FRANCISCO de Vitoria. – Dominican theologian, born probably at Vitoria (Álava) c. 1492, died at Salamanca on 12 August 1546.
I. Life
A religious in the convent of St Paul at Burgos, between 1506 and 1510 he was sent to the University of Paris, where his teachers were Peter Crockaert and John Fenario. In 1513, at the General Chapter of Genoa presided over by Cajetan, he was authorised to lecture on the Sentences. During this period of indefatigable application to theological study he supervised the publication of the Summa Theologiae, 2a-2ae (Paris 1511, reprinted 1515), of the Summa compiled by St Antoninus (ibid. 1521) and of the Sermones dominicales of Peter Covarrubias (ibid. 1521). Having obtained academic degrees in 1522, the following year he left for Valladolid, where he taught theology; in 1526 he ascended to the primary chair of theology at the University of Salamanca, which during the twenty years of his teaching made it famous throughout Catholic Europe for the depth of its learning and the charm of its master. Universally esteemed, he was consulted by prelates and princes alike; Charles V designated him as his theologian to the Council of Trent, to which he had also been invited by Paul III. The humble friar replied that he was now on the path to eternity.II. Works
Although he published nothing himself, F. de V. left a considerable body of works, the fruit of his daily and scrupulous preparation for the classroom. The manuscript lectures follow this order: 1526–28: commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 2a-2ae; 1529–31: commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 2a-2ae; 1533–34: commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 2a-2ae; 1534–37: commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 2a-2ae; 1537–38: commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 3a; 1538–39: commentary on the IV Sentences; 1539–40: commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1a. The codices of these lectures, collected by his disciples, are described by Cardinal Ehrle and Fr Beltrán de Heredia O.P. (v. BIBLICA). The latter published the Commentaries on the 2a-2ae of St Thomas in the series Biblioteca de Teólogos Españoles (I–II, Salamanca 1932; III–IV, ibid. 1934; V, ibid. 1935), using ms. 43 of the Library of the University of Salamanca. Many desire an edition that would take account also of the other manuscripts.But what remains most vivid of his work are the Relectiones, to which is bound the truest and most lasting fame of the Spanish theologian. These are a kind of summary lectures on the entire subject matter of the academic year or the treatment of topics of special timeliness, delivered before all the students of the faculty and sometimes of the whole university. The imposing audience demanded in the lecturer a particular mastery of the subject combined with an attractive presentation. These qualities shine in eminent degree in the lucid Relectiones, which were delivered in the following chronological order: De silentii obligatione (Christmas 1527); De potestate civili (Christmas 1528); De homicidio (2 June 1530); De matrimonio (25 January 1531); De potestate Ecclesiae prior (early 1532); De potestate Ecclesiae posterior (May or June 1533); De potestate Papae et Concilii (April–June 1534); De augmento caritatis (2 April 1535); De eo ad quod tenetur veniens ad usum rationis (June 1535); De simonia (May–June 1536); De temperantia (1537–38); De Indis prior (June 1539); De Indis posterior sive de iure belli (19 June 1539); De magia (18 June 1540); De magia posterior (spring 1543). The first and the last no longer exist; according to some they were never written. The thirteen surviving Relectiones had many editions (16 in the 16th–18th centuries): the first (Lyons 1557) appeared eleven years after the author’s death, the best is that of Ingolstadt (1580). Recently Fr Alonso Getino has produced a new complete edition: Relectiones teológicas del maestro fray Francisco de V. (3 vols., Madrid 1933–35). In the author’s intention this is a critical edition, but since it is based on the first licences with reference not always consistent to the other editions and to the codex of Palencia, it falls far short of modern requirements. The following works are also attributed to F. de V.: Confessionario util y provechoso (Salamanca 1562); Parecer que dió el p. m. Francisco de V. sobre si los señores pueden vender y arrendar los oficios (published in the work of D. de Zúñiga, Instrucción y refugio del alma, Salamanca 1552); Summa Sacramentorum Ecclesiae (a synthesis of his lectures compiled by Thomas de Chaves O.P., which between 1560 and 1629 had 34 editions).
