Roots of medieval scholastics in the Valladolid controversy about the legitimacy of the conquest of the indies

Abstract

The Valladolid Debate (1550-51) was the emperor's consultative forum, of a legal, philosophical and theological nature, for the controversy over the legitimacy of the Conquest of the Indies. The contenders –  the Dominican Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, as representative of a good part of the Church and Doctor Sepúlveda, as humanist and defender of the encomenderos – debated about indigenous rights, civilization and barbarism, or the right to a just war against the indigenous. Little has been analyzed of medieval thought in this controversy, which Zabala, Dussel and Mignolo consider the framework of early modernity. The corpus analyzed is Sepulveda's Democrates Alter and Las Casas' Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies, as an idealizer, theoretician and defender of indigenous rights and Sepulveda as the alma mater of modern imperial thought (RODRIGUES, 2006, 2010) and of the Revolution of the Twelfth Replica of Las Casas with regard to the final and surprising evolution of Las Casas' thought on the Conquest of the Indies (VIDAL APRIL, 1984). It is concluded that there is a considerable influence of medieval and Thomistic thought, especially in both contenders of the debate on the Conquest of America.