129

1987. Deciani Tiberio. In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, ed. Istituto della Enciclopedia
Italiana, Vol. 33. ad vocem. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

Loredana GARLATI

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De iustitia et iure tomi sex

(Six Books on Justice and Law)
1593-1609
Luis de Molina (1535-1600)

Keywords: School of Salamanca, Ius Commune, Natural Law

Molina was born into a family of hidalgos (lower nobility) in Cuenca in

September 1535 and died in Madrid in October 1600. Before entering the newly
founded Society of Jesus in August 1553, he had studied law for one year at
Salamanca and logic for six months at Alcalá de Henares. As a novice, he went on
to study philosophy in Coimbra (1554-1558). After his ordination in 1561 or 1562,
Molina was sent to Évora to pursue a doctorate in theology, but he never obtained
his degree because of teaching obligations in philosophy at Coimbra from 1563
onwards. Later, he taught theology at Évora (1568-1584), using Thomas Aquinas’
Summa Theologiae as a textbook. His lectures about the questions dedicated to the
virtues of prudence and justice (IIa-IIae, 47-78) lasted from September 1577 to
July 1582, a comparatively long period. They formed the basis for his treatise On
Justice and Right (De iustitia et iure), which he effectively started to write in 1591
during his retirement at the Jesuit house in Cuenca. This retirement followed the
controversy stirred by his Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina
scientia, praescientia, providentiae, praedestinatione (Lisbon 1588), his first
major work, which dealt with the issues of free will, grace, divine foreknowledge
and predestination. King Philip II opposed his nomination to the chair of theology
at Coimbra in 1596, appointing Francisco Suárez SJ (1548-1617) instead. In 1600,
Molina was requested to leave Cuenca to teach moral theology at the Jesuit
College in Madrid, but after six months he died.

The six volumes (tomi) of Molina’s De iustitia et iure were not published at once.
The first volume was printed in Cuenca in 1593. It contained the first tractate on
justice in general and 251 disputations of the second which dealt with rights in
general, royal laws, the relationship between Church and State, the different
modes of acquiring property, slavery, and war. It was 1597 before the second
volume, which contained disputations 252-575 of the second tractate, dealing with
contract law, was printed. This part became so popular that it was already
republished by Barezzi and Colosino in Venice in 1601. The remainder of the
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second tractate, dealing with the primogeniture and taxation, was published in
Cuenca in 1600 as the first part of the third volume. In 1602, the Mylius printing
house at Mainz published an influential new edition of both the first and the
second volume of Molina’s De iustitia et iure. The following year they published
a new edition of the first part of the third volume. The publication of the second
part of the third volume and of the other volumes was prepared by the Jesuits of
the College of Madrid and was not completed until 1609, when Martin Nutius’s
printing house in Antwerp published the second part of the third volume,
concerning delicts and quasi-delicts, as well as the remaining three volumes.
Around the same time, editions of the remaining volumes appeared in Venice and
Mainz. The fourth volume continued the discussion of matters related to criminal,
delictual and quasi-delictual liability in 106 disputations. Some 51 disputations on
the violation of honour, fame and spiritual goods were included in the fifth
volume. The sixth volume dealt with questions of jurisdiction and the execution of
justice in 73 disputations. A new edition of volumes I-IV was printed in 1659 by
Schönwetter at Mainz. A modern Spanish translation was provided by Manuel
Fraga Iribarne (Madrid, 1941-1944).
The book belongs to the tradition of Early Modern scholastic theologians who
tried to solve cases of conscience on the basis of Roman and Canon law, and
Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. They used the vocabulary and grammar of the
legal tradition to deal with concrete cases with which they were confronted as
confessors and advisors to merchants and princes. It was also their ambition to
provide a model of true justice to judges in the external, secular and ecclesiastical
courts. From lengthy commentaries on the Secunda Secundae of Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologiae, for instance in the case of Francisco de Vitoria, an
autonomous literary genre of treatises On Justice and Right emerged in the second
half of the 16th century, starting with the publication of Domingo de Soto’s De
iustitia et iure in 1553. Molina became the second major exponent of this genre,
directly influencing later treatises De iustitia et iure by Jesuits such as Leonardus
Lessius (1554-1623) and Juan de Lugo (1583-1660). As a matter of fact, Molina
and Lessius exchanged ideas in the process of writing their respective treatises. As
Molina explained in a letter from 1582 to General Aquaviva SJ, Thomas Aquinas’
elaborations on legal issues had not reached a sufficient degree of sophistication.
Even Soto’s work he considered too short. Therefore, Molina planned a
comprehensive treatment of all matters related to the virtue of justice, classifying
his work on the basis of Aristotle’s philosophy of justice in his Nicomachean
Ethics. The result was a vast treatise of interest to jurists as well as moral
theologians, three volumes of which had to be published posthumously. It
appeared at a moment that also saw the publication of the Institutiones morales by
the Jesuit Juan Azor (1536-1603), which is considered as the ultimate step in the
birth of moral theology as an autonomous discipline.
Molina’s De iustitia et iure drew on the same kind of philosophical, theological
and legal sources as Soto’s work, but the juridical component was much stronger.
His arguments abounded with references to the texts from the classical period of
canon law and late medieval canonists such as Panormitanus. He was imbued with
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the work of Salamancan canonists such as Martín de Azpilcueta (1492-1586) and

