Here Is Contained a Dispute or Controversy (the Valladolid disputation)
The tract in which Las Casas printed the record of his debate with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda before the theologians and jurists whom Charles V assembled at Valladolid in 1550 to judge whether the conquests in the Indies were lawful.
The long title states the matter: Doctor Sepúlveda, chronicler to the emperor, contended that the conquests of the Indies were lawful; the bishop maintained that they had been, and could not but be, tyrannical, unjust and wicked; and the question was argued before many theologians and jurists in an assembly that the king ordered to meet at Valladolid in 1550. The tract opens with a summary of how the dispute arose and then gives the abstract of the two men’s arguments that the Dominican theologian Domingo de Soto made for the assembly, followed by Sepúlveda’s objections and Las Casas’s replies.
It is a printed record of the debate, and it comes from one of the two parties. Las Casas chose what to print and wrote the introduction. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s own book on the subject, a dialogue in Latin, had been refused a licence to print, as the introduction itself says, so his case is known here through his opponent’s report of it.
Cited in
- 2 June 1537, firm date