Valladolid Debate
The Valladolid Debate was a 16th-century discussion held in Spain to address the treatment of indigenous peoples in the Americas. Led by Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the debate centered on whether indigenous people had souls and the implications for their treatment. It reflected the moral and ethical dilemmas arising from European colonization and the impact on native populations.
7 Key excerpts on "Valladolid Debate"
eBook - ePubA Stumbling Block
Bartolomé de Las Casas as Defender of the Indians
- Mariano Delgado(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- ATF Press Publishing(Publisher)
...Chapter 3 The Truth of the Other The background of the dispute of Valladolid The dispute of Valladolid was convened by Charles V on July 7, 1550 so that Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, outstanding polemicists and spokesmen of the ‘doves’ and the ‘hawks’ regarding the colonial question, could candidly justify their opinions before a commission composed of first-rate jurists and theologians. It took place in two sessions in the Dominican College of San Gregorio and in the nearby monastery of San Pablo. The first session lasted from August 15 until probably the end of September 1550, the second from April 11 until May 4, 1551. The dispute was not a real ‘debate’ since the opponents never set eyes on each other. The Spanish expansion as such was not up for discussion. Both supported the universalization of the Christian religion and Western civilisation, the one only in a peaceful way and after the voluntary consent of those concerned, the other at all costs. Whereas Las Casas wanted to universalize the Christian religion and the achievements of Western civilization ‘for the sake of the other, but not against the will of the other’ and saw the Indians as ‘partners with equal rights’, Sepúlveda championed a ‘Eurocentrism for the sake of the other and, if necessary, against the will of the other’ because he was convinced of the natural inferiority of the Indians. According to him, the best thing for them in the end was to be evangelized and westernized, and one should do this even against their will just as a father must raise his recalcitrant children against their will. Sepúlveda was, however, not bloodthirsty. He rejected the massacres carried out by marauding soldiers in the conquests no less than Las Casas himself. But he considered them to be a necessary evil, a shock therapy, so that the good deeds of Christian civilization could extend as far as the New World...
eBook - ePubSixteenth-Century Mission
Explorations in Protestant and Roman Catholic Theology and Practice
- Robert L. Gallagher, Edward L. Smither(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Lexham Press(Publisher)
...This famous debate occurred in August 1550 in Valladolid, Spain. Sepúlveda was not actually arguing for slavery (very few were so bald-faced) but for a paternalism based on the “childlike” qualities of the Indians who needed Spanish guidance to flourish, and in fact needed conversion (utilizing just war theory to support their reasoning). He stated that the Indians “are as inferior to the Spaniards as children are to adults, women are to men, the savage and ferocious to the gentle, the grossly intemperate to the continent and the temperate and finally, I shall say, [are] almost as monkeys are to men.” 28 Las Casas pushed back using a justice argument as well, but contending that the Indians were actually the just ones, having to defend their lives and their lands from invading Spaniards. In addition, while the Spaniards did have just cause in fighting against atrocities such as cannibalism or human sacrifice, the collateral damage of innocent Indian lives lost was so great that it was not worth it. Finally, he also excused their initial resistance to conversion, claiming that they had an “invincible ignorance.” 29 Their arguments consisted of Aristotelian vs. biblical principles. Sepúlveda, as a humanist, employed the Greek philosopher to justify his hierarchical perspective, that some were “natural slaves” and others were “natural masters.” 30 Las Casas used the imago Dei as found in the Bible to lend dignity to the Indians as equally valuable as the Europeans. Both argued for Spain to have some measure of responsibility over the Indians, but for Las Casas it was limited to evangelistic efforts, whereas for Sepúlveda it justified a feudalistic system. Although neither man definitively “won” the debate, history does lean toward Las Casas’s perspective as having had the greater influence. 31 In addition to this debate, Las Casas’s publication of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552 really helped to shed light on the subject...
