Source: Geografía Infinita
The School of Salamanca, emerging in 16th century Spain, revolutionized modern thought with groundbreaking contributions to human rights, market economics, and international law. Its members, including Francisco de Vitoria and Juan de Mariana, established the foundations of natural law, modern economic theory, and individual liberties. Their influence persists today, from economic theory to international law, proving that Spain’s Golden Age was also a golden age of universal thought.
“The theoretical principles of the market economy and the basic elements of economic liberalism were not designed, as was believed, by Scottish Calvinists and Protestants, but by the Jesuits and members of the School of Salamanca during the Spanish Golden Age.”
Friedrich A. Hayek. Austrian economist and Nobel Prize winner in economics
“Humanity came to be understood in a ‘modern’ way: it is made up of all human beings who inhabit any part of the earth. This natural right to be born free became something consubstantial with the human being.”
“Marianne, the name given in France to the Republic, comes from the name of the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, an illustrious member of the School of Salamanca”
Florence Gauthier. French historian. Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris VII. Specializing in the study of the French Revolution
The currents of thought, ethics, science and knowledge generated by the Spains were innovative, as well as diverse. So much so that some of them created academic disciplines that did not exist until then. Even today, their updated models are still taught in various universities and knowledge centers.
These subjects also have direct application in our daily lives and are the subject of continuous research by renowned specialists. In short, these disciplines created a school of thought, although unfortunately – like other great achievements of our ancestors – they are today quite unknown outside the most erudite and exclusive circles.
The School of Salamanca was a fundamental school of thought in various areas of knowledge. It took place in the Renaissance of the 16th century, through a group of theologians and jurists concentrated mainly in the city of Salamanca, Spain.
If the Italian city-states initiated the Renaissance in the 15th century, Spain and Portugal investigated the new world in the 16th century and emerged as centers of commerce and enterprise. Intellectually, Spanish universities engendered a revival of the great scholastic project, the so-called second scholasticism. This current drew on Greco-Roman and Christian traditions to investigate and expand all sciences, including economics, on the firm basis of logic and natural law.
As natural law and reason are universal ideas, the scholastic project was a search for the universal laws that govern the way the world works. And although economics was not considered an independent science, these researchers turned to economic reasoning as a way of explaining the world around them. They looked for regularities in the social order and produced catholic patterns of justice to act on it.
The members of the School of Salamanca renewed theology and laid the foundations of modern international law and modern economic science.
Mathematicians from this School studied the reform of the calendar, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII, and proposed the solution that was later implemented, known as the Gregorian calendar.
University of Salamanca: cloister of scholars
The University of Salamanca is the oldest university in Spain and one of the four in Europe still open today, along with the universities of Bologna, Oxford and Paris (Sorbonne). It originated in the Cathedral School of Salamanca, founded in 1130.
The first official document was issued by King Alfonso IX of León, who on January 1, 1218 granted it the status of Estudio General salmantino, “Studii salmantini”. Under the reign of Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile and León, the Estudio General became a University, in its dual character of royal and pontifical, on May 8, 1254.
In the middle of the Middle Ages, when the majority of the European population was illiterate in an agrarian and rural society, Salamanca became a pioneer and the origin of universal knowledge in Spain. Its study and passion for university schools made it a nerve centre for students and teachers, most of them from the world of the clergy, who were the only ones who could boast of being able to read and write.
Studies were offered in Law, Medicine, Logic, Grammar and Music. Professors of subjects related to Law enjoyed a higher salary, as it was a university with a bias towards legal disciplines. Towards the 13th and 14th centuries, new chairs were created, especially in Law.
The final accolade came in 1255 with the papal bull of Pope Alexander IV which granted it the licentia ubique docendi, a document which recognized the validity of degrees awarded by the University of Salamanca throughout the world.
Classes were taught in Latin, which facilitated the international mobility of professors and students as it was a language used throughout Europe.
The splendor of the School of Salamanca
It was during the Spanish Golden Age that the University became the setting for events of relevance to the history of humanity. In the cloisters of this University the viability of Christopher Columbus’s project and the consequences of his claims were discussed. After the discovery of America, the indigenous peoples’ right to full recognition of their rights was debated; the so-called controversy of the Indies was something revolutionary for the time.
The fact is that the scholars of the School of Salamanca also formed an important humanist focus, they renewed theology, they laid the foundations of modern Law of Nations, of International Law, a precursor of the first Human Rights, led by Francisco de Vitoria. And they carried out the first studies in ethnography and modern social anthropology, especially by Bernardino de Sahagún. Relating democracy to justice, they defined the concept of the International Community.
This movement was led by a group of theologians and jurists who, based on the theory of Natural Law, developed the first laws in International Law of Nations, precursors of Human Rights.
Its most brilliant members were Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), the founder of the school, Domingo de Soto (1494-1570), Martín de Azpilcueta (1493-1586), Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590), Tomás de Mercado (1500-1575), Domingo Báñez (1528- 1604), Luis de Molina (1535-1601), Juan de Mariana (1536-1624), Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), etc.

