Francisco de Vitoria (Burgos or Vitoria, 1483 - 1486 - Salamanque, the August 12th 1546) was a Spanish theologist. Entered the Dominican order in 1504, it exerts a great influence on the intellectual life of its time.

Biography

Wire of Pedro de Vitoria and Catalina de Compludo, it enters to the Dominican convent of Burgos in 1505. Sent to Paris in 1508, it there studies the Théologie, and is in particular the pupil of Jean Feynier and Pierre Crockaert. It binds with Juan Luís Vives, present in Paris of 1508 with 1512. As of 1516, Francisco de Vitoria teaches with the Sorbonne, and receives finally its doctorate in theology in 1522.

The following year, of return in Spain, he teaches this discipline with Valladolid, before obtaining the pulpit of theology of the Université of Salamanque three years later. The Summa Theologica of saint Thomas d' Aquin is for him the reference book of theology, and he endeavors to generalize of it the use at the expense of the Sentences of Pierre Lombard, which then were more usually studied. Because of the considerable prestige of Salamanque in Spain and Europe at the 16th century, it contributes of this fact to the adoption of the Thomisme by most of the European catholic theologists.

He is the inspirer of the school of Salamanque, within which many theories were elaborate considering the economy from a moral point of view. The catholic doctrines of its time regarded the desire of enrichment of the traders as a sin, and those were addressed to him to solve their scruples of conscience, which involved it to be interested in the economic questions. For Vitoria, the natural order rests on the freedom of circulation of the people, the goods and the ideas; in this way, the men can know each other all and sundry, thus increasing the reciprocal feeling of fraternity. What implies that the traders cannot be rejected on the moral level, but that on the contrary they serve the general wellbeing.

Vitoria also studies the sources and the limits of the civil authority and the ecclesiastical capacity: it rejects certain medieval theories according to which the emperor or the pope would have been founded to exert a universal supremacy. For him, the civil capacity is subjected to the spiritual authority of the Papauté, but not to its temporal authority.

It is also interested in the rights of the Indiens. In its De Indis , Vitoria expresses its point of view on the many excesses made by the Spanish Conquistador S in America. He affirms that the Indians are not lower beings, but has the same rights that any human being, and is the legitimate owners of their grounds and their goods. With Bartolomé de Las Put, it exerts its influence near Charles Quint during the adoption of the Nouvelles Laws on the Indies , which place the Indians under the protection of the Crown.

He is one of the principal theorists of the Guerre right. In Of swears belli , it studies the limits of the use of the force to regulate the quarrels between people. It is licit to make the war, but it can be started to only answer in a way proportioned an attack. Thus, it is not licit to make the war because of religious divergences, or to annex a territory.

In Of potestate civili , it establishes the theoretical bases of the modern International law, of which it is regarded today as one of the founders, with Hugo Grotius. It was one of the first to propose the idea of a community of the people based on the natural right, and to consider that the international relations cannot simply rest on the use of the force. While Machiavel considers the State as a morally autonomous unit (which could not thus be judged according to external standards), Vitoria shows that its action in the world is subjected to limits morals.

Works

• Of potestate civili , 1528

• Of potestate Ecclesiae , 1532
• De Indis , 1532
• Of Swears belli Hispanorum in barbaros , 1532
• Relectiones Theologicae , 1557
• Summa sacramentorum Ecclesiae , 1561