{ "id": "titulo-de-la-infidelidad-de-los-indios", "type": "entity", "name": "The title of infidelity: the argument that unbelief alone justified the conquest, and the refutations printed beside it", "summary": "Libro I capítulo X of the Política Indiana opens with the harshest title offered for the conquest: the Indians were infidels, and that alone made them liable to war and dispossession. Solórzano states it at full strength, records that one author extended it to enslavement, then prints Innocent IV's contrary opinion and the Bishop of Chiapa's judgment that Hostiensis's doctrine, badly understood, \"ha llevado à muchos al Infierno\".", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "colonial-law", "law-of-the-indies", "legal-history", "jurisprudence", "canon-law", "human-rights", "indigenous-rights", "indigenous-peoples", "americas", "spanish-empire", "seventeenth-century", "eighteenth-century", "religion", "just-war", "books" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "potestad-indirecta-y-el-titulo-de-la-predicacion" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "bula-de-alexandro-vi-en-romance" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "vitoria-relectio-de-indis-1557" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "bartolome-de-las-casas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "valladolid-debate" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "school-of-salamanca" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "entradas-de-misioneros-con-armas-o-sin-ellas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "acosta-de-procuranda-indorum-salute-1588" } ], "questions": [ "Did Spanish jurists argue that being non-Christian was by itself a ground for conquest?", "What was the Hostiensis doctrine on the dominion of infidels?", "How did Innocent IV's opinion differ from Hostiensis on the property of unbelievers?", "Did Las Casas answer the argument that infidelity justified the conquest?", "What did Solórzano Pereira say about the title of infidelity?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "What this is and where it sits. Libro I of the Política Indiana is the book \"EN QUE SE TRATA DEL DESCUBRIMIENTO, DESCRIPCION, PREDICACION, Adquisicion, y Retencion de las Indias Occidentales, y de los titulos de ellas\", and its capítulo X, opening at page 38 of the 1736 Madrid impression, is headed \"DE OTROS TITULOS, QUE SE SUELEN fundar en la infidelidad de los Indios, Predicacion, y Propagacion de la Santa Fè Catholica. Concesion del Imperio, ò de la Santa Sede Apostolica. Refierese, traducida en Romance, la que hizo de este Nuevo Orbe à los Reyes Catholicos Alexandro VI. Romano Pontifice.\" Its printed SUMARIO, read here in the right column of page 38, divides it into thirteen indexed heads beginning \"1 Los Infieles pueden ser develados, para introducirles la Fé, y n. 7. y 17.\" and \"2 La razon, y n. 3. y aun hacerlos esclavos, y num. 4.\", with head 5 \"Opinion contraria de Innocencio, y n. 6.\" and head 8 \"Respuesta à Innocencio, y sus sequaces.\" This entry is scoped to §§1-8, the run those four heads cover.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The title is stated at full strength before it is qualified, and the sentence is worth having in full. §1: \"Quando los Titulos, ponderados en el Capitulo antecedente, no tuvieran la fuerza, y sustancia, que por ellos parece, pudieran recibir mucha, considerando, que todos quantos Indios hasta aora se han descubierto en este Nuevo Orbe, eran Infieles, è Idolatras, como se ha dicho, sin tener conocimiento alguno de nuestro Verdadero Dios, y Criador, y mucho menos de su precioso Hijo, Salvador, y Redemptor Nuestro Jesu-Christo, ni de la Ley Evangelica, y de Gracia, que vino à predicar al Mundo, y esso bastaba, para que solo por esta causa, quando faltáran otras, se les pudiera hacer guerra, y ser legitimamente privados, y despojados de las tierras, y bienes, que poseìan, tomandolas en sí, y para sí en dominio, y governacion superior los Principes Catholicos, que las conquistassen, principalmente teniendo para ello licencia del Romano Pontifice, cuya Universal Jurisdicion sobre los mortales, se estiende tambien à los Reynos de los Infieles.\" The authority named for it is \"el doctissimo Cardenal Hostiense, seguido comunmente por infinitos Canonistas, y Theologos\" — Henricus de Segusio, the thirteenth-century canonist.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The ground offered for it is the transfer of all dominion to Christ and through him to the papacy. §2 gives the reason as printed: that the infidels' goods could be taken from them \"despues de la venida de Christo al Mundo, de quien fue constituido absoluto Monarca, y cuyo Imperio, juntamente con su Sacerdocio, comunicó à San Pedro, y à los demás Pontifices, que en su Catedra sucediessen\", with Scripture, canon-law texts and the authority of the saints alleged for it. §3 adds Aquinas by name: \"Y en particular la del Angelico Doctor Santo Thomás, que expressamente afirma, que por sentencia, ù ordenacion de la Iglesia, que tiene la autoridad, y vezes de Dios, se puede quitar à los Infieles su dominio, prelacion, y govierno, el qual con razon pierden por este delito, y se transfiere en los hijos de la Gracia.\"", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "It is then applied to the Indians by name, and one author is recorded as having taken it further than the rest. §4: \"Y hablando particular, y nombradamente de nuestros Indios, y que por solo este titulo pudieron licitamente ser develados, lo assientan assimesmo por llano, en fuerza de las doctrinas referidas, otros muchos, y graves Doctores, y alguno ay, que se alargó à decir, que la misma causa justifica, que se hagan esclavos.