Economic processes were analyzed for the first time, generating the first movement of studies and analysis of modern macroeconomics. The School of Salamanca was the first current of economic, moral and legal thought to debate the moral problems arising from the innovative commercial system and the neo-mercantilist mentality generated in Europe during the Modern Age and the discovery of the New World.
The initiator: Francisco de Vitoria
Francisco de Vitoria was the inspiration behind the School of Salamanca and theorized about economics from a moral point of view. According to Vitoria, the natural order is based on the freedom of movement of people, goods and ideas.

Francisco de Vitoria
In his classes he dealt with the most current issues and they were attended by both students and professors. His teaching ability was extraordinary, his students admired him so much that they called him “the teacher” and even government officials came to him for advice. He is considered the father of modern international law and the main defender of the human rights of American Indians.
During the twenty years he spent in Salamanca, he tackled the greatest intellectual challenges of his time, renewing methods and subject matter. He also originated a true current of theological-juridical thought destined to have an enormous impact. His work revolves around the dignity and moral problems of the human condition.
The teachings of Francisco de Vitoria
He was especially influential for his legal contributions, although his studies on theology and on the moral aspects of economics also had great repercussions. His teachings have been preserved in thirteen lectures or solemn lessons. They are dedicated, among other topics, to homicide, marriage, civil and ecclesiastical authority, the relationship between the Council and the Pope, just war or the conflicts arising from the Discovery of America, the incorporation of those territories into the Spanish Crown and peace and respect in relations with the Indians.
For Vitoria, the international community should be governed by a set of laws that are fair to the rights of all peoples. The harmony and coexistence of Humanity depends on the coexistence of each of the states that comprise it.
In his body of law, he put six essential elements on the table:
- The defense of individual rights to life, liberty and equality before the law.
- The defense of private property and contracts
- The importance of the market and international trade
- The need to maintain a controlled and limited government
- The defense of the sovereignty of the people and the principle of citizen consent
- The defense of the right to oppose or rebel against tyrants.
The fathers of economic theory
Economics students usually trace the origins of pro-market thinking back to the Scottish professor Adam Smith (1723-1790). This tendency to see Smith as the origin of economics is reinforced among Americans because his famous book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in the year of American independence from Great Britain.
There are many things that this view of intellectual history overlooks. The real founders of economic science actually wrote hundreds of years before Adam Smith. They were not economists as such, but moral theologians, trained in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, and they are collectively known as the late scholastics.
These men, most of whom taught in Spain, were at least as favorable to the free market as the much later Scottish tradition. Moreover, their theoretical foundations were even more solid: they anticipated the theories of value and price of the Austrian School of the late 19th century.
Contributions to the economic theory of the School of Salamanca
Among their main contributions are the acceptance of the law of supply and demand as agents in the determination of prices in a free market, the exposition of a subjective theory of the value of goods, and the establishment of the value of money as a function, not only of its abundance or scarcity, but of its purchasing power, the general doctrine of interest and the analysis of the tax system.
His great discovery for modern macroeconomics was the formulation of the Quantity Theory of Money. It is a relationship between the abundance of currency and the increase in the price level and, influenced by that theory, that of currency exchange.
This theory demonstrates that an increase in the money supply in circulation causes a proportional increase in the level of prices. Its equation was developed in the 20th century by Irving Fisher using the formula M x V = P x Y, that is to say, that the money supply multiplied by the velocity of circulation is equal to the national product multiplied by the price level. This equation became one of the bases of modern economics.
The main economic thinkers of the School of Salamanca
The economic thinking of Tomás de Mercado can be observed in his work Suma de tratos y contratos. In it, the Sevillian thinker reflected on the basis of interest and condemned usury and monopolies. He also delved into the quantitative theory of money. Concern about these issues seems logical in a context characterised by the massive arrival of precious metals from the Americas.

