Between the Kingdom’s Legal Order and the Canonical Doctrine: The Participation of the Indigenous in the Natural Law and of the People (16th C.)

Abstract

After the discovery of the American territories, the controversy of the just titles and the juridical situation of the indigenous people arises and an ideological reasoning is constructed that will transform the Indies into a laboratory where the best ways of evangelizing the natives are experienced. The first chroniclers will try to search between the historical sources sacred and profane with the purpose of vindicating the American company. His works, written mostly by religious of the regular clergy project and their training, Thomist or rationalist and with different mentalities affect the anthropological, ethnological, political, religious and legal, trying to justify some, the origin of the Indians in the Sacred Scripture. The present work analyzes the aspects of how the chroniclers saw the idolatry beliefs of the natives and their condition of freemen in a state of semi-slavery from their theological and juridical foundations received in the Castilian educational centers.