{
  "id": "acosta-de-procuranda-indorum-salute-1588",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "José de Acosta, De procuranda Indorum salute (Salamanca, 1588)",
  "summary": "A Jesuit who had spent his working life in Peru printed a six-book manual telling the ministers and officers of the Indies what they might and might not do. Its most quoted page grades the peoples of the world into three classes of barbarians. Its least quoted pages rule that the Indians cannot be conquered, owe no tribute for their own soil, and must be paid for their labour — and that the encomenderos, the magistrates and the parish priests are the ones sinning against it.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "peru",
    "law",
    "ethics",
    "missions",
    "jesuits",
    "labour",
    "tribute",
    "books",
    "sixteenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "acosta-historia-natural-y-moral-1590"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cieza-cronica-del-peru-1553"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pena-montenegro-itinerario-para-parochos-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sandoval-naturaleza-policia-1627"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "montoya-conquista-espiritual-1639"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "santo-tomas-grammatica-quichua-1560"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "universities-of-lima-and-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cajas-de-comunidad-de-indios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "castilian-language-question-in-the-indies"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "constituciones-sinodales-de-guamanga-1672"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "preguntas-del-cacique-nicaragua"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is José de Acosta's De procuranda Indorum salute?",
    "What were Acosta's three classes of barbarians?",
    "Did Spanish theologians argue that the Indians owed no tribute?",
    "What did Acosta say about paying Indian labourers?",
    "Did anyone in the sixteenth century write that the Indies could not be justly conquered?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page reads \"DE NATVRA NOVI ORBIS LIBRI DVO, ET DE PROMVLGATIONE EVANGELII, APVD BARBAROS, SIVE DE PROCVRANDA INDORVM SALVTE LIBRI SEX. AVTORE IOSEPHO ACOSTA presbytero societatis IESV. SALMANTICAE. Apud Guillelmum Foquel. M.D.LXXXVIII.\" Two works are bound as one volume — a two-book natural description of the New World and a six-book treatise on the promulgation of the Gospel among barbarians — and the running heads of the second half read DE PROCVRANDA INDORVM SALVTE on the verso and SALVTE. LIBER I, II or III on the recto.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The book was licensed and price-controlled by the crown. The leaf of the royal privilege printed in Spanish before the Latin text requires that the printed sheets be brought back to the Council together with the signed original \"para que se vea si la dicha impression esta conforme al original\", that the errata noted by the appointed corrector be printed in every copy, and that the price at which each volume may be sold be fixed by the Council, under the penalties of the pragmatic.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The proemium states a method before it states a doctrine. Acosta names as the common error the habit of defining Indian matters narrowly, \"res Indicas tanquam rus aliquod aut oppidum anguste definientium, & sicut vno verbo dicuntur, ita vnius esse naturæ rationisque putantium\" — as if, being called by one word, they were of one nature and one reason. Against it he undertakes to be \"nullo partium studio ductos\" and to bring out \"& proba, & praua … & iucunda & tristia æquè\" — the sound and the depraved, the pleasant and the sad, alike.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "He also states the limits of his own competence. Because the nations of the Indies are innumerable and each has its own rites, and because he cannot cover them all, he has chosen to write for barbarians in general while keeping the Peruvians most in view, \"Peruensium maximè habere rationem\", for two stated reasons: those provinces were better known to him, so that he could say something more certain of them, and that kind of Indian always seemed to him a middle case from which the extremes could more easily be judged.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The famous classification is set out as a corrective to lumping. All the peoples of the New World are called barbarians, Acosta writes, but \"non omnes eiusdem ordinis sunt, sed Indus Indo, vt Comicè dicam, multum interest, barbarus barbaro longe præstat\" — one Indian differs much from another and one barbarian far surpasses another. Long investigation showed him three classes. The mark of the first is a standing commonwealth, public laws, fortified cities, notable magistrates, sure and rich commerce, \"& quod omnium caput est, literarum celebris vsus\" — and, the head of all, the common use of letters.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "In the first class he puts the Chinese, \"quorum ego characteres vidi Syriacis persimiles\", whose books, academies, laws, magistrates and public works he reports as flourishing, then the Japanese and most provinces of East India. These, he writes, are to be called to the Gospel as the Greeks and Romans once were by the Apostles — won by their own reason with God working within — and he adds the sentence that governs the whole treatise: \"quos si per vim & potentiam Christo subijcere pergas, nihil aliud agas, quam vt à lege Christiana alienissimos reddas.