\" (\"Develados\" is this impression's spelling of *debelados*, subdued by war; the volume's own search layer returns the same form on pages 35, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 44.) The extension to enslavement is carried in a lettered footnote and is not adopted in the body; the sentence records that it was said, and by whom, without endorsing it.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The contrary opinion is given its own paragraph and its own authority. §5: \"Y aunque es verdad, que esta opinion se encuentra con otra de Innocencio, que tambien ay muchos, que la defienden, no teniendo por bastante solo el titulo de la Infidelidad en aquellos, que nunca recibieron el Evangelio, ni tuvieron quien se le predicasse, ni ocupan tierras, y Provincias, que antes fuessen de los Christianos, por cuya causa aya guerra abierta con ellos, y se la podamos hacer justamente, y despojarlos, de lo que tuvieren, siempre que halláremos ocasion para ello, quales son los Moros, Turcos, y demás Sarracenos.\" Innocent IV's distinction — between unbelievers who never heard the Gospel and occupy no formerly Christian land, and those against whom there is open war — is the pivot on which the whole question turned, and it is printed here in the treatise that defends the Spanish title.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The Bishop of Chiapa is named as the leading defender of that view for the Indians, and the words attributed to him are not softened. §6: \"Lo qual, hablando en particular de los Indios, defienden assimesmo nervosamente el Obispo de Chiapa, y otros muchos, que despues de él trataron de esta materia: teniendo por erronéa la opinion contraria de Hostiense, ò diciendo, que por mal entendida, ha llevado à muchos al Infierno.\" The lettered footnote attached to it cites \"Chiap. in Apolog. contra Sepulvedam, & alibi passim\" — the Apología Las Casas wrote against Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda for the disputation of 1550-51. The crown's own jurist, writing to justify the Spanish title, puts Las Casas's judgment on Hostiensis in the same paragraph as the doctrine, in the Bishop's own register.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The reply to Innocent IV is then printed at equal length, and it is the most revealing passage in the run. §7 reports Doctor Martha, following Torquemada, as affirming \"que está por Hostiense la practica de la Iglesia, que absolutamente quita el dominio, y jurisdiccion à todo genero de Infieles, siempre que le parece convenir: y que esta opinion, no solo es mas comun; sino mas Catolica, y mas util à la Fé, y Religion Christiana: y que no debieran los Escriptores Christianos haver derramado tanto veneno contra ella, sabiendo, ò debiendo saber, que la Iglesia no puede errar en tales, y tan graves resoluciones.\" §8 gives Pedro Malferito answering Innocent's arguments one by one, and arguing that Innocent departed from his own position elsewhere, where he taught that the first governor God gave his creatures after the Flood was Noah, that the patriarchs, judges, kings and priests succeeded in that vicariate down to Christ, and that Christ left Peter and his successors as his vicars — so that \"assi Judios, como Sarracenos, Gentiles, Cismaticos, y otros qualesquier Infieles de qualquier forma, que se considerassen, havian de pertenecer à la Jurisdiccion de la Iglesia, y Romano Pontifice.\"", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The eighteenth-century editor answers the chapter from the foot of its own opening page, and signs the answer. Page 38 carries, between the lettered footnotes and marked off by asterisks at both ends, the line \"* Ram. Val. Para mantenerles su libertad, ay un titulo, entero, que es el 2. lib. 6. Recop. y el 10. 12. y 13.*\" — the editor of the 1736 impression, Francisco Ramiro de Valenzuela, pointing the reader from the chapter on the title of infidelity to título 2 of libro 6 of the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias, the whole título on the liberty of the Indians, and to three of its laws. This is the first place in this corpus where the impression's asterisked editorial matter is found carrying the editor's own name in abbreviation; earlier objects attributed such matter to him from the asterisk convention alone. The two observations — the asterisks and the printed \"Ram. Val.\" — are of the page; that the note is meant as a counterweight to the chapter is a reading of its placement and content, and the claim is set at 0.85 for that reason.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "What this entry establishes and what it does not. It establishes that the standard treatise on the law of the Indies opens its chapter on the titles drawn from unbelief by stating, at full strength and without hedging, that infidelity alone would have sufficed for war and dispossession; that it names Aquinas and Hostiensis for it, records that some authors applied it to the Indians by name and that at least one extended it to enslavement; and that in the next four paragraphs it prints Innocent IV's contrary opinion, the Bishop of Chiapa's judgment that Hostiensis's doctrine misunderstood had sent many to hell, and two jurists' replies to both. It establishes nothing about what Solórzano himself concluded: §§1-8 report the state of the question, and the paragraph in which he speaks in his own voice on whether infidels may be forced comes later in the same chapter and belongs to the next entry. Not one of the authorities named here — Hostiensis, Aquinas, Innocent IV, Las Casas's Apología, Martha, Malferito — was opened in its own printing for this entry, and every attribution is at the second hand of this page. No case, no province, no date and no cédula is named in the run.