The School of Salamanca () was an intellectual movement of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish Scholastic theologians rooted in the intellectual and pedagogical work of Francisco de Vitoria. From the beginning of the 16th century, the traditional Catholic conception of man and of his relation to God and to the world had been informed by internal developments in the Italian Renaissance and its humanism, but also been challenged by the Protestant Reformation and the new geographical discoveries and their consequences. These new problems were addressed by the School of Salamanca.
The name is derived from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where de Vitoria and other members of the school were based. The Salamanca School of economic thought is frequently regarded as an early precursor to the Austrian School of Economics. This is due to its development of the subjective theory of value, its advocacy for free-market principles, and its focus on the supply and demand of money—ideas that would eventually contribute to the modern concept of sound money.
Scope of the term Most properly, the term applies merely to the intellectual movement of the early 16th century at the university of Salamanca led by Francisco de Vitoria. The University of Salamanca (Spain) was founded in 1218 and was one of the homes of Thomisitic theology. More broadly, it comprises the bulk of Iberian Renaissance-Scholastic philosophy. In its broadest application, the notion is sometimes applied to the entirety of Second scholasticism, of which Vitoria's career and legacy are but an early, albeit formative part. This, however, is highly misleading, as there are important strands of Second scholasticism, such as the Baroque Scotism, of which connexion to the Salamancan legacy is rather tenuous.
The term most often connotes developments specifically in the fields of philosophy of law and economics associated with Vitoria's legacy; for Scholastic philosophy and theology of the 16th century in general the term "Renaissance Scholasticism" is now preferred by scholars.
History and leading figures The intellectual movement started with Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) and Domingo de Soto (1494–1560), both Dominican Thomists. The Thomist line was continued by the Carmelites Complutenses and Salmanticenses.
In the latter part of the 16th century, the newly founded Jesuits rose to intellectual prominence, with authors such as the Conimbricenses, Pedro da Fonseca (1528–1599), Luis de Molina (1535–1600), Gabriel Vásquez (died 1604) and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617).
With Suárez, however, the intellectual movement had already vastly surpassed its roots and Suárez's legacy defines the transition from Renaissance to Baroque scholasticism of the 17th and 18th centuries, for which the term "School of Salamanca" is no longer appropriate {Citation needed}.
Law Philosophy of law Many leading figures of the school, such as Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Martín de Azpilcueta (or Azpilicueta), Tomás de Mercado, or Francisco Suárez, were not just philosophers and theologians but also jurists and scholars of natural law and of morality. They undertook the adaptation of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas to the then-new political-economic order.
The juridical doctrine of the School of Salamanca represented a profound transformation of medieval concepts of law, with a revindication of liberty not habitual in Europe of that time.
The natural rights of man came to be, in one form or another, the center of attention, including rights as a corporeal being (right to life, economic rights such as the right to own property) and spiritual rights (the right to freedom of thought and to human dignity).
Natural law The members of the School of Salamanca were the first people to develop a modern approach of natural law.
For Domingo de Soto, the theologian's task is to assess the moral foundations of civil law. That's how he criticized the new Spanish charities' laws on the pretext that they violated the fundamental rights of the poor, or that Juan de Mariana considered that the consent of population was needed in matter of taxation or money alteration.
Except for the earlier Laws of Burgos, the views of the Salamanca school constituted a quasi-novelty in European thought and went counter to those then predominant in Spain, and Europe that people indigenous to the Americas had no such rights.
Sovereignty
The School of Salamanca distinguished two realms of power, the natural or civil realm and the realm of the supernatural, which were often conflated in the Middle Ages through granting royal control of investiture of bishops, or the temporal powers of the pope.
One direct consequence of the separation of realms of power is that the king or emperor does not legitimately have jurisdiction over souls, nor does the pope have legitimate temporal power. This included the idea that there are limits on the legitimate powers of government.
Thus, according to Luis de Molina a nation is analogous to the mercantile corporations of his time, in that those who govern are holders of power (effectively sovereigns) but a collective power, to which they are subject, derives from them jointly.
Nonetheless, in de Molina's view, the power of society over the individual is greater than that of a mercantile corporation over its members, because the power of the government of a nation emanates from God's divine power (as against merely from the power of individuals sovereign over themselves in their business dealings).
At this time, the monarchy of England was extending the theory of the divine right of kings—under which the monarch is the unique legatee of God's power—asserting that subjects must follow the monarch's orders, in order not to contravene God's design. Counter to this, several adherents of the School sustained that the people are the vehicle of divine sovereignty, which they, in turn, pass to a prince under various conditions. In this, the late scholastics were instrumental in the development of early modern theories of political representation.
