The Iberian School of Peace at the Universities of Coimbra and Evora (XVI Centuries)

Abstract

The critical conscience of the conquest and the colonization of America in the Iberian Universities of the Renaissance is discussed here, with special incidence in the scholastic masters of Coimbra and Evora. It is demonstrated how this Iberian School argued that the Pope didn’t have temporal or spatial power over the American people, remaining for him only, in temporal matters, indirect Power over temporal affairs among Christians; that as a consequence He is not granted the right of punishing idolatry or infidelity among these people; that the emperor is not the lord of the world, because such Power is not supported by divine, natural or human rights; that the secular Power lies immediately in the community or people, as a way of achieving the social nature of man and that the Power of the pagan princês, in itself, is noto f inferior or distinct nature from the Christian princês, although this is more perfect because Grace doesn’t contradict nature but renders it more perfect; that the empire is a juridical expectation, depending on a free pact; that the temporal Power lies neither in faith nor in charity and that infidelity is not a legitimate title of war; it also shows the Genesis of the principle of humanitarian intervention in defense of the natural rights of men, in the light of the universal authority of the orb, becoming the human person a subject of people’s rights, as well as the principle that in the international order there is a clear limit to the sovereignty of the States, on behalf of the universal common good, based on an objective conception of justice, definid by the scholastic natural Law theory.