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-titulo-de-la-infidelidad" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "English-language accounts of the \"titles\" controversy reached by the search behind this entry treat Vitoria and Las Casas as the record and Hostiensis as the position they defeated; no quotation of the chapter in which the crown's own jurist sets out that position at full strength, in Spanish, and then prints both refutations beside it turned up in that search. This entry gives the paragraphs: §1 in full, saying unbelief alone \"bastaba\" for war and dispossession; §4 recording that some applied it to the Indians by name and that one author extended it to slavery; §5 on Innocent IV's distinction; §6 quoting the Bishop of Chiapa on Hostiensis \"por mal entendida, ha llevado à muchos al Infierno\", with the footnote citing the Apología against Sepúlveda; and §§7-8 on the reply. It also records something no reading of the text alone would show: the 1736 editor's own asterisked note at the foot of the same page, signed \"Ram. Val.\", sending the reader to the Recopilación's whole título on the liberty of the Indians — the first signed instance of that editorial hand this corpus has found. The cost is in the same voice: the treatise's purpose is to justify the Spanish title, the refutations are reported to be answered, and every authority here is at second hand.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-09-27", "media": [], "x": {}, "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/titulo-de-la-infidelidad-de-los-indios", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/titulo-de-la-infidelidad-de-los-indios.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The title of infidelity: the argument that unbelief alone justified the conquest, and the refutations printed beside it", "description": "Libro I capítulo X of the Política Indiana opens with the harshest title offered for the conquest: the Indians were infidels, and that alone made them liable to war and dispossession. Solórzano states it at full strength, records that one author extended it to enslavement, then prints Innocent IV's contrary opinion and the Bishop of Chiapa's judgment that Hostiensis's doctrine, badly understood, \"ha llevado à muchos al Infierno\".", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/titulo-de-la-infidelidad-de-los-indios", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-09-27", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Política Indiana, libro I, capítulo X, §§1-8 and the editor's footnote to page 38 — the title drawn from the infidelity of the Indians: the chapter heading 'DE OTROS TITULOS, QUE SE SUELEN fundar en la infidelidad de los Indios, Predicacion, y Propagacion de la Santa Fè Catholica. Concesion del Imperio, ò de la Santa Sede Apostolica. Refierese, traducida en Romance, la que hizo de este Nuevo Orbe à los Reyes Catholicos Alexandro VI. Romano Pontifice'; the printed SUMARIO heads 1 'Los Infieles pueden ser develados, para introducirles la Fé, y n. 7. y 17.', 2 'La razon, y n. 3. y aun hacerlos esclavos, y num. 4.', 5 'Opinion contraria de Innocencio, y n. 6.' and 8 'Respuesta à Innocencio, y sus sequaces.'; at §1 the title stated at full strength, that all the Indians so far discovered 'eran Infieles, è Idolatras … y esso bastaba, para que solo por esta causa, quando faltáran otras, se les pudiera hacer guerra, y ser legitimamente privados, y despojados de las tierras, y bienes, que poseìan', on the authority of 'el doctissimo Cardenal Hostiense, seguido comunmente por infinitos Canonistas, y Theologos'; at §2 the ground, that Christ was made absolute monarch of the world and communicated his empire with his priesthood to Peter and his successors; at §3 Aquinas, 'que por sentencia, ù ordenacion de la Iglesia, que tiene la autoridad, y vezes de Dios, se puede quitar à los Infieles su dominio, prelacion, y govierno, el qual con razon pierden por este delito, y se transfiere en los hijos de la Gracia'; at §4 its application to the Indians by name, 'y alguno ay, que se alargó à decir, que la misma causa justifica, que se hagan esclavos'; at §5 the contrary opinion of Innocent IV, who did not hold infidelity alone sufficient against those 'que nunca recibieron el Evangelio, ni tuvieron quien se le predicasse, ni ocupan tierras, y Provincias, que antes fuessen de los Christianos'; at §6 that the Bishop of Chiapa and many after him defend that view 'nervosamente', 'teniendo por erronéa la opinion contraria de Hostiense, ò diciendo, que por mal entendida, ha llevado à muchos al Infierno', with the footnote 'Chiap. in Apolog. contra Sepulvedam, & alibi passim'; at §7 Doctor Martha holding Hostiensis's opinion 'no solo es mas comun; sino mas Catolica, y mas util à la Fé, y Religion Christiana: y que no debieran los Escriptores Christianos haver derramado tanto veneno contra ella'; at §8 Pedro Malferito answering Innocent's arguments one by one; and, at the foot of page 38 between the lettered footnotes and marked off by asterisks, the 1736 editor's own signed note '* Ram. Val. Para mantenerles su libertad, ay un titulo, entero, que es el 2. lib. 6. Recop. y el 10. 12. y 13.*'", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=huEykw_YtzYC&pg=PA38" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The title of infidelity: the argument that unbelief alone justified the conquest, and the refutations printed beside it" } }