience and ownership: ‘Todavía trabajo cuanto puedo; pues que ellos se llevan la hacienda, no me quede yo con alguna jactura desta otra hacienda de la conciencia; y aunque se echa poco de ver, creo que no importa menos que la otra’ (1967, 137).

20 ‘Graviter peccaret quicumque dissentiret alicui propositioni pertinenti ad bonos mores, in qua communiter convenient omnes sancti et doctores: vel si esset determinate ab Universitate ut puta Parisiensi; talis enim semper peccaret mortaliter, vgr. Si parisius determinatur quod talis contractus est usurarius, et saepe, si ego dissentirem, peccarem mortaliter’ (quoted in Villoslada 1938, 248). Professors of the University of Paris were asked to consult in the university’s name on a variety of matters in the early sixteenth century. For examples, see Farge 1985, 114–59.

21 During Vitoria’s tenure, Salamanca appointed a significant number of graduates from the University of Paris and other French universities to positions across its colleges (Noreña 1975, 55–58). For the numbers of Spanish religious and secular doctors to graduate from the Paris faculty of theology in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, see the tables in Farge 1985, 55–83.

22 The opinion, signed by Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, and other theologians, was issued in 1541 (Colección de documentos inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía 1864–1884, 3:543–53, also reproduced in Vitoria 1967, appendix 8, 157–64).

23 On the consolidation in Medieval Spain of a distinct class of men of learning who became close advisors to the king and members of the royal council, see Maravall 1973. On the expansion of this class as new universities were founded, see Maravall 1973, 364–65.

24 ‘Et primum, dato quod nullum esset dubium in tota hac quaestione, non est novum disputations theologicas institui de re certa; nam disputamus de incarnatione Domini et de aliis aritulis fidei. Non enim semper disputations theologicae sunt in genere deliberativo, sed pleraeque in genere demonstrativo, id est, non ad consultandum, sed ad docendum susceptae’ (Vitoria 1967, 10).

25 A letter from the king, announcing that royal approval was required before the Spanish titles could be discussed publicly, was sent to the prior of the monastery of San Esteban in Salamanca (Vitoria 1967, appendix 5, 152–53). Vitoria was well aware that public declarations could have unforeseen consequences, and he altered his relections, including his relectio De temperantia, before allowing them to circulate in manuscript form. He trusted only select acquaintances like Miguel de Arcos with the original texts (Beltrán de Heredia 1930, especially 156–63). Vitoria’s caution was at least partly justified, given that, decades after his death, the 1557 Lyon edition of his relections was included in the 1590 Roman Index, although it would be removed shortly thereafter (Bujanda 1994, 316–17).

26 Vitoria mentioned the paucity of his publications in the letter to the lady from Salamanca that prefaced his Confessionario: ‘Por escrivir algo que haga al caso, dexo de escrivir mas vezes, y quanto mas tardo, menos hallo que dezir’ (1564, a2r).

27 Vitoria’s thorough preparation of the text of his relections suggests that he intended to publish them (Belda Plans 2000, 334).

28 William Clark has proposed an engaging Weberian interpretation of academic authority that focuses on German Protestant universities, which, he argues, are the origin of our present concept of a research university (2006, 14–19). He also discusses the emergence of new criteria for the appointment of university professors—including fame and publications—in eighteenth-century Germany (257–61).

29 Clark has called the Jesuit education program a radical example of rationalization (2006, 21).

30 Azor served on the first committee that drafted what would become the ratio studiorum.

31 These anecdotes, which together suggest a literary genre or subgenre along the lines of biography, convey the point of view of the theologian or his school of thought. Martín de Azpilcueta, a professor of canon law in Salamanca, provided an example that comes from the Thomist tradition and is close to Salamanca (1572, 224). Azpilcueta reported that a gentleman once asked Cardinal Cajetan why Aquinas and the cardinal himself had neglected to mention murmuratio when discussing particular sins. Cajetan responded that murmuratio was inherent in every sin of the tongue and therefore should not be considered a genus or species of sin. The anecdote is Azpilcueta’s attempt to dispel a widespread misconception of sinful acts, but it can also be read as a parable of the enduring power of the Thomist tradition for theologians responding to contemporary concerns.