\" If you set about subjecting them to Christ by force and power, you do nothing except make them utter strangers to the Christian law.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "In the second class he puts the Mexicans and the Peruvians, \"quorum imperia & Respubl. & leges, & instituta merito admirari quiuis possit\" — whose empires, commonwealths, laws and institutions anyone might deservedly admire. What is almost incredible, he writes, is that they supplied the lack of letters with such dexterity of mind that they keep histories, lives, laws and even the courses of time and the reckonings of numbers by signs of their own devising, \"quos ipsi Quipos vocant, vt nostri cum literis suis plerumque eorum peritiæ cedant\" — so that our own men, with their letters, for the most part yield to their skill. He doubts whether Spanish letters make surer arithmeticians for counting or dividing than those knots make of them, and calls their fidelity of memory in the smallest matters wholly admirable.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The cost of the same passage is on the same leaves. The praise is followed immediately by \"Multum tamen etiam hi & à recta ratione … & à consuetudine generis humani absunt\" — even these are far from right reason and from the custom of the human race. The class is said to contain empires, lesser kingdoms and principalities such as most caciques hold, and public magistracies created by the community itself, \"quales Araucani, Tucapelenses, cæterique Chilenses ferè sunt\". Because their rulers have such licence to rage against their subjects, Acosta writes, Christian princes and magistrates may deservedly be set over them where the case demands and the Church's authority requires — \"sed ita tamen vt facultatibus fortunisq; suis & legibus non naturæ aut Euangelio contrarijs vti liberè permittendi sint\", yet so that they are freely permitted the use of their own goods, fortunes and laws not contrary to nature or to the Gospel.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "In the third book, on tribute, the treatise denies the conquest. \"At Indorum populi, vt supra satis disputatum est, à Christianis debellari non possunt, ac proinde neq; libertate, neque argenti pensione mulctari. Quid enim nostros læserunt, quorum ne nomen quidem audierant?\" The peoples of the Indies cannot be subdued in war by Christians and so cannot be mulcted either of their liberty or of a money payment; for what harm did they do to our people, whose very name they had not heard? Avenging offences against God and injuries to nature, he adds, is no business of ours.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The same page names the practice it is aimed at. Those would sin gravely, Acosta writes, who on such a title loaded barbarians defeated in war \"instar Amorrhæorum, & Chananæorum, vel potius, vt præsentia loquamur, Maurorum, atq; Turcarum, seruitute, atq; multa pensione\", as if they were Amorites and Canaanites, or rather, to speak of the present, Moors and Turks — thinking they conferred a benefit by not putting them to death. \"Neq; enim tam stolida ratio nisi ab imperitia, & insolentia militari proficisci potest\": so stupid an argument can come only from ignorance and military insolence.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "Three rules follow. Tribute may not be reckoned as payment for the Gospel: to take account, in exacting a levy, of the faith and baptism imparted, \"quasi retributio expectetur\", is a most sordid thought and differs from Simon Magus only in trading grace for money instead of money for grace — \"Quæ enim gratis accepimus gratis quoq; dare iubemur.\" And the third rule is stated flatly: \"Barbaros causa soli, terræve ab ipsis cultæ, & habitatæ nihil debere Principibus Christianis\" — the barbarians owe Christian princes nothing by reason of the soil or the land they themselves cultivate and inhabit.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The reason given is that the ordinary title to a land tax does not exist here. Rent for soil is owed where a private man holds it by the grant of the prince or the commonwealth, Acosta argues, and that is not the case in the Indies: \"Neq; enim solum nostrum ipsi occuparunt, sed nos illorum, neq; ad nos ipsi, sed ad illos nos certè peruasimus\" — for they did not occupy our soil, but we theirs; they did not force their way to us, but we certainly to them. To scale tribute to the size of their holdings, fields, flocks and pastures would therefore be \"iniquissimum\", a tax on things that owe nothing of themselves; he adds that he does not know it to have been done so far, \"sed est fortasse improborum cupiditate tentatum\" — but it has perhaps been attempted out of the greed of dishonest men.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "The counterpoint is printed two pages later, in the author's own voice. Whether the king succeeded to the whole right of the Inca and of Moctezuma is a question Acosta raises and declines: \"Vtrum vero aut illud ita habeat aut illud, examinare ac diiudicare nostrum non est. Habent Catholici reges consilia, senatusque suos, habent conscientiæ magistratus.\" Subjects, while the injury is not evident, are to think and pronounce for the right of their princes. What he will assert is the narrower point: that even if the barbarians are converted to Christ they do not forfeit the right to their own property, nor become liable to servitude or in their fortunes to our people, and that Pope Paul III openly decreed it.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "On wages the treatise argues from the price of a horse. If a price is justly paid to the owner for loading another man's beast or riding his horse, \"cur non iniquum valde existimetur hominis liberi corpus oneri laboriue addicere, neque quicquam tamen soluere pro opera collocata?