Martín de Azpilcueta
Martín de Azpilcueta was a pioneer in analyzing the effects of the massive arrival of American precious metals on the Spanish economy; his conclusion was that it generated inflation, and therefore price increases and shortages. He noted the fact that in countries where the precious metals gold and silver were scarce, the prices of goods were lower than in countries where they were abundant. The more abundant a precious metal is, the less purchasing power it has as a commodity. It was a great paradox: the possession of abundant gold and silver generated poverty.
All these teachers also spoke out in favor of economic freedom and declared that the morally just price is that formed in accordance with supply and demand, excluding violence, deceit or fraud, and provided that there are a sufficient number of buyers and sellers, that is to say, in the absence of situations of public monopoly that these doctors considered a crime.
On this subject, it is worth quoting, for their freshness and knowledge of reality, the texts in which Tomás de Mercado says that “the fair price is the one that is publicly quoted and is used this week and this hour, as they say in the square, there being no force or deception in it, although it is more variable, as experience teaches, than the wind. And if someone brought haberdashery from Flanders and when he arrived in Seville it is worth nothing, because of the great quantity and abundance that he has, he may well keep it. But if he sells it, he should not take into account what it cost him, or what he paid along the way, but what it is now worth in the city, because the art of the merchant is subject to this variety and fortune. Now he must lose; another day time will take care to offer him the opportunity and chance to earn.”
The work of this thinker had a notable influence in later periods. Especially relevant was, already in the 20th century, the Chicago School, with Milton Friedman at its head, who, like Mercado, devoted a great deal of effort to the Quantity Theory of Money.

Monument to Domingo de Soto in Burgos.
Domingo de Soto defends the market price, saying that “something is worth what it can be sold for, excluding violence, fraud and deceit”; that is, the price freely debated in a competitive market, a word specifically used by Luis de Molina when he says that “competition – concurrentium – among many buyers, more often than not, and their greater greed, will drive up prices; on the other hand, the scarcity of buyers will cause them to fall.”
Luis de Molina argued that private property was an institution with positive practical effects since, for example, goods would be better administered by a single owner than if they were communally owned.
Finally, Juan de Mariana supported the arguments of his fellow scholastics, summarizing them in a single sentence: “When an ass is owned by many, the wolves eat it.”
For this reason, all the doctors of the School of Salamanca viewed state price regulation with the utmost disapproval. In this respect, the position of Martín de Azpilcueta is even striking, as he categorically opposed price regulation, “because it was unnecessary when there was abundance and ineffective or harmful when there was scarcity”.
Schumpeter and the name of the School of Salamanca
Within our ancestral inefficiency to disseminate our own achievements, the final accolade to the School of Salamanca denomination of economists came well into the 20th century. It was given by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in his History of Economic Analysis (1954), although many economic historians had already used the appellation before him.
Schumpeter studied scholastic doctrine in general and Spanish scholastic doctrine in particular and praised the high level of economic science in 16th-century Spain. According to the aforementioned economist, this school was the group most deserving of the title of founder of economic science.

