New Worlds and Th eir Challenges 135
minion Maris (Closed Sea or Sovereignty over the Sea), took issue with
Grotius, largely along the lines set out earlier by Freitas.
One of the most impressive things about these debates over freedom of
the seas and New World conquest and settlement, as well as the earlier ones
about medieval crusading, was the extent to which natural law was, by and
large, accepted on all sides as the governing body of principles. It was all too
appropriate that natural law should do such faithful ser vice, since it was, by
its very essence, a universal (and eternal) set of principles, as applicable in
wind- swept Tierra del Fuego as in the hallowed confi nes of the Vatican in
Rome. But international law was about to embark upon what might be called
an age of exploration of its own, in which a leading— and growing— role
would be played by natural law’s humble manservant, the ius gentium.