Martin de Azpilcueta

Martín de Azpilcueta y Jaureguízar C.R.S.A. or Doctor Navarrus (Barásoain, Kingdom of Navarre, December 13, 1492-Rome, June 21, 1586) was a Navarrese priest, theologian, philosopher and economist.

Navarre begat me; Castilla la Nueva educó me in Alcalá; France made me a man; Castilla la Vieja ensalzó me in Salamanca; Portugal honored me and clarified [...] Finally [...] I came to Italy, the most chosen land of the whole world, and lived in the mother and teacher of the orb, Rome.

Apologetic letter to Virrey Alburquerque, 1570.

Biography

Martín de Azpilcueta [also Azpilicueta] y Jaureguízar was born into a noble family from Agramonte of Baztan origin. He is the son of Martín de Azpilcueta and María de Jaureguízar, natives of the palaces of their surnames located in the Baztán valley.

He studied Grammar in Navarre; between 1509 and 1516 he studied Arts, Philosophy and Theology at the University of Alcalá, founded by Cardinal Cisneros, from here he went on to study Canon Law at the University of Toulouse, the most famous at that time for the study of this discipline. In 1518 he obtained the chair of Canons from said university at the age of 26, teaching classes at said university, as well as at Cahors where he stayed for a year, around 1522.

During his stay in Toulouse he was ordained a priest, returning to Navarre in 1523, despite the offers he received to remain at that university. On the return trip, he stopped in Roncesvalles, whose prior was at that time Francisco de Navarra, where he took the habit of the Order of Regular Canons of Saint Augustine when he was 30 years old.

In the company of the prior of Roncesvalles, he went to the University of Salamanca in 1524. While in Salamanca, and even before obtaining a chair there, he was promoted by Charles V to a position on the Royal Council of Navarre and was also granted a canonry in the cathedral of Pamplona, although he refused both charges. In Salamanca he was forced to take a doctorate again in Canons, since this university did not accept the degrees obtained in others.

Resolution of usuras, by "Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro", printed in Estella, in 1565, by Adrian de Antwerp

Treaty of praise and murmuring, by the "Doctor Martin de Azpilcueta Navarro", edited "at the expense of the author", in Valladolid, in 1572

He was a professor in Salamanca for fourteen years, during which time Emperor Charles V attended to listen to him, before whom he spoke about the democratic origin of power. He formed disciples, including Diego de Covarrubias (1512-1577), the Portuguese lawyer Arias Pinelo, Francisco Sarmiento and Pedro de Deza (1526-1600).

By order of the emperor, in 1538, he transferred to the University of Coimbra (Portugal), recently founded by the Portuguese monarchs. Once there, King Juan III granted him in 1538 the chair of Prima de Canones and an annual income of eight hundred and fifty ducats, as well as a cantorry in the cathedral of that city.

During his stay in Coimbra, in addition to his teaching activity, he influenced Portuguese public life as a counselor and confessor to distinguished personalities. He was consulted about various matters by the courts of the Inquisition and they wanted to give him a bishopric, which he refused. After sixteen years of teaching at that University, in 1554, at the age of 62, he retired at the University of Coimbra.

On his return trip to Navarre, he stopped in Valladolid, where the Princess Regent Juana commissioned him to visit two monasteries. One of them was San Isidoro de León, which he had already visited twenty years before. On this occasion he was entrusted with resolving the differences that the religious of the monastery had with their abbot, fulfilling this task with great prudence.

Once in Navarra, he took up residence in his birthplace in Barásoain from 1556 to 1562 where, according to the customs of the time, he took care of three nieces, daughters of two of his deceased brothers, to arrange their marriages, taking charge of the payment of their generous dowries, which ranged between one thousand and one thousand five hundred ducats, being a condition that they marry "with my consent and opinion".

In 1561 he was appointed defense attorney for Bartolomé de Carranza, also from Navarre, from Miranda de Arga, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain since 1557, accused of heresy by the Inquisition and imprisoned for this in 1559; He occupied himself with this task for fifteen years, until Pope Gregory XIII pronounced the final sentence in April 1576, partially acquitting Carranza, since he was declared vehemently suspected of heresy . Exhausted by prison and the bitter trial, Bartolomé de Carranza died a few days later. In 1567 the process had been transferred from the Spanish Inquisition to Rome, which forced Azpilcueta, following his client, to move to this city. Here he established his final residence and spent the last 19 years of his life. He died at the age of 93, on June 21, 1586.

Azpilcueta was proposed to be elevated to the cardinalate twice, but he was prevented by the opposition of Felipe II, who was acting in Rome through the mediation of Cardinal Francisco Pacheco and Ambassador Juan de Zúñiga.

Along with the work required for the defense of the Archbishop of Toledo and the publication of his works, he entered the Supreme Penitentiary Court as a consultant, at the proposal of Pío V and Carlos Borromeo. He was also highly esteemed by Popes Gregorio XIII and Sixto V, who frequently turned to Martín de Azpilcueta for advice. He also had a close relationship with Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Philip Neri.

