New Worlds and Th eir Challenges 115
More fundamental than the problems with the requerimiento were the
doubts were voiced, even from within the fold of the Catholic Church itself,
over the ability of the popes to confer sovereignty over territories onto secu-
lar rulers. One of the doubters was a young scholar named Domingo de
Soto, who was working as a teaching assistant to Vitoria at the University of
Salamanca— and who would later be his successor in the theology chair
there. In a section of his relection De Dominio (On Dominion), in 1534– 35,
he held that the popes had no power to confer sovereign rights onto the Span-
ish and Portuguese monarchs. Soto’s master, Vitoria, voiced the same con-
clusion in his De Indis relection of 1539. Th e pope, he argued, was not the
lord of the whole world. He could confer no sovereign powers onto kings
and princes “because no one can give what he does not have.” He could
therefore allocate spheres of missionary activity to Spain and Portugal but
could not grant sovereignty.
Despite these misgivings, the Spanish and Portuguese governments, to-
gether with their legal servants, continued throughout the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries to assert that the papal grants did confer actual sover-
eignty onto their recipients. Th e most prominent advocate of this thesis—
who has been described as “the chief jurist of the [Spanish] empire”— was the
Spanish cleric Juan de Solórzano y Pereira. A native of Madrid, he spent
twelve years at the University of Salamanca— that veritable hub of New
World studies— and then became a professor immediately upon graduation.
But the major part of his career was spent in royal ser vice, which included
an eighteen- year stint as a judge in the audiencia of Lima (in 1609– 27).
Upon his return to Spain, he served on the Council of the Indies. His mas-
sive study of colonial law, De Indiarum Jure (Th e Law of the Indies), written
in 1629– 39, served as the de facto offi cial statement of the Spanish govern-
ment position on colonial issues. In this work, he insisted fi rmly on the va-
lidity of the papal donation as the basis of Spain’s title.
Acquiring Title by Just War
An alternative basis of title to the New World territories was acquisition by
means of a just war. Th e Spanish government began to incline in this direc-
tion as it reduced its reliance on the requerimiento. A decisive step was the
promulgation of a set of ordinances in 1526. Th ese stipulated that all licensed