32 The Dominican Miguel de Arcos regularly consulted Vitoria on moral cases. He also made a point of preserving Vitoria’s letters and other opinions. For a transcription of Arcos’s trove, see Beltrán de Heredia 1931, 27–50 and 169–80.

33 The ill-fated theologian and archbishop Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda sought his friend Vitoria’s advice on dealing with ‘peruleros’ (Fernández 1914, vol. 1, book 2, chap. 16, 246).

34 An eloquent and elaborate anecdote recorded by Vitoria’s student, the Dominican Thomas de Mercado, is worth quoting in its entirety: ‘Acuerdome de un parescer, y respuesta notable, que se dio los años passados en Salamanca, a un hidalgo, que vino de corte a pedir consejo, al padre maestro Victoria, lumbre que fue en sus tiempos de nuestra España, sobre que movido de passion acuso con falsedad a su adversario, de un infame delicto, por do le avian preso, y le querian justiciar. Respondiole, mi parecer es, que // te dejeys ir al infierno. Atonito el reo de tan absoluta respuesta, preguntole: no avra algun medio para salvarme? Respondio el mas cierto a mi juyzio es condennaros. Despedido y medio desesperado fuesse al maestro Castro, varon en letras muy eminente, relatandole juntamente el caso, y la resolucion primera. Dixole, el os ha respondido con gran prudencia, viendo en vos y vuestro trage, que lo que soys obligado a hazer, que es desdeziros ante el juez no lo aveys de hazer, y no haziendolo no ay salvaros’ (Mercado 1571, book 6, ch. 1, 130v–31).

35 These condensed vignettes dispense with the physical descriptions common in popular tradition to focus instead on the Master’s opinion and its delivery. In form, they closely resemble the biographical species of ‘dichos y hechos’ that kept alive the memory of famous individuals. Fernando Bouza’s study of biographical sketches of members of the Spanish nobility is useful in thinking about these narratives (2001, 215–32).

36 Maravall has pointed out that Medieval letrados, who came to be defined by their function as counselors in royal government circles, were novel figures, unlike traditional wise men and humanists (1973, 367). Along similar typological lines, biographers but also colleagues, friends, and acquaintances built the figure of Vitoria around his close identification with the university, and especially the discipline that was still considered the highest among the sciences, as Vitoria reminded the audience of his relectio De potestate civile (1991, 3). The transformation of the humanists over the course of the sixteenth century produces another figure or persona that exemplified the reordering and emergence of new disciplinary fields, both inside and outside universities, with growing autonomy from the Church and, in some countries, the government (Shank 2015). Vitoria is not quite a humanist, nor is he the humanist’s descendants, the homme de lettres or ‘man of science’ (Clark 2008, especially 211–14 and 218–20). During their formative years in Peru, the Jesuits discussed the need for ‘padres de letras’ to deal with the moral issues posed by Spanish colonists.

37 Critics have long questioned both the depth of Las Casas’s familiarity with legal and theological sources and the way he deployed and interpreted them. Decades ago Lewis Hanke (1968a) reviewed these longstanding charges and provided some preliminary and general responses. On the persistence of these charges in scholarship, see Hanke (1968b). Following Helen Rand Parish, José Alejandro Cárdenas Bunsen (2011) has placed the question to rest through a meticulous reconstruction of the canon law sources that informed the evolution of Las Casas’s thought on Spanish titles. With characteristic sharpness and economy, Brian Tierney has called attention to Las Casas’s original use of legal texts (1997, especially 280).

38 Records discovered by Helen Rand Parish show that Las Casas obtained two degrees in canon law, one as a bachiller, the other as a licenciado. Parish planned to publish these findings, but they never made it to the press (Parish and Weidman 1992, 133–34). In his recent biography of Las Casas (2012), Clayton disputes that Las Casas received a degree from Salamanca, but it is not entirely clear whether he concedes that Las Casas took university courses (83).