Joseph Schumpeter
Schumpeter believes that it is justified to speak of a school of Salamanca of economists, although it should be pointed out – and it is worth mentioning – that Schumpeter is a faithful heir to the historical prejudices that exist about Spaniards in northern Europe.
In the aforementioned work, he feigns surprise upon discovering that several of its most prominent members “happened to be Spanish”. However, he states that “their teaching had nothing specifically Spanish about it” – See here. – Nothing new beyond the navel of our friends the Anglo-Saxons, you know.
Main economic doctrines of the Salamanca thinkers
But reality is stubborn, even in the face of prejudice. Nowadays, the researcher Anton Alexandrovich Afanasyev, Professor of Business Analysis at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and leading researcher at the Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published in 2015 an interesting compilation of the main economic doctrines postulated by the Salamanca thinkers, which are listed below (along with the year of publication):
- In monetary theory, some of these doctrines are:
- The quantitative theory of money (1556)
- The theory of the purchasing power parity of money (1535–1594).
- The theory of the marginal value (utility) of money (1583, 1642)
- The doctrine of the demand for money (1601).
- A broad interpretation of the money supply (1601).
- The doctrine of monetary mercantilism (1569) and of the mercantilism of a favorable trade balance (1600).
- In terms of the theory of prices, the following are significant:
- The theory and mechanisms of competition between sellers and buyers (1597).
- The justification of selling luxury goods (1535) and basic necessities (1552) at free prices.
- The idea that it is impossible for man to know the exact value of the fair price of a product (1546, 1617).
- The doctrine of the three main actors in the market from which the fair price can be known (1546).
The fathers of the law of nations
The School of Salamanca renewed medieval concepts of law through a vindication of human freedom. They initiated a legal doctrine that claimed the natural rights of man to life, dignity, property, freedom of thought, etc.
Natural law or iusnaturalist doctrine
Redefined the concept of Natural Law or Natural Law doctrine, which defends the laws of man originating from nature itself, and everything that exists according to the natural order shares that law. He concluded that if all men share the same nature they also share the same rights and freedoms.
These freedoms are inherent to them and therefore belong to them above the considerations of any prince or pope, and independently of their religion or political affiliation.
These natural law ideas were put into practice in America where they recognized the rights of the indigenous people, such as the right to own their land or the prohibition of the use of force as a means of converting them to Christianity. Justice was understood as a natural law for the individual living in society.
The humanistic and missionary work of the Spanish clergy in America was inspired by the doctrines of the scholars of Salamanca.

The humanistic and missionary work of the Spanish clergy in America was inspired by the doctrines of the wise men of Salamanca.
The members of the School of Salamanca initiated a theory of the separation of powers: that of divine law and that of natural law. A separation that until that time had not been developed.
They argued that the origin of royal power lay in the sovereignty of the people, who transferred it to the ruling prince on the basis of a pact or contract between the two parties: human beings are by nature free and insubordinate to any other human being, and although they are governed by a king they can depose him if he is not just.
The role of the State and the existence of the Government
With regard to the role of the State, the majority of the students from Salamanca who analyzed the political structures considered that the most important thing was not so much the political system as the rights and conditions enjoyed by the citizens.
For these scholastics, society predated governmental power, as Juan de Mariana affirms, for example, who says: “only after society was constituted could the thought arise among men to create a power, a fact that in itself would be enough to prove that the rulers are for the people, and not the people for the rulers, when we did not feel to confirm it and put it beyond all doubt the cry of our individual freedom, wounded from the point at which one man has extended over another the scepter of the law or the sword of force.”
The existence of government, in itself, means a limit to freedom. They consider this limit necessary, but for it to be valid it must be based on the will of the people. If we need someone to govern us for our own well-being, it is we who must give them the power, not they who must impose it on us at the point of a sword.