eBook - ePub- David T. Orique(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The monarch called this assembly to assess the legitimacy of Spain’s rights and the ethical basis of Spain’s actions in the Indies. Sepúlveda and Las Casas famously presented their opposing views of the Indigenous peoples’ humanity as part of their response to the monarch’s query (Figure 4.1). 74 Figure 4.1 Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. “Retratos de Españoles ilustres.” Published by the Real Imprenta of Madrid, 1979. Source: Wikipedia. During the mid-1550s, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, a devotee of Aristotle, was the most articulate exponent of the opinion that Indigenous people were slaves by nature, a position espoused a half-century earlier by his mentor, John Major. 75 Sepúlveda also placed them in Aristotle’s third category of barbarians, which he justified by citing their bestial inclinations, undeveloped talents, and perverse customs. 76 The sources for his assessment were primarily Oviedo’s Historia general, which Sepúlveda regarded as “facts,” and the opinions that he garnered, for example, from Vasco de Quiroga who had described how cruel, barbaric, and fierce Indigenous inhabitants of Michoacán were to one another. 77 Sepúlveda also drew on Aquinas’s understanding of barbarians as those lacking the use of reason—those generally “incapable” and mentally deficient—to support his assessment that “they do not live in conformity with natural reason.” 78 He linked this aspect of their savagery to the rough and unsophisticated level of their skills, except, he acknowledged, in manual activities. As “obviously barbarian,” he regarded them as inferior to the Spaniards just as “brute animals [were] to men, women to men, and children to adults.” 79 As natural slaves, they were destined by natural law to obey those who had more developed aptitudes...
eBook - ePubLawful Conquest?
European Colonial Law and Appropriation Practices in Northeastern South America, Trinidad, and Tobago, 1498–1817
- Constanze Weiske(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Oldenbourg(Publisher)
...At the same time, Sepúlveda concedes that prior to the Spaniards’ arrival, Indigenous Peoples had been “lords in their own lands” and had “imperium under the terms of the law of nations which grants rights of occupancy to the first settler”. 165 In turn, the Dominican Bartholomé de las Casas countered Sepúlveda by arguing that the spread of Christianity is an “unjust” cause of waging war and that voluntary consent by Indigenous Peoples to both the conversion to Christianity and Spanish rule presents the only legitimate title, while the Church had no jurisdiction. 166 Moreover, las casas denied “any legitimacy of the Crown’s powers over the natives, on the basis that it had been acquired by force in the absence of consent”, which instead “would be forthcoming without the use of force” and by maintaining “existing native authorities”. 167 From 1560 to 1563, the argument of the Dominican was developed by the Salamanca school, most notably by Juan de la Peña, who confirmed that the Spaniards “have no authority over them” and even argued that Indigenous Peoples “could [also] fight just wars against Christians and be entitled to all the rights”. At the same time, the scholar of Salamanca confirmed Francisco de Vitoria’s “just war” cause of cannibalism in stating that “it was legitimate for the Spaniards to prevent such tribes as the Caribs from eating each other by force”. 168 In result, King Philipp II sided with the Dominican las Casas and the colonial law of Vitoria by issuing the royal decree Ordenanzas de Descubrimiento, Nueva Población y Pacificación de las Indias (Ordinances of Discovery, New Population and Pacification of the Indies) of 13 July 1573, which confirmed the replacement of “conquest” by “pacification” and completely prohibited the “conquest of the Indians ‘by fire and by sword’”. 169...
eBook - ePubJust War Thinkers
From Cicero to the 21st Century
- Daniel R. Brunstetter, Cian O'Driscoll, Daniel R. Brunstetter, Cian O'Driscoll(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Sepúlveda's arguments earned him the wrath of las Casas, and caused a national controversy. Las Casas feared what might happen if Sepúlveda's views came to be accepted as the standard of jus ad bellum, believing they would “infect the minds of readers, deceive the unwary, and arm and incite tyrants to injustice” (Ibid., pp.18–19). In 1550, King Charles V called for the Valladolid Debates to settle the controversy. Controversies Las Casas begins his Argumentum apologiae adversus Genesium Sepúlvedam theologum cordubensem (the English version is titled In Defense of the Indians), which he composed for the debates, with a promise to repudiate the four causes of just war Sepúlveda put forth to justify the conquest of the Indians (las Casas, 1999). 2 To understand las Casas's contribution to the just war tradition, we need first to revisit the contribution of Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda's arguments at Valladolid were presented orally and not transcribed; however, his Democrates Secundus de justis belli causis (Democrates Secundus, or On the Just Causes of War) offers a template from which we can garner his understanding of just war (Sepúlveda, 1984). 3 Sepúlveda begins by delimiting the “great question” that concerned thinkers of this time period: Whether the war with which the Kings of Spain and our compatriots have subdued and look to subdue under their dominion the barbarian peoples who live in western and southern region, called communally Indians in Spanish is just or unjust, and based on what right can one found an empire over these peoples. (Sepulveda, 1984, p.1) In addressing this dilemma, it is important to note that Sepúlveda clearly knows the traditional arguments for just war circulating at the time. He turns to Augustine, St. Isidore and Innocent as his main authorities, explicitly stipulating there is a difference between waging war for “just causes” compared to war waged for the wrong reasons (Ibid., p.4)...