Possibly the one who went furthest in this direction was Francisco Suárez, whose work Defensio Fidei Catholicae adversus Anglicanae sectae errores (The Defense of the Catholic Faith against the errors of the Anglican sect 1613) was the strongest contemporary defense of popular sovereignty. Men are born free by their nature and not as slaves of another man, and can disobey even to the point of deposing an unjust government.Defense of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith against the Errors of Anglicanism - https://www.aristotelophile.com/Books/Translations/Suarez%20Defense%20Whole.pdf - Chapter 2. Part 7.
As with de Molina, he affirms that political power does not reside in any individual, but he differs subtly in that he considers that the recipient of that power is the people as a whole, not a collection of sovereign individuals—in the same way, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of popular sovereignty would consider the people as a collective group superior to the sum that composes it.
Gabriel Vásquez (1549–1604) held that natural law is not limited to the individual, but obliges societies to respect natural rights and justice.
For Suárez, the political power of society is contractual in origin because the community forms by consensus of free wills. The consequence of this contractualist theory is that the natural form of government is either a democracy or a republic, while oligarchy or monarchy arise as secondary institutions, whose claim to justice is based on consent of the governed organized in a political body.
Law of peoples and international law
Francisco de Vitoria played an important role in the early modern comprehension of ius gentium (the rights of nations). He extrapolated his ideas of legitimate sovereign power to relations between nations, concluding that international society as well ought to be ruled by just forms respecting the rights of all. The common good of the world is of a category superior to the good of each state. This meant that relations between states ought to pass from being justified by force to being justified by law and right. Vitoria has been referred to, along with Grotius, as the “father of international law.”
Francisco Suárez subdivided the concept of ius gentium. Working with already well-formed categories, he carefully distinguished ius inter gentes from ius intra gentes. Ius inter gentes (which corresponds to modern international law) was a just agreement among the majority of countries, although being positive law, not natural law, it was not necessarily universal. On the other hand, ius intra gentes, or civil law, is specific to each nation.
Many scholars have argued for the importance of Vitoria and Suárez as the forerunners and founders of the international law field, and the precursors of the seminal text De iure belli ac pacis by Grotius.e.g. James Brown Scott, cited in Cavallar, The Rights of Strangers: theories of international hospitality, the global community, and political justice since Vitoria, p. 164 Others, such as Koskenniemi, have argued that none of these humanist and scholastic thinkers can be understood to have founded international law in the modern sense, instead placing its origins in the post-1870 period.Koskenniemi: International Law and raison d'état: Rethinking the Prehistory of International Law in Kingsbury & Strausmann, The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations, pp. 297–339
Just war
The School of Salamanca made significant contributions to just war theory, particularly in the writings of Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suárez and Luis de Molina. Building on Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo, these scholars developed further the ethics of warfare.
Vitoria argued in his lecture De Indis that a just war requires legitimate authority, a just cause, and proportional means. He opposed wars motivated by religious conversion, territorial expansion, or personal ambition. Additionally, Vitoria held that both Christian and non-Christian societies possessed natural rights, rejecting the concept of natural slavery and affirming the right of indigenous peoples to sovereignty and property.
Suárez and Molina expanded on Vitoria's ideas by making distinctions between natural law and the ius gentium. They proposed that, while natural law is universally binding, ius gentium constitutes a set of agreed-upon principles among nations, laying the groundwork for modern international law. Molina also recognized the possibility that each side in a conflict might perceive its cause as just, adding nuance to the subjective experience of warfare.
The Salamanca scholars debated the moral implications of Spain's actions in the Americas, including the treatment and enslavement of indigenous peoples. Figures like Bartolomé de las Casas advocated for the rights of Amerindians against claims by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who viewed indigenous people as natural slaves. The consensus among Salamanca thinkers, however, was that enslavement based on race or religion was unjustifiable. Instead, they allowed for slavery only under limited conditions, such as capture in a just war, while condemning racial discrimination in enslavement.
These ideas marked a critical shift in moral and legal philosophy, as Salamanca scholars developed frameworks that emphasized universal human rights, dignity and the ethical limitations of warfare, laying the intellectual groundwork for later developments in human rights and international law.
Conquest of America
In the 16th century, the School of Salamanca was the first to use the natural law's principle that rights reside in the individual to question the Spanish colonization on the indigenous people of the Americas.