Juan Gines de Sepulveda

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. José Maea drawing, ca. 1796.

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (Pozoblanco, Córdoba, 1490 – November 17, 1573) was a Spanish Catholic priest known for his role as a philosopher, jurist and historian, and his opposition to Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, during the Controversy or Junta de Valladolid (1550-1551), defending the war against the natives in order to achieve their forced conversion. Sepúlveda was a defender of the right of conquest, colonization, forced conversion and colonial slavery.

Biography

Born in Pozoblanco, Córdoba, he was known in Italy as "Ginés el amputado". He completed his first studies in Córdoba and since 1510 at the recent University of Alcalá de Henares, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in Arts and Theology; there he had among his teachers the anti-erasmian Sancho Carranza de Miranda. In 1515 he went to Bologna, where he received his doctorate in both disciplines. He made some friends, like the humanist Luis de Lucena, soon standing out for his erudition in classical languages. He was a student of the famous Royal College of Spain in Bologna, created by Gil de Albornoz, and which still exists, and at that time wrote the biography of its founder, De vita et rebus gestis Aegidii Albornotii . During his stay in Bologna he came into contact with the humanist currents and obtained the protection and friendship of Alberto Pío, Prince of Carpi, also anti-Erasmian. He also knew Julio de Médicis and Adriano VI.

His interest in Aristotle led him to translate his Politics (1548), and the defense of the subjugation of inferior cultures contained in this book would later influence him in sustaining the legitimacy of the Conquest of America in order to infuse the Indians with a superior and Christian culture. In this same spirit he attended the lessons of the famous Pietro Pomponazzi. When the prince retired to France after the sack of Rome in 1527, Ginés moved to Naples alongside Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio), who commissioned him to review the Greek text of the New Testament. He accompanied Cardinal Francisco de los Ángeles Quiñones to Genoa, in charge of fulfilling Charles V, and the emperor was so taken with him that he appointed him his chronicler. His role as opposed to ecclesiastical reforms led him to combat the thought of Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose idea of free will he did not share, and to refute Luther. He also defended Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of the Catholic Monarchs and Spanish wife of Henry VIII, in his work Antapologia pro Alberto Pio, comite Carpensi, in Erasmum Roterodamum (Rome and Paris, 1532). In 1535 he was appointed chaplain and chronicler by Carlos I. He returned to Spain, where he was later named tutor to the future Felipe II. Antonio Ramírez de Haro, bishop of Segovia, had the work on which his doctrines on the conversion of infidels were based condemned by the universities of Salamanca and Alcalá, and Sepúlveda then withdrew from court to his hometown of Pozoblanco, devoting himself to writing. the historical works that have given him his great reputation, and there he died.

Mission of the Indies

He wrote a panegyric chronicle about the emperor, De rebus gestae Caroli Quinti. Also a history of the conquest of the New World, De rebus hispanorum gestis ad Novum Orbem Mexicumque, and became the official defender of the conquest, colonization and evangelization of the native population of America, justifying the right of some peoples to submit to others due to their superior civilization or the right of the dominator over the dominated to evangelize them and elevate them to the same height, because they were uncivilized peoples, contrary to the natural law opinion of Francisco de Vitoria. He also wrote a History of the Indian War.

It was contrary to the spirit of the "New Laws" from 1542, like the encomenderos, who achieved their repeal by the viceroys in America, which led to the return to Spain of Bartolomé de las Casas. Sepúlveda published his De justis belli causis apud indios (1550) and Las Casas replied with his Thirty very juridical propositions, which led to a meeting of theologians being held in Valladolid (Junta de Valladolid) between the months of August and September 1550 with the aim of resolving the dispute, which received the name of "controversy of the natives" or "of just titles". Domingo de Soto, Bartolomé Carranza and Melchor Cano participated in the meeting, later replaced by Pedro de la Gasca. Sepúlveda, a supporter of an Aristotelian consuetudinarismo and of the reason of state of Nicholas Machiavelli,^{[citation needed]} defended his ideas on the justice of the war against the Indians because of their cannibal customs and human sacrifices, due to their cultural inferiority and to avoid wars between them. In addition, he believed that the conquests were necessary for the cultural advancement of Spain, in such a way that civilization was equivalent to the right of the dominator over the dominated to evangelize him and elevate him to the same height; His rival Las Casas advocated the gender equality of the human being regardless of any political position, and the need for the Spaniards to leave America, limiting themselves to sending preachers to evangelize, without any military support. There was no final resolution, and each of the opponents was considered the winner. Sepúlveda did not fail, however, to point out how much his failure as encomendero marked Las Casas:

Failed the company that had brought him to the New World and lost the troop of peasants that Carlos gave him as young to, he said, do great things, he had become friar. This one, moved by mercy to the barbarians and by religion (or by the desire for disturbances, to which he was very fond, because he was seditious by nature), returned to Spain, with his friend Rodrigo de Andrada informed the Emperor, taking as a witness to Rodrigo, of the calamities of the barbarians, and showed that many islands and even part of the continent of very populated had been reduced to deserts by the wrongdoing.