eBook - ePub- J. S. Cummins, J. S. Cummins(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...392—410. 2 Roberto Levillier, Francisco de Toledo (Madrid, 1935) pp. 198—205, 276—295. 3 See the ‘tratado de docedudas’ in Bartolomé de las Casas, Obrasescogidas (Biblioteca de autoresespanoles, 5 vols., Madrid, 1957). V. 485—534; for the attack on Las Casas see the text of ‘ Anónimo de Yucay (1571)’ ed. Josyane Chinese in Hisioria y Cultura 4 (Lima, 1970) pp.105—152. 4 Bartolomé de las Casas, Hisioria de lasIndias (3vols., Mexico, 1951) III, 92—100. 5 Ibid., II, 264. 6 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Hisioria general y natural de lasIndias (Biblioteca de autoresespanoles, 5 vols., Madrid, 1959) on Indians I, 31, 67—8, 112, 124; on tortures etc.III, 235. 7 The text of these laws can be found in L.B. Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain, (Berkeley, 1966) pp.32—35. 8 These memorials are printed in Las Casas, Obrasescogidas, V, 6 — 39. 9 For the Cumanáepisode see Las Casas, Historia, III, 368—86; Oviedo, Hisioria general II. 194—99; and Marcel Bataillon, Estudios sobre Bartolomé de las Casas (Barcelona, 1976) pp.45—179. 10 Oviedo, Historia general, IV, 97,259—63. 11 Jerónimo de Mendieta, Historiaeclesiásticaindiana, (Mexico, 1971) pp.210—11. 12 On the mendicant mission see Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley, 1966) and George Kubler, Mexican Architecture in the Sixteenth Century (2 vols., New Haven, 1948). 13 See also Silvio Zavala, Sir Thomas More in New Spain. A Utopian Adventure of the Renaissance (London, 1935). 14 Mendieta, Historiaeclesiástica, pp. 222, 250. 15 On Sahagún see Munro S. Edmonson (ed.) Sixteenth Century Mexico. The Work of Sahagún (Albuquerque, 1974). 16 See Ricard, Spiritual Conquest pp. 269—72; and N.M. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule (Princeton, 1984) pp.286—318. 17 Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Late Middle Ages...
- Lawrence A. Clayton, Lawrence A. Clayton(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...One student of the phenomenon styled the Christianization of the Americas a “spiritual conquest.” 6 There was another battle at stake during the Conquest, and this was the struggle to reconcile the Spanish desire to exploit the Indians and the wealth of the Americas with an equally strong commitment on the part of some truly to convert the Indians to Christianity peacefully. In a larger context, it is the eternal struggle of humankind to reconcile one’s cosmological being with one’s worldly nature, and put each in harmony with the other. Historiographically, it is one of the most fascinating discourses in the history of the Conquest, for it pits the competing natures of men against each other, one side responding to the desire for self-aggrandizement, wealth, and power in this world, and the other devoted to the concerns of the spiritual world governed by God. Las Casas, too, struggled between his worldly and his spiritual nature. Figure 2.2 Statue of Antonio de Montesinos, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He delivered the sermon in the Christmas season, 1511, that struck the first chord for human rights in the Americas. Available at: http://images.google.com/images?q=image%20antonio%20de%20montesinos&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi. Image not available in this digital edition Although he also held an encomienda and kept Indians in semi-bondage, he was a man being transformed. He could not escape the images of his early years on the island, of dead and dying women and children and the brutalization of these innocent souls by his fellow settlers. Nor could he escape his growth as a child of the Church...