III. Method
The lifetime of V. coincided with an age of particular conflicts. The opposition between the old speculative theology of Cajetan and the humanistic and erudite tendencies of Erasmus deeply divided the University of Paris when the Dominican student arrived there. But F. de V., an open-minded man endowed with a particular assimilative power, did not engage in the subtle disputes and severe metaphysical investigations then current in the learned circles of Parisian Humanism. In the various years of his stay in the French metropolis he assimilated the best that contemporary culture had to offer, and on returning to his homeland, almost by a spontaneous movement of his intellect, he fused these conflicting elements into a higher synthesis, in which the solid thread of Thomism was harmonised with the beauties of humanistic style while being enriched by documentation drawn from the sources. Thus at Salamanca there arose modern theology, equally solicitous of speculation and of the biblical-patristic foundations of dogma, whose norms were fixed in the classic work De locis theologicis by his celebrated disciple Melchior Cano. It arose in a propitious climate, namely in the golden age of Spanish civilisation, when the internal unity of the kingdom, the discovery of America, and the artistic-cultural movement made the Iberian peninsula the pivot of the Christian world; in this atmosphere Salamanca, above all through the merit of F. de V., attained world-wide fame eclipsing Paris. His innumerable and talented disciples (Azpilcueta, Cano, Ledesma, Vega, Pedro Soto, de Castro, Carranza, Salmerón, Laínez) spread the new methods of the master throughout Europe and made his teaching triumph in the Tridentine assemblies.IV. Teaching
Under the influence of Crockaert and Fenario, F. de V. oriented himself decisively towards Thomism, of which he became the most effective restorer. Drawing on the great commentary of Cajetan, he brought to light the profundity and solidity of the principles of the Angelic Doctor, from which he knew how to draw the conclusions most suited to the needs of the times.Simplifying the formalistic procedure of Cajetan, he reached with greater immediacy the substance of doctrine, which he presented in a clear and concise style. A free mind, he sometimes departed from the teachings of St Thomas and at times indulged the minimalist tendency (e.g., in the causality of the Sacraments) that nominalism had spread through all cultural milieux; traces of this subtle infiltration will be found in the later orientations of the Second Scholasticism, which traces its origins back to Salamanca.
A man of his time, he had a vivid sense of reality.
of what was tumultuous in souls, of the new intellectual ferment stirred by contemporary life. Treatises on homicide, simony, temperance, magic, and marriage laid bare the sore of clashing social mores of the age. The treatises *De potestate Ecclesiae*, *De potestate Papae et Concilii*, *De potestate civili* grappled with the most pressing religious and political problems of the tormented sixteenth century. Anticonciliarist like Cajetan, he refuted the anti-papal errors of Hieronymus and Luther alike, yet spoke frankly of the need for ecclesiastical reform and the urgent requirement that good example come from above. On the power of the Church, equally removed from the extremism of the *Partinenses*, champions of regalism, as from the *Augustinenses*, advocates of the Pope’s direct power over temporal affairs, he expounded the doctrine of indirect power, linking it to St Thomas and Torquemada, in terms so precise that, through the classic treatises of Suárez and Bellarmine, they reached the papal sanction of *Innocent XIII’s* *Dei Filius* (1885) and Leo XIII’s *Sapientiae Christianae* (1890).
Yet it is in the *Relectiones de Indis* that he penned his most glorious pages. In the first, with rigorous critique, he dismantled every sophist argument amassed by the conquerors’ greed, to vindicate the truly just motives—above all the preaching of the Gospel—for the peaceful intervention of his countrymen in the lands discovered by Columbus. In the second, he confronted the problem of war, so keenly felt at a time when France and Spain were locked in perpetual strife. The wise doctrine he set forth there attained classic status and may well secure for its author the first place among the founders of international law.