Talk:School of Salamanca

Whig history?
I'm the person responsible for translating nearly all of this (with a little help from Mpolo. I'm wondering: as I go through this, the School of Salamanca are presented as so uniformly modern in their thinking that I suspect a bit of "Whig history". That is, I suspect that there are some characteristic (but less modern) aspects of their thinking that are left out and perhaps there are even ideas attributed to them here that are not correct descriptions of their own ideas, but instead are extrapolations of the later developments of those ideas. Does anyone know the subject matter well enough to comment? -- Jmabel|Talk 18:23, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)


 * Here's some info from "Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche" (as a translation of copyrighted material, it can't be just quoted, obviously): While the two first generations (of the Salmanticenses) were very creative, B. de Medina and D. Báñez (third generation from F. de Vitoria) received the mission from their religious superiours to collect the unprinted material of their predecessors. Their commentaries to the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas show a notable advance in the formulation of the theological problems. In Báñez, who no longer had the intellectual gifts of F. de Vitoria, there is a notable scholastic spirit (see "dispute over grace"). This was probably the beginning of the fall of the school, although P. de Herrera, F. Araujo, and P. de Godoy remained on a notable high point.


 * On the Coimbricenses (or Conimbricenses) LTK has: These are the editors of the "Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis SJ" on Aristotle in 5 volumes.... The course contains no commentary on the Metaphysics, because this was provided by P. da Fonseca's Metaphysics I-IV. The printing "Colegii Conimbricensis commentarii in universam Logicam" is a private publication of Fonseca's Logic, which was not recognized by the Conimbricenses. Mpolo 13:47, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Merge proposal
There appears to be a duplicate article Salamanca school that is written mostly from an economics perspective. It should clearly be merged here, but since this article is already quite long, I propose the following: Any ideas/objections? jni 11:29, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Split the section "Economics" into its own article with title Economic thought of the Salamanca School or something similar.
 * 2) Merge everything from Salamanca school to that article.
 * 3) Keep Salamanca school as a redirect to this page.


 * I'd have no problem with that. And then have a section in this article saying See main article: Economic thought of the Salamanca School or some such and giving a one-paragraph summary. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:23, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)


 * Argh, I started merging this and was almost finished before I noticed this discussion on the talk page. I figure that rolling back what I already did would be pointless, so I went ahead and finished the merge up. Since I merged the bulk of the other article into the "Economics" section, I'm hoping this won't pose a problem for splitting that section off into its own article as indicated. I apologize for any inconvience and I'm sorry that I didn't read the Talk page first. :\ -- Zawersh 06:09, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Questionable Statement
I find this statement problematic, especially since its scope is unclear: "The School of Salamanca distinguished two realms of power, the natural or civil realm and the realm of the supernatural, which were not differentiated in the Middle Ages." While this may be true as a general rule, it also seems to stretch to Medival thought. Dante in The Divine Comedy expresses a similar need for the seperation of the natural and spiritual, at least until the return of Christ. --chemica 01:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * How about "…which were often conflated in the Middle Ages through doctrines such as the Divine Right of Kings and the temporal powers of the pope"? - Jmabel | Talk 23:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that is more accurate statement. Thank you. --chemica 01:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Another passage is, "The mendicant orders considered the possession of goods and private property as, at least, morally objectionable. In contrast, the Dominicans in general and Thomas Aquinas in particular, defended private property as a morally neutral human institution." The Dominican's ARE mendicants, thus one cannot contrast the mendicants and the Dominicans. The mendicants, at least in general, didn't have a moral problem with private property, but freely gave it up.

I don't understand the comment about the "onslaught of secular humanism." In the Renaissance, humanism was an intellectual practice geared towards, inter alia, the redaction and translation of classical texts. Can someone give me an example of a secular humanist before the sixteenth century? Even if one can be named (Machiavelli?), this is not the best way to frame this problem. It is better to note that the scholastic method (as a method) was criticized for its barbaric language and scholastic content was criticized with a lack of attention to ethical matters, etc.

The whole statement is still quite questionable. As the reference to divine right theory makes clear, the confusions between and confusions of the secular and temporal were actually worse in early modernity than in the mediaeval ages. Vexilloid (talk) 20:44, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Private Property
The first paragraph of this passage is self-contradictory: "The growth of the mendicant orders in the 13th century began a movement that, with ever more force, insisted on poverty and the brotherhood of man, deploring the accumulation of wealth in the Church. The mendicant orders considered the possession of goods and private property as, at least, morally objectionable. In contrast, the Dominicans in general and Thomas Aquinas in particular, defended private property as a morally neutral human institution." The Dominicans (including Aquinas)were mendicants, thus contrasting mendicant teaching as a whole with Thomistic/Dominican teaching is implicitly contradictory. While the mendicants did take a vow of poverty it was not because poperty was viewed as evil, but becasue they wanted to remove the temptaions to greed and arrogance, as well as to generally free them from the concerns of maintaining property to more fully concentrate their efforts on their work. 69.138.210.176 22:05, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a technicality. Kylenielsen (talk) 22:54, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Neo-Austrian retroactive imperialism
It may well be a matter of taste and style, but I think the late Murray Rothbard could have found more modest ways to express his admiration for the insights of the Salamanca School than labelling them proto-Austrians, which is essentially anachronistic and a strange thing to do for an historian of economic thought. Any opinions? Robertsch55 13:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Questionable Statement
So, there is this "Francisco de Vitoria was perhaps the first to develop a theory of ius gentium (the rights of peoples), and thus is an important figure in the transition to modernity." This is not even close. I in no way want to discount the legacy of Vitoria. His influence on Grotius was immense and any work on natural law, international law or Thomas Aquinas should reference him. He might be the "founder" of international law, as Grotius is considered its "father", but Vitoria did not develop jus gentium. the jus gentium or "law of nations" (not the rights of peoples) was Roman customary law, as opposed to jus civile, which was Roman civil law. In addition, modern international law is not just positive law. The number one source of international law are jus cogens norms. Even among the problematic (See Alvarez:IOs as law-makers) sources of international law listed in Article 38 of the ICJ statute only one of the sources is really positive law. The other two principle sources customary law and the general principles of law are generally not codified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.92.76.114 (talk) 03:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced questionable claim
§The conquest of America is not only entirely unsourced, but contains dubious claims such as:

"In this period, in which European colonialism began, Spain was the only western European nation in which a group of intellectuals questioned the legitimacy of conquest rather than simply trying to justify it by traditional means."

That is a HUGE claim, and one I'm not sure is backed up by the facts. Not even one Western European intellectual outside of Spain questioned colonial imperialism? Are you sure? It is also unclear as to when specifically this period refers to. This whole page needs serious rewriting, frankly. &thinsp;&mdash; Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)&thinsp; 05:08, 21 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Mr. Guye puts the finger on a problem that has been troubling the entire article since inception ( translation from the Spanish page in 2004, i.e. uncritical transfer /origination). Unsourced sections of this page have metastasized into other articles, like for example the Just War theory. I ususally try to find and addresse the editor who adds unsourced stuff, but in this case it clearly happened at inception, too late.
 * On the English WP unsourced claims can be so wonderfully tagged (not so in some other language WPs...), so persistently unsourced claims can and absolutely should be deleted!Wuerzele (talk) 10:27, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The former vague and biased statement has been replaced for an improved, cited intro to the section. Agreed that other parts of this page also are badly in need of sources.--Darius (talk) 16:34, 4 November 2022 (UTC)