39 Cárdenas Bunsen has deftly made this point (2011, 390–91 n.20).

40 ‘Yo he escripto muchos pliegos de papel y pasan de dos mill en latín y en romance, de los cuales han visto muchos los más doctos teólogos de acá y se han leído a la letra en las cátedras de las universidades de Salamanca y de Alcalá, y en nuestro colegio muy largamente’ (Las Casas 1957–1958, 5:470). The Dominican had good reason to boast, as Cárdenas Bunsen has shown in his careful analysis of the impact of Las Casas’s arguments on theologians such as Melchor Cano and Domingo de Soto (2011, 357–94). Las Casas’s almost unmanageable literary output is in contrast to Vitoria’s, whose concise vignettes eschew scholastic trappings. Motolinía mocked Las Casas’s excesses in an unflattering portrait of the Dominican friar as he travelled with a vast library carried by the Indians he so passionately defended.

41 The ratio studiorum contemplated two years of study of cases of conscience, in addition to attendance at regular meetings on moral cases presented by students, priests, and some faculty members (Pavur 2005, rules 18–21, 12–13).

42 According to minutes of committee meetings, the University of Salamanca appointed a committee in November 1547 to decide whether Sepúlveda’s work should be published; the university received the final report eight months later (Peña 1982, 1:499–500). Some faculty members did not want to endorse their colleagues’ conclusion because they were unfamiliar with both the work in question and the royal provision that called for its examination (503).

43 Cano acknowledged the partial accuracy of the rumor, but disputed the public nature of his comments, telling Sepúlveda that he had only shared them with a very small group of students (Sepúlveda 1995–2013, vol. 9, part 2, letter 81, 216). Sepúlveda had pegged his hopes on the 1550 Junta de Valladolid, where the theologians considered his opinion on the Crown’s just titles of conquest. The junta has therefore acquired the aura of a judicial proceeding in the popular imagination, with the Spanish humanist in the role of defendant. In reality, however, the format of the junta was that of the familiar university disputatio.

44 For an overview of the development of theology in Mexico during colonial times, see Torre Villar 1991. For a comprehensive survey of theology—especially moral theology—in early colonial Spanish America, see Saranyana 1999–2007, volume 1.

45 Veracruz, who had earned the degrees of master of arts and doctor of theology, began teaching at the University of Mexico that same year (Plaza y Jaén 1931, 1:17).

46 He declined the bishoprics of Tlaxcala, Michoacán, and León, in Nicaragua (Grijalva 1985, 402).

47 The third archbishop of Mexico, Pedro Moya de Contreras, apparently sought advice on cases of conscience from the Jesuit Pedro de Hortigosa, reader of theology at the Jesuit Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico (Plaza y Jaén 1931, 1:114). In Spain, Hortigosa replaced Azor as professor of moral theology at the University of Alcalá. On Moya de Contreras’s request for teaching by the Jesuits, see the ‘carta anua’ from 17 April 1582 (Monumenta Mexicana 1956–[1991], 2:75). On the changing relationship between the Crown and Spanish universities in the early modern period, see Carabias Torres (1989).

48 Ovando offered Veracruz the bishoprics of Michoacán and Puebla de Los Angeles (Plaza y Jaen 1931, 1:17). As visitador (inspector), Ovando had been appointed by the king to reform the Council of the Indies; he became president of the council in 1571 (Poole 2004, 156). He took on the ambitious task of compiling the existing legislation on the Indies, a project he never finished (Sánchez Bella 1987). Angel Martín González (1978) has edited the first book of the code. For the correspondence between Veracruz and Ovando, see Veracruz 1968–1972, 5:37–47.

49 His Recognitio summularum and Dialectica resolutio cum testu Aristotelis were published in 1554. In 1557, the same printer, Ioannes Paulus Brissensis, published his Phisica speculation (García Icazbalceta 1954, 105–8 and 137–41).