Francisco Suárez
Francisco Suárez became the main defender of this natural law thinking. Suárez defends the sovereignty of the people against royal power by divine design. For him, the community is formed by a pact between free and sovereign men, and this in turn grants political power to another man to be governed on the basis of contractual relations.
This form of natural government established by contract between its members is a principle of democracy. His contractualist theory considers that the community can choose its institutions of government, such as monarchy, oligarchy or republic, if they maintain the agreement in full.
This vision of man was novel in the socio-political context of the time, but even more innovative was the atmosphere of freedom with which these intellectuals formulated the principles that questioned the Spanish presence in the New World, even with the support of the Spanish monarchs.
The revolutionary scholar: Juan de Mariana
Mariana’s work De Rege was written at the suggestion of King Philip II of Spain and dedicated to his successor, Philip III. But the monarchy did not come out well in the hands of the tough Mariana.
He was a fervent opponent of the rising tide of absolutism in Europe. He did not agree with the doctrine of those who, like King James I of England, believed that kings ruled absolutely by divine right. Mariana turned the scholastic doctrine of tyranny from an abstract concept into a weapon with which to strike at the monarchs of his time.
Unlike other scholastics, who placed the “ownership” of power in the hands of the king, she affirmed that the people have the right to reclaim their political power whenever the king abuses it. Mariana was the predecessor of John Locke’s theory of popular consent and the continued superiority of the people over the government.
Mariana also preceded Locke in arguing that men abandon the state of nature to form governments in order to preserve their rights over private property.

Juan de Mariana. El sabio revolucionario
Innovation in the definition of tyranny
But the most fascinating feature of the “extremism” of Mariana’s political theory was his creative innovation in the scholastic theory of tyrannicide. Mariana broadened the definition of tyranny. For him, a tyrant was any ruler who violated the laws, who imposed taxes without the consent of the people or who prevented a democratic parliament from meeting.
In reality, Mariana did not think that an individual could commit murder lightly. First, he would have to gather the people together to make this crucial decision. But if that were impossible, he would at least have to consult some “grave and learned men”, unless the clamor of the people against the tyrant were so manifest that consultation would be unnecessary.
Mariana has left us an eloquent description of the typical tyrant and his deadly task:
“He appropriates the property of individuals and wastes it, possessed as he is by the ignoble vices of greed, avarice, cruelty and fraud (…) Tyrants, in truth, seek to harm and ruin everyone, but they direct their attack especially against the rich and honest men throughout the kingdom. They consider good to be more suspicious than evil and the virtue they lack to be more formidable (…) They expel the best men from the community under the principle that whoever is exalted in the kingdom must be overthrown (…) They squeeze all the rest so that they cannot unite, demanding new taxes from them daily, promoting fights between citizens and linking one war to another. They construct great works at the expense and suffering of the citizens. (…) The tyrant necessarily fears that those he terrorizes and keeps as slaves will try to overthrow him (…) So he forbids citizens to meet, to assemble and to discuss the affairs of the community, using secret police methods to take away their opportunity to speak and listen freely, so that they are not even allowed to complain freely.”
It is understandable that the French authorities were nervous about Mariana’s theories and his book De Rege. While the King of Spain refused to consider France’s proposals to suppress this subversive work, the Jesuit general issued a decree at his command forbidding the teaching that it is legitimate to kill tyrants. Note the difference in royal behavior compared to what we have been “sold” about enlightened France compared to obscurantist Spain.
However, this act of submission did not prevent a thoroughgoing smear campaign in France against the Jesuits, as well as their loss of political and theological influence. France did not forget, and history tells what happened to the Jesuits when the Bourbon dynasty ruled in Spain.
The echo in France of Mariana’s theories
Although, due to one of the many ironies that abound in history, it must be said that the theories of Juan de Mariana had a full echo in France, to the point that he inspired the ideologues of the French Revolution.
We are unable to infer whether his work was relevant to what happened to Louis XVI, although it is true that Father Mariana gave his name to the symbol of the First Republic: the Marianne. Como dicen los italianos… vendetta è un piatto che si serve freddo…
Liberty Leading the People. A very famous painting by Eugène Delacroix -1830-. The figure of Liberty, with all her beauty, represented the First French Republic –La Marianne-, whose name was given in homage to Juan de Mariana

