serve as a boundary between the territorial acquisitions of the two nations, who claimed to appropriate to themselves not merely the vast continents and numerous islands of the Indian seas, but even the extensive surface of ocean which divided them from the known parts of the world, and likewise the races of people who might be found to inhabit them.
The scandal given by this extreme stretch of authority on the part of the See of Rome, coupled with the cruel and rapacious abuse of the Papal Donation by the Spaniards, provoked a champion from amongst the ranks of theological casuists to step forth in behalf of the native inhabitants of the newly discovered countries. It is to the honour of the Dominican Order, that one of their members was the first to protest against the asserted right of the Pope to grant away the lands of heathen nations to Christian princes. Franciscus à Victoria, a Dominican monk, began to teach at Valladolid in 1525, and subsequently as professor in the university of Salamanca. His doctrine may be gathered from a series of thirteen dissertations, published for the first time at Lyons in 1557, and entitled Relectiones Theologicae, a book of remarkable scarcity, although it passed through four editions. The fifth of these dissertations entitled “De Indis,” treated of the title of the Spaniards to the possession of the new world; and the sixth “De Jure Belli” discussed exclusively the right of war. In the former dissertation, Victoria maintained the right of the Indians to the exclusive dominion over their own country, and confronted directly the doctrine of Bartolus and the Bolognese school of jurists, that the Pope had the power of conferring on the kings of Spain the dominion over countries inhabited by pagan barbarians. This would have been too bold a thesis
