Author:
TANG Yan, Assistant Professor, School of Law, Zhengzhou University.
Abstract:
The modern conception of international law emerged in Late Medieval Scholasticism. The theologians of the School of Salamanca, notably Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, transformed theological notions of law and applied them to the newly evolving relations between nations and states, reflecting the early modern Christian theological imagination of the world order.
This paper examines 16th- and 17th-century Salamanca School writings on international law, arguing that the core concepts of international law were primarily derived from Christian theology, along with Christianized Greek philosophy and Roman jurisprudence. In response to Spanish colonial expansion in the New World, Salamanca theologians sought to establish the equal legal status of indigenous peoples and Europeans. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas's classification of law, they distilled three key categories—Natural Law (ius naturale), Divine Law (ius divinum), and the Law of Nations (ius gentium), the latter being a subset of Human Law (ius humanum)—as the legal norms of world order. These concepts not only underpinned classical international law from the 17th to the 19th centuries but also continue to be reflected in the conceptual framework of modern international law today.
Keywords:
International Law, Christian Theology, The School of Salamanca, World Order, Conceptual Structure
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