Vitoria, Francisco de

(c. 1485–1546)

   Philosopher and Theologian.

   Vitoria was born in the Basque country. He joined the Dominican Order in 1504 and he was a student in Burgos and Paris. Subsequently he taught philosophy, first at Valladolid and then at Salamanca. He is remembered as a pioneer of international law and in his published lectures De Indis, De Iure Belli and De Potestate Civili, he argued that there was a natural law of nations. He criticised the conduct of the Spanish in their conquest of the New World and he went further than thomas aquinas in arguing that no war is just which brings serious evil to the world. These ideas were further developed by suarez and grotius. He is also regarded as a forerunner of the Salmanticenses, a group of seventeenthcentury Carmelites, who produced a huge commentary on the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Vitoria used the Summa, rather than the ‘Sentences’ of peter lombard, as his prime theological text book and, after his death, Salamanca became the most important centre of Thomist study in Europe.

   R.C. Gonzales, Francisco de Vitoria (1946) [no English translation available];

   B. Hamilton, Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Spain (1963);

   J.B. Scott, Francisco de Vitoria and his Law of Nations (1934).