50 ‘Y llegando a leer las proposiciones dijo el Padre maestro sin alterarse: Pues a la buena verdad que me pueden quemar a mi si a él lo queman, porque de la manera que él lo dice lo siento yo. Con todo esto no quiso hacer en esta occasion lo que hacía en todas las demás: porque no habló más en la material, por el respeto que se le debe a aquel tribunal santo, hasta que últimamente dio la sentencia tan honrosa para el padre Maestro León y tan alegre para nuestra Religión’ (Grijalva 1985, 401). As a professor of sacred scriptures, Veracruz was particularly interested in Fr. Luis de León’s thoughts on biblical interpretation; in turn, Fr. Luis de León shared his work with Veracruz in manuscript form and sought his opinion (Alcalá 1996).

51 By the fifteenth century, it had become the norm in Italian and French university classrooms for the professor to dictate the text under study to his class. This practice later spread to other countries and replaced the traditional system of peciae (Hamesse 1989, 181). In order to preserve the integrity and accuracy of the text, dictation or pronuntiatio was slow and deliberate. University authorities, worried that dictation was vulnerable to abuse because it took up significant class time, issued guidelines and even banned dictation outright in some colleges (Hamesse 1989, 188–92). On the move toward the use of writing and visual aids in the Medieval classroom, see Illich 1993, 91–92. In Spain, dictation was permitted in the faculties of theology (Getino 1930). On the use of dictation at the University of Paris, see Villoslada 1938, 308–15. There is some disagreement over what constituted dictation. While Villoslada claims that Vitoria dictated all his lectures, from his first course in 1526, Barrientos García, in a more recent and highly illuminating essay on the activities of Fr. Luis in Salamanca, has pointed out that Vitoria moved from a slow style of delivery early in his career to full dictation during the academic year 1539–1540 (1996a). Barrientos García has also painstakingly reconstructed Fr. Luis de León’s academic activities in Salamanca (1996b).

52 After much opposition from professors and students, a more lenient policy was adopted for the faculty of theology. On the controversy over dictation in the teaching of law and theology in Salamanca, see Barrientos García 1996a, 98–105.

53 On the authority of eyewitness accounts in Las Casas and Oviedo, see Pagden 1993, 51–87.

54 On the measures that Montúfar took against Veracruz for his position on tithing, see Burrus’s introduction to De decimis (Veracruz 1968–1972, 4:65).

55 For a general discussion of the Augustinians from Salamanca in Spanish territories overseas, see Pereña 1990.

56 The Augustinian chronicler Juan de Medina claimed to have seen this dictionary in 1612 (1892–1893, 4:54).

57 The instructions from 1564 include the following recommendation: ‘Try the best you can to use all means to make peace and friendship with the natives, presenting to those whom you consider to be nobles and chiefs the letters of his majesty which you have for them, putting first the addresses and then closing them. Convey to them the good will and love His Majesty has for them, offering them some gifts, as you would like it to be done, and treating them very well’ (The colonization and conquest of the Philippines by Spain 1965, 21). The instructions to Legazpi contain some guidelines that would be included in the royal ordinances issued in 1573 regarding all future overseas expeditions and conquests (Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar 1885–1932, 3:142–87).

58 ‘otros papeles y libros y tablas muchas astronómicas, por mí inventadas se me han perdido en la mar y quemado quando Limahón quemó la casa de Manila. La prolixidad del tornarlas a hazer, me espanta. Si por ay uviesse alguno que pretendiesse que escriviesse yo sobre alguna cosa, sería incitar el ingenio a ynventar algo que se entorpesce y encoge, no aviendo quien lo aguije. También me ha de ocupar gran summa de observations que S. M. me embía a mandar que haga, a petición de un Juan Baptista Jesio que yo no conosco; y ocuparme ha más, por la falta que tengo de instrumentos, para hazerlas: que havré primero de hazerlos’ (Veracruz 1968–1972, 5:202). For other scientific works by Rada, see his first letter from 1576 (Veracruz 1968–1972, 5:196).

59 For a masterful account and analysis of the problems the missionaries faced in the Philippines, and the legacy of Las Casas and Vitoria among them, see Phelan 1957. See also Costa 1961, 15–36.

60 ‘La de V. P. rescebí, do, con ánimo paternal, nos avisa que no nos perdamos por absolver al que está en mal estado’ (Veracruz 1968–1972, 5:199).