Acts of the Emperor Charles VBook XXI

If by his thought Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was an Aristotelian and a follower of Nicholas Machiavelli,^{[citation required]} due to his Latin style he is in favor of Ciceronian imitation and therefore such an enemy of Erasmian eclectic imitation. He translated, in addition to Aristotle's Politics , also other books of the Stagirite and the Commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias to Metaphysics .

With perfect right the Spaniards prevail over these barbarians of the New World and adjacent islands, which in prudence, ingenuity, virtue and humanity are as inferior to the Spaniards as children to the adults and women to the men, or the Black to the whites, there are as much difference between them as the one that goes from fierce and cruel people to the very people.

What could happen to these barbarians more convenient or healthier than being subjected to the empire of those whose prudence, virtue and religion are to convert them from barbarians, such that they hardly deserved the name of human beings, into civilized men as soon as they can be?

For many reasons, therefore, and very serious, these barbarians are bound to receive the empire [imperium] of the Spaniards, [...] and they must be even more profitable than the Spaniards, [...] and if they refuse our empire they can be compelled by the weapons to accept him, and it will be this war, as before we have declared with authority of great philosophers and theologians, just by natural law.

The first [reason of the justice of this war of conquest] is that being by barbarous nature, unseen and inhumane, they refuse to admit the empire of those who are more prudent, powerful and perfect than them; an empire that would bring them great utilities, magnificent comforts, being also fair by natural law that matter obeys the form.

Of the just cause of war against the Indians

Works

Liber gesturerum Aegidii Albornotii, 1521

Cover of the book Epistolarum libri septempublished in 1557.

The City Council of Pozoblanco has published its Complete Works in fifteen volumes:

• volume I, De rebus gestis Caroli V (libri I-V)
• volume II, De rebus gestis Caroli V (libri VI-X)
• volume III, Democrats II, Apology
• volume IV, De rebus gestis Philippi II
• volume V, De vita et rebus gestis Aegidii Albornotii
• volume VI, De regno, De ritu nuptiarum, Gonsalus
• volume VII, Antapolofia, De correctione, Cohortatio
• volume VIII, Epistulae
• Volume IX, Epistulae
• volume X, De rebus gestis Caroli V (libri XI-XV)
• volume XI, Orb Novo
• volume XII, De rebus gestis Caroli V (libri XVI-XX)
• volume XIII, Democrats I, Fao, Theophilus
• volume XIV, De rebus gestis Caroli V (libri XXI-XXV)
• volume XV, De rebus gestis Caroli V (libri XXVI-XXX)

The collection closes with a XVI volume with the Biography of Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda written by Santiago Muñoz Machado.

Sepúlveda also arranged Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia de las Indias, and an extensive Epistolario is preserved in seven books that deserves translation. In 1780, Cerdá y Rico reprinted his complete works by order of the Royal Academy of History.

Biography

• De vita et rebus gestis Aegidii Albornotii.

Theology

• De fato et libero arbitrio, libri three (Rome, 1527).

History

• De rebus Hispanicrum gestis ad Novum Orbem Mexicumque.
• De rebus gestis Caroli V (1556).
• De rebus gestis Philippi II (1564).

Controversies

• AntapologyRome, 1532 (antiapology in defense of his friend Alberto Pio, Count of Carpi, against Erasmus of Rotterdam).

Politics

• Democrats, sive de justi belli causis (Rome, 1550), a two-part dialogue on the just causes of the war where it is in favour of higher civilizations submitting to the lower ones; it did not obtain an impression license due to the pressures of its rival Bartolomé de las Casas, although it did manage to publish in Rome its Propology pro book of iustis belli causis.
• De regno et regis officio.
• De convenientia militaris disciplinae cum christiana religione.
• Gonsalus seu de appetenda glory dialogueus.