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Francisco de Vitoria

Type Figure Region Spain Time c. 1483–1546 Also known as Vitoria

Francisco de Vitoria was a 16th-century Spanish Dominican theologian and jurist of the Salamanca School, hailed as a pioneer of international law.

Timeline

  1. c. 1483–1526Burgos · CastileBorn in Burgos, he studied in Paris and elsewhere before returning to Spain, taking the theology chair at the University of Salamanca in 1526 and gradually establishing a scholastic teaching system centered on natural law.
  2. 1539–1540Salamanca · CastileIn 1539 at Salamanca he delivered his famous lecture on the rights of indigenous peoples and the legitimacy of Spanish conquest (Relectio de Indis), arguing that natives possessed full personhood and property rights and limiting military conquest in the name of spreading the faith.
  3. 1541–1546Salamanca · CastileFrom 1541 to 1546 he continued to lecture on the law of war, the law of trade, and international relations; his lectures were posthumously collected as De Jure Belli and other works, and in the 1540s he was one of the core academic voices in the Spanish colonial ethics debate.

Sources