Diego de Covarruvias y Leyva. By the same token, Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis
and commentaries by late medieval jurists such as Bartolus were present every-
where. Molina frequently quoted Spanish legislation and 16th century civilians
such as Fortunius Garcia (1494-1543), Antonio Gómez and Arias Piñel (1515-
1563). However, the ultimate source of authority for Molina was right reason, as
expressed in natural law. It was his task, precisely, to confront the natural law so-
lution of a case with statutory regulation. This was less of a metaphysical exercise
than might appear at first sight. For example, Molina reasoned from experience
that the natural price of a good was determined by the common estimation of cir-
cumstances in the market such as supply and demand and by other factors such as
the liquidity of the money market. But the price could also be fixed by the political
authorities for the sake of the common good, for instance if the natural price of a
vital good such as grain exceeded the means of ordinary people. Starting from
such simple premises, Molina would then go on to analyse thorny issues such as
insider trading, cornering the market, monopolies and so on. Along with Lessius,
he is not only remembered for his sophisticated legal analysis but also for his
sharp insight into economic phenomena.
Consequently, in the work of Molina and that of other late scholastic theologi-
ans, the Ius Commune was transformed on the basis of Natural Law principles and
scholastic virtue ethics. This synthesis of morality and law left an indelible imprint
on the work of subsequent natural lawyers such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufen-
dorf and Robert-Joseph Pothier. In addition, Molina and other late scholastics in-
spired authors of the Usus Modernus Pandectarum such as Samuel Stryk. In the
19th century, Molina remained a point of reference, for example in Jean-Paul
Lyonnet’s (1801-1875) works De iustitia et iure and De contractibus, which inte-
grated the late scholastic tradition and Napoleon’s Code civil. Molina’s De iustitia
et iure was even a direct source for Andrés Bello’s (1781-1865) codification of
private law in Chile.

Online version: ***if there is an online version available, please insert URL
here***.

Alonso-Lasheras, Diego. 2011. Luis de Molina’s De iustitia et iure: Justice as Virtue in an Eco-
nomic Context. Leiden: Brill; Costello, Frank Bartholomew. 1974. The Political Philosophy
of Luis de Molina, S.J. (1535-1600). Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I.; Guzmán Brito,
Alejandro. 2013. La división de los contratos en Luis de Molina. GLOSSAE. European Jour-
nal of Legal History 10: 204-214; A Companion to Luis de Molina, ed. Matthias Kaufmann &
Alexander Aichele. 2014. Leiden: Brill; Weber, Wilhelm. 1959. Wirtschaftsethik am Vora-
bend des Liberalismus: Höhepunkt und Abschluss der scholastischen Wirtschaftsbetrachtung
durch Ludwig Molina S.J. (1535-1600). Münster: Aschendorff.

Wim DECOCK
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Política para corregidores y señores de vassallos en tiempo de paz, y de

gverra: y para Perlados en lo espiritual, y Temporal entre legos, Iuezes de
Comissión, Regidores, Abogados, y otros Oficiales publicos: y de las Iu-
risdiciones, Preeminencias, Residencias, y salarios dellos: y de lo tocante
a las de Ordenes, y Caualleros dellas.
(Politics … ***please give an English translation of the title***)
1597
Jerónimo CASTILLO DE BOBADILLA (BOUADILLA) (c. 1546-1605)

Keywords: Municipal Administration, Jurisdiction, Practical Legal Literature,

Mos Italicus, Spain, Vernacular Language

Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla was born in Medina del Campo (Spain) between
19 February 1546 and 18 February 1547. His family belonged to the lower nobili-
ty (hidalgos) of Bobadilla, located in the proximity of that Castilian town. At a
young age he began studying canon law at the University of Salamanca. From this
prestigious university he earned the bachelor degree in 1563 and that of licenciado
in 1568. It is not clear whether he spent all the time in Salamanca after his bache-
lors or if he studied at another university too. Castillo de Bobadilla did not defend
a doctoral thesis, as some authors wrongly state. Soon after graduation, the li-
cenciado began his professional life as a jurist.
After some years in Badajoz, probably as deputy-corregidor, he served as cor-
regidor in Soria in 1574 and, from 1585 on, in Guadalajara. The periods in office
as corrigidor in each place were limited, so it is probable that Castillo had to cover
intervals between the posts. Occasionally he acted as pesquisidor (investigator)
too. In 1590 his appointment as corregidor ended, and he worked as a lawyer
(abogado) at the Consejos de la Corte. In 1592, and for ten years, he was Letrado
de las Cortes. Having declined an appointment as corregidor of Vizcaya in 1599,
he took office as Fiscal de la Real Audiencia y Chancillería de Valladolid in
1602. His last years left little documentary traces. Castillo de Bobadilla died in the
early days of September 1605, the places of his death and of his tomb are un-
known.
Castillo’s active life as a jurist covered the last third of the 16th and some years
of the early 17th century, predominantly during the reign of Philipp II. He was a
staunch supporter of the Rey Prudente as well as a perfect political and adminis-
trative agent of the Spanish King. Living in post-tridentine times, the Catholic ex-
pert in canon law did not hide his attitudes towards ecclesiastical matters in the
book that made him famous.

The editio princeps of the Política was published in Madrid in 1597 by Luis
Sanchez. Like all later editions, the book consists of two in-folio volumes. During