61 ‘El sexto fundamento es que aquí no hablamos en general de todos los ynfieles de las Yndias, por que no se diga que lo que se determinare de unos ha de ser de todos los ynfieles de las Yndias, sino hablaremos de solas las Filipinas, donde se sabe el hecho para fundar el derecho, porque puede ser que lo que ha pasado en otras partes sea muy diferente de lo que se ha hecho y hace en las Filipinas, y así no se podrá hacer consequencia de las unas partes a las otras’ (Salazar 1943, 127).

62 ‘sino que es necesario, juntamente con haber estado allá, haber visto con sus ojos y tocado con sus manos lo que pasa, y haber procurado saber lo que pasó de los mismos indios que la padecieron y lo vieron, y de los españoles que en ello se hallaron’ (Salazar 1943, 128). Salazar, a somewhat divisive figure, inspired strong feelings among the friars in the islands and beyond; see, for example, Veracruz’s stern 1583 letter in defense of the privileges of the religious orders (1968–1972, 5:62–102).

63 See, for example, Rada’s 1569 letter to the Marquis of Falces, the viceroy who succeeded Velasco in Mexico (The colonization and conquest of the Philippines by Spain 1965, 151).

64 ‘Pues como el estando en la China en esta jornada no supiesse estar ocioso determino leer diversos libros en aquella lengua China, y mirando atentamente los ritos y costumbres de aquellas gentes, las recogio en un tratado breve, el qual vino a mis manos, y tomandolo no se quien jamas quiso restituyrmelo, por donde recibi gran tormento, porque desseava escrivir la republica de esta gente’ (Román y Zamora 1595, 3:212v). Román y Zamora, who had known Rada in Toledo, also used material on China that had remained in the hands of Juan de la Rada, the missionary’s brother. In Mexico, Veracruz was kept well informed of problems arising from the publications of his brothers in the order. In a letter dated 29 October 1575, the Biblical scholar and author Lorenzo de Villavicencio informed him of a royal order prohibiting further sales of Román y Zamora’s work (Veracruz 1968–1972, 5:190). On the censorship of Román y Zamora, see Adorno 1992.

65 ‘I write about this distinctly and clearly as one who has dealt and lived with the natives from the beginning. I believe I know their customs more thoroughly than anyone in this land. Any false account might give rise to an occasion to ruin the land’ (letter dated 30 June 1574, in Benítez Licuanan and Llavador Mira 1990–1996, 3:95).

66 On the relationship between ius and factum as Las Casas understood it, see Pagden 1993, 74–75.

67 ‘Escriben también el Padre Sedeño y el Padre Alonso Sánchez que, si la Compañía no toma a cargo indios o no assienta estudios en Manila, no hai para qué estén allí los de la Compañía, porque no tienen qué hacer; porque los españoles son muy pocos, y éstos, lo más ordinario, occupados en tales tratos, que han menester personas de más hancha consciencia que los absuelva’ (Monumenta Mexicana 1956–[1991], 2:439).

68 Vitoria’s sixth title considers the legitimate possibility of a freely elected ruler chosen by the majority (1967, 94–95).

69 ‘Volví (mal dije, pues nunca cesé); proseguí, digo, a la estudiosa tarea (que para mí era descanso en todos los ratos que sobraban a mi obligación) de leer y más leer, de estudiar y más estudiar, sin más maestro que los mismos libros. Ya se ve cuán duro es estudiar en aquellos caracteres sin alma, careciendo de la voz viva y explicación del maestro; pues todo esto sufría yo muy gustosa por amor de las letras’ (Cruz 1957, 447).

70 The fifteenth-century theologian Pedro Martínez de Osma, who taught theology at the University of Salamanca, is generally credited with laying the groundwork for the rediscovery of Aquinas (Andrés Martín 1971, 130).

71 Before they were published, the guidelines drafted by Las Casas circulated in manuscript form during his stay in Mexico (Parish and Weidman 1992, 63–65).

