New Worlds and Th eir Challenges 123more advanced and civilized Spaniards. Th ird was the dilatatio principle.
And fi nally, he argued that Spanish rule provided increased protection to
weak and vulnerable natives. It is noteworthy that none of these argu-
ments alleged the commission of any off ense by the Indians against the
Spanish specifi cally, though the fi rst one rested on violations of general
natural law.
Th is spirited juridical showdown, unfortunately, produced all too little in
the way of concrete results. Th e adjudicating panel proved annoyingly re-
miss in its duty to arrive at an agreed resolution of the issues. One problem
was that Soto was called away to another urgent duty, attendance at further
sessions of the Council of Trent. Th ere is evidence that, by 1557, nearly all of
the panel members had composed individual opinions, but these have been
lost. It appears that Soto abstained, and that a collective judgment was never
arrived at, despite the earnest eff orts by the Council of the Indies, continu-
ing over a period of some years, to obtain one.
Las Casas has been said to have won “a technical victory” in that Sepúlve-
da’s treatise remained suppressed (not to be published fi nally until the late
nineteenth century). But the fact remains that no judgment was rendered.
Th e aff air appears to have rekindled Soto’s interest in legal issues relating to
the New World. In the period following the debate, he published a treatise,
entitled De Ratione Promulgandi Evangelium (On the Promulgation of the
Gospels), analyzing the legal basis of Spain’s rulership of the New World.
Sadly for present- day scholars, this text has been lost.
If the great debate at Valladolid had little immediate impact, the position
of las Casas won offi cial favor in the longer run, largely as a result of the
work of a lawyer named Gregorio López de Tovar. Originally from Guada-
lupe in Spain and educated at Salamanca, he served the Spanish government
in various high capacities, including the important post of president of
the Council of the Indies (in 1543– 60) at the time of the Valladolid debate.
He appears never to have visited the New World, but he was married to the
niece of Francisco Pizarro. López was seen as an opponent of Vitoria, in that
he, unlike Vitoria, supported the validity of the papal grants as a basis of
Spanish sovereignty over the Americas. But he revealed the infl uence of las
Casas, too, in his contention that this acquisition of sovereignty did not en-
title the Spanish to take immediate possession of their territories by armed
force. Th ey had fi rst to attempt to persuade the Indians, by peaceful means,