\" Scripture, Acosta adds, does not merely condemn those who refuse the wage outright — it names those who delay it, cut it down, or in any way defraud the price of another's sweat. \"Ne mihi igitur obsoletum à te cibum porrectum commemores, ne vestem annuam, ne agelli portiunculam illius vsibus relictam referas\": do not cite to me the worn-out food you handed him, nor the yearly garment, nor the scrap of field left for his use. The just rate is defined in the same paragraph: where a price is prescribed by law, as in most matters it is, \"quicquid de legitimo detrahis, rapina est\"; where no law fixes one, the common estimation of good and prudent men sets the measure, or a mutual agreement of hirer and hired free of all fraud and force.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c15",
      "text": "He then names the offenders, his own clergy included: \"Quo toto genere multum ac sæpe peccant, & patroni Indorum, & prætores, & ipsi passim parochi, dum subditis pro rerum occasionibus multa imperant, nulla aut pauca persoluunt\" — in this whole class the encomenderos of the Indians, the magistrates, and the parish priests everywhere sin much and often, ordering their subjects to do much as occasion arises and paying nothing or little. Nor may the Indians' own compliance be pleaded in excuse: a timid kind of men shows itself so obliging because it fears for itself, and \"pretium non audet repetere\".",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c16",
      "text": "What the same chapter permits is on the record beside what it forbids. Where the law assigns a fixed number of Indians to a patron for herding or tillage, Acosta answers the objection that this introduces personal service with \"Verum id sanè iniquum non est per se, cum tributi loco accipitur\" — it is not in itself unjust when taken in place of tribute, since what they would otherwise have paid in silver or cloth is understood as remitted for the wage of the work. The safeguards he attaches are that the burden fall by lots and turns rather than unequally, that what a man has served be deducted from his tribute so that \"non huius sudoribus alius lucrum faciat\", and that the turns not leave him short of necessities. He closes the passage against himself: \"Quæ quidem omnia dictare facile est, perficere verò, aut infecta emendare per quam difficile.\"",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c17",
      "text": "What the volume does not establish is stated here rather than left to inference. It is a manual of what ought to be done, printed in Spain by a member of the order that ran the Peruvian mission, and no page opened in this reading records a case in which its rules on tribute or wages were enforced, a restitution made, or an official disciplined. The pages describing the third and lowest class of barbarians were not opened, so nothing is asserted here about what the treatise concedes may be done to them; nor was the closing matter read, so the date and place of composition are not established from the sheets.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-de-procuranda-salamanca-1588"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language coverage of this book is almost entirely the three classes of barbarians, quoted as evidence that even the sympathetic Spaniards graded humanity — and the grading is real and is quoted here in full, including the licence it gives to set Christian magistrates over the second class. What that framing loses is the other four hundred pages, and this object opens them: the same author, in the same volume, ruling that the peoples of the Indies cannot be conquered in war, that they owe nothing for the ground they live on, that tribute may not be charged for baptism, that conversion does not forfeit property, that any labour must be paid at a price fixed by law or by honest common estimation, and that the encomenderos, the magistrates and the parish priests are the ones breaking these rules. Both halves come off the same 1588 sheets, quoted in the printer's Latin with the page given, so neither can be produced without the other — and the concession that closes the argument, that personal service in place of tribute is not unjust in itself, is quoted too, next to Acosta's own admission that all of this is easy to prescribe and very hard to carry out.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-10",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/acosta-de-procuranda-indorum-salute-1588",
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    "name": "José de Acosta, De procuranda Indorum salute (Salamanca, 1588)",
    "description": "A Jesuit who had spent his working life in Peru printed a six-book manual telling the ministers and officers of the Indies what they might and might not do. Its most quoted page grades the peoples of the world into three classes of barbarians. Its least quoted pages rule that the Indians cannot be conquered, owe no tribute for their own soil, and must be paid for their labour — and that the encomenderos, the magistrates and the parish priests are the ones sinning against it.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/acosta-de-procuranda-indorum-salute-1588",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-10",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "De natura Noui Orbis libri duo, et De promulgatione Euangelii, apud barbaros, siue De procuranda Indorum salute libri sex",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "José de Acosta, De procuranda Indorum salute (Salamanca, 1588)"
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}