Liberty leading the people. Famous painting by Eugène Delacroix -1830-. The figure of Liberty, with all her beauty, represented the First French Republic -La Marianne-, whose name was given in homage to Juan de Mariana.
In any case, as the French expert Florence Gauthier points out: “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, of 1789, is a text that condenses the political theory proper to the tradition that had united figures such as Mariana and Locke”.
Other scientific disciplines cultivated by the School of Salamanca
Less well known to the general public, it should be noted that the University of Salamanca also taught scientific disciplines, such as astronomy, where students had a syllabus that included Copernicus, for example.

At the University of Salamanca, Copernicus was part of the syllabus as early as 1561.
Other members of this School also studied the natural sciences, poetry (such as Fray Luis de Leon), music, mathematics and geography.
Among their teachers was the aforementioned scholar Domingo de Soto, who was the first to establish that a body in free fall undergoes constant acceleration. This was a key discovery in physics, an essential basis for the later study of gravity by Galileo and Newton.
The Gregorian calendar
Also noteworthy is the commission they received from Pope Gregory XIII to replace the Julian calendar. The calendar, created by Julius Caesar 46 years before the birth of Christ, was out of step with the seasons. This commission resulted in the Gregorian Calendar.

Mathematician and humanist Pedro Chacón
Due to its special interest, and the general lack of knowledge about the authorship of this calendar, we have included here the description of the episode described in the book “Música, teoría y matemática en el Renacimiento”, published by Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, in 2014:
“Pedro Chacón (1527-1581) from Toledo, mathematician, Latinist and theologian, was one of the most outstanding humanists at the University of Salamanca. Chacón moved to Rome, where Pope Gregory XIII entrusted him, together with other scholars, with the reform of the calendar. Although the final credit is usually given to the German Christopher Clavius and the Italian Luigi Lilio, the intervention of the Spanish mathematician was of great importance. There is another key point: the proposals submitted by the University of Salamanca in 1515 and in 1578 (the latter with the participation of professors such as Diego de Vera, Cosme de Medina, Fray Bartolomé de Medina, Fray Domingo Báñez, Fray Francisco Alcocer, Fray Luis de León, Gabriel Gómez and Miguel Francés). The opinion of Salamanca in 1515,” write Ana María Carabias Torres and Bernardo Gómez Alfonso, “to which Luigi Lilio merely added the guide tables for the future celebration of Easter, was basically confirmed by the pontiff in 1582, with the publication of the Gregorian calendar, which has now become humanity’s civil calendar.”
But these latest scientific notes are only the beginning of what awaits us…
Sources
- Afanasayev, A. A., La Escuela de Salamanca del siglo XVI: algunas contribuciones a la ciencia económica. (2015)
- Roaro, J., La Escuela de Salamanca y la interpretación histórica del Humanismo renacentista español. Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin 4 (2014), pp. 189-261
- Paradinas Fuentes, J.L., El Pensamiento Económico De La Escuela De Salamanca. Fundación Canaria Orotava de Historia de la Ciencia(
- Escuela de Salamanca in Wikipedia
- Universidad de Salamanca in Spain Illustrated
- La escuela de Salamanca in Spain Illustrated
- Domingo de Soto in Fundación Villacisneros
- Los verdaderos fundadores de la economía: la Escuela de Salamanca in Mises Wire
- El erudito extremista Juan de Mariana in Mises Wire
- El origen salmantino del calendario gregoriano in El mercurio salmantino
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