School of Salamanca
[1] 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 assaulted by the rise of humanism, by the Protestant Reformation and by the new geographical discoveries and their consequences.
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.
[3][4] 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.
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.
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 (†1604), and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617).
The juridical doctrine of the School of Salamanca represented a profound transformation of medieval concepts of law,[8] with a revindication of liberty not habitual in Europe of that time.
[9] That's how he criticized the new Spanish charities' laws on the pretext that they violated the fundamental rights of the poor,[10] or that Juan de Mariana considered that the consent of population was needed in matter of taxation or money alteration.
[11] 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.
[14] 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.
[18] 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.
[19][20] 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.
[22] The Salamanca scholars debated the moral implications of Spain’s actions in the Americas, including the treatment and enslavement of indigenous peoples.
[22] 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.
Ius peregrinandi et degendi, developed primarily by Francisco de Vitoria in the 16th century, established the universal right to travel and conduct commerce throughout the world, regardless of territorial governance or religious differences.
Vitoria articulated this right in his lectures "De Indis" (On the Indians), arguing that restrictions on free movement and trade violated natural law.
[29] The other cases of this casuistry are: Emperor Charles V, then ruler of Spain, took offense to this doctrine of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" titles purporting to limit his prerogatives, and he tried without success to stop its promulgation.
[37] However, this liberty isn't complete because it cannot overstep the principle of free consent[38] and because the contrat cannot ignore the formalism required by the authorities,[39] or have an immoral object.
[40] The members of the School of Salamanca also thought, following Luis de Molina, that contracts have been established for common utility[41] and consequently, that natural law can't tolerate a privileged party.
[46] In 1517, de Vitoria, then at the Sorbonne, was consulted by Spanish merchants based in Antwerp about the moral legitimacy of engaging in commerce to increase one's personal wealth.
The adherents of the School of Salamanca all agreed that property has the beneficial effect of stimulating economic activity, which, in turn, contributed to the general well being.
Thus observing the effect of American silver and gold arrivals in Spain, namely lessening of their values and augmentation of prices, Martín de Azpilcueta established the idea of a value-scarcity, first form of the quantity theory of money.
The just price is found not by counting the cost but by the common estimation.However, as Friedrich Hayek has written,[54] the school rarely followed this idea through systematically.
In the medieval economy, loans were entirely a consequence of necessity (bad harvests, fire in a workplace) and, under those conditions, it was considered morally reproachable to charge interest.
In the Renaissance era, greater mobility of people facilitated an increase in commerce and the appearance of appropriate conditions for entrepreneurs to start new, lucrative businesses.
Developed principally by Bartolomé de Medina and continued by Gabriel Vázquez and Francisco Suárez, Probabilism became the most important school of moral thought in the coming centuries.
Báñez was then denounced to the Holy Office by Leon, who accused him of "committing the error of Lutheranism", that is of following the doctrines of Martin Luther.
Nonetheless, this did not end the dispute, which Luis de Molina continued with his Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis (1588).
The polemic continued over the course of years, including an attempt by the Dominicans to get Pope Clement VIII to condemn the Concordia of de Molina.
Finally Paul V in 1607 recognized the liberty of Dominicans and Jesuits to defend their ideas, prohibiting that either side of this disagreement be characterized as heresy.