As stipulated in his will, made on September 7, 1582, he was buried in the church of San Antonio de los Portugueses in Rome.

He was the uncle of the Jesuit missionary Juan de Azpilcueta Navarro.

Thought

As an expert in Moral Theology, he advocated the supremacy of popular power against royal absolutism, emphasized the Law of Peoples as an embryo of International Law and the necessary separation between that of the papacy and kings; At the same time, he proclaimed peaceful coexistence between Christian monarchies, and denounced attitudes among students that today would be branded as xenophobic nationalism; he also opposed torture as a tool of the judiciary and the abuses of the conquest of America.

The seventh respect that raises or lowers the money, which is to have great need and need or copy of it, is worth more where, or when there is great del fault (...) as for the experience it is seen that in France, do there is less money than in Spain, worth much less the bread, wines, cloths, hands and labors of men; and even in Spain, the time that there was less money, for much less were given the sellable things, the hands and the hands. The cause of which is that money is worth more where and when there is lack of it, than where and when there is abundance.

M. de Azpilcueta. Resolution of changes (1556)

Considered both a theologian, jurist and economist. He author of numerous essays. He belonged to the so-called School of Salamanca together with other Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans, long before the founders of Classical Economics (the 18th-century Briton Adam Smith and his followers, among others), who are generally considered to be the initiators of economics. modern, but not.

He dealt with the economic effects of the arrival of precious metals from America, being the first formulator in the history of the quantity theory of money; He noted the difference between the purchasing power of money in different countries depending on the abundance or scarcity of precious metals in them. He defines what was called the scarcity-theory of value in the following terms: "Every commodity becomes more expensive when its demand is stronger and its supply is scarce."

He recognized that money is one more commodity and, as such, it has a value and must be paid for: the interest on the loan.

Works

Manuale de ConfessoriVenice, 1584 (Milano, Fondazione Mansutti).

Consilia et responsa, Lyon, 1594

• Commentrii de PoenitentiaCoimbra, 1542.
• If quando de Rescriptis in causa propria. Cook, 1543.
• Comment [...] on the chapter Inter VerbaCoimbra, 1543.
• Relectio sive iterata praelectio [...] de resit. SpoliatCoimbra, 1547.
• Relectio in cap. Novit [...] de iudicisCoimbra, 1548.
• Comment or repetition of the chapter Quando de consecratione, Coímbra, 1550, Zaragoza, Pedro Bernuz, 1560
• Relectio cap. ita quorundam de IudaeisCoymbra, 1550.
• Relectio in LeviticoCoymbra, 1550.
• Handbook of confessors and penitents or Enchirindion confessariorum, Portuguese edition, Coímbra, 1550; Spanish edition, Salamanca, 1556; Pamplona, Adrian de Antwerp, 1566; 1566 Latin edition, 1573. In 1577, after 25 years of his appearance, he commissioned the Printer of Plantino, in Antwerp, the edition of his Confessors Manual, for which he established a strip of three thousand copies, but the high cost of it forced him to hand over a third of the strip to the printer and while he took charge of the marketing of the rest.
• Five commentsSalamanca, 1556.
• Resolution of usurasSalamanca, 1556. Pamplona, Adrian de Antwerp, 1565.
• Repertoire about theftSalamanca, 1556.
• Ecclesiastical Benefits Income Treaty, Valladolid, 1566.
• Additions to the Confessor Manual1569.
• Commentarii in three De Poenitentia1569.
• Old Chapter and eight of the additions to the Confessor Manual, Valladolid, 1570.
• Response [...] to De redditibus ecclesiasticis1571.
• Commentarius de spoliis clericorumRome, 1572.
• Treaty of praise and murmuring, Valladolid, 1572.
• Commentarius [...] of religions sine debitoRome, 1574.
• Commentrius de silentio in divinis Officciis1580.
• Miscellanea centum de oratione, praesertim de Psalterio et Rosario. Rome, 1586.
• Address of the silence to be kept in the Diuinos Oficios, mainly in the Coro, Salamanca, Pedro Lasso, 1588.
• Commentaria [...] Gregorii IX, ca. 1595.
• Consiliorum sive Responsorum Rome, 1602.
• Disposal of Ecclesiastical Things.
• Commentary on the ex-cops of the clerics.
• Four Regular Comments.
• Human chapter Aures.
• Tractatus de Finibus Humanorum Actuum.
• Penitentiary Treaty,
• Treaty of Indulgence and Jubilee,

His complete works were published in Venice (1598) under the title "Compendium horum omnium Navarri operum".

Martín de Azpilcueta Award

Since 2004, the Government of Navarra, through the Navarre Institute of Public Administration, has annually convened the Martín de Azpilicueta Award for study and research work on Public Administrations, the public sector of Navarra and the Foral Civil Law of Navarre.