72 On the ripple effect of Las Casas’s stance on restitution among Spaniards in Peru, see Lohman Villena 1966. On the divergent perspectives that Las Casas and Vitoria offered to confessors, see Lohman Villena 1966, 30–32.

73 This brief ‘aviso’ for confessors of encomenderos dates from 1575 and is located in the Archivo de la Orden de Predicadores, Universidad de Santo Tomás, Manila; Signatura: T. VII, Fl.388. Professor Dolors Folch Fornesa has transcribed the document and made it available, along with related documents, at a website sponsored by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra: www.upf.edu/asia/projectes/che/rada12.htm.

74 See Le Goff 1991. Sixteenth-century theologians continued to rely on long-held notions that common abuses were associated with different trades. Francisco de Alcocer responded to critics of his manual for confessors with more detailed guidelines regarding particular trades: ‘De esta doctrina del Spiritu sancto, se aprovechen los tractantes y officiales y todos los que tienen alguna grangeria, o otra manera de vivir: conviene a saber que consulten con hombres doctos y temerosos de dios como usaran de sus tratos officios y grangerias licitamente y sin offender a dios. […] Los officios de los juezes, abogados, escrivanos, y procuradores y los tratos de los mercaderes y cambiadores y algunos otros, suenan mal entre algunas gentes, por creer que no usan dellos bien y sirviendo a dios’ (Alcocer 1568, 6v). The frequent invocation of the king’s conscience among religious and secular writers indicates that even the office of king was not exempt from vulnerability to specific sins; see Reinhardt 2016, 87–105.

75 In a letter to Everard Mercurian, superior general of the order, dated February 1574, de la Plaza wrote: ‘Lo que yo desseo y me parece tengo mucha necesidad de entender de V. P. son los puntos principales de donde se ha de inferior el pro o el contra del punto principal. Porque yo los tengo reduzidos a dos. El primero, si ay cosas que no se pueden tolerar con buena consciencia, y no se pueden remediar ni hablar en ellos sin escándalo ni provecho; y solo éste me parece que basta para la parte negativa del punto principal. El segundo, si ay commodidad para que nuestros ministros sean fructuosos. Este Segundo se ha de entender de la disposición que allá ay; pero el primro entiendo que no. Porque los que allá van no saben más de lo que acá les dizen, y desto entiendo convernía que V. P. mandarse tratar aí, pues está el Padre Gil González estos negocios’ (Monumenta Peruana 1954–[1986], vol. 1, doc. 144, 609). A few months later de la Plaza expressed his doubts in sharper terms: ‘En lo que yo deseo satisfactión es en el punto principal del señorío y dominio universal de aquellos Reinos, porque estando éste llano todo lo demás es fácil de allanar’ (vol. 1, doc 158, 648). Mercurian’s response was direct; he instructed de la Plaza to put any doubts about the king’s titles to rest, since they had been recognized as just (vol. 1, doc. 162, 659). Mercurian recognized the minefield that awaited his brothers in Peru and even banned any member of the order from serving as confessor to the viceroy (vol. 1, doc. 119, 544).

76 On the role of the queen’s confessor in the Spanish court, see Sánchez 1993.

77 With regard to the first half of the seventeenth century, Adriano Prosperi has written with characteristic insight: ‘Doubts and perplexity reigned. The comforting certitude of the self-evidence of truth that had existed during the violent battles of the reformation had now disappeared. When the impulse for general reform passed from a clash of ideas to the governance of society, it lost its way in a tangle of possible directions. Theological battles had become a matter for specialists and no longer prompted the ingenious, even confused, enthusiasms of the past. Anyone charged with the direction of moral conduct (or simply with reflection upon it) had to renounce the grandiose and fascinating simplicity of evangelical models for more tortuous paths’ (1995, 161–62). Hilaire Kallendorf has noted that characters in Spanish Golden Age theater also struggled with doubt (2007). The experience of European missionaries in the sixteenth century is a vitally important chapter in the historical narrative of doubt and the vicissitudes of moral certainty in the early modern period.

78 The creation in Portugal in 1532 of a royal tribunal, the Mesa da Conciência e Ordens, further illustrates this shift.