The Jus Gentium as Universal Order

In a lecture given at this university 46 years ago, in June 1946, commemorating the 400 th anniversary of the death of Francisco de Vitoria and entitled 'Premisas filosóficas e históricas del totus orbis de Vitoria' (Philosophical and historical premises of Vitoria's totus orbis'), I began by noting, 'The notion of a totus orbis, a sort of world community of mankind, conceived of as a legal entity encompassing all States on the basis of natural law, is undeniably Francisco de Vitoria's greatest and most innovative conception.Without completely doing away with the idea of Christianity, an agreeable one in the Middle Ages, the guiding principle of which was the profession of a single religious faith, it nevertheless established itself as a linchpin of the system of international relations.Thereafter, it enabled the successive incorporation of non-Christian States into the international community.As a result of this idea, modern international law is universal in nature, and that is why Vitoria is rightly known as the founder of modern international law.' 1Given the similarities between the subject of that lecture and the one I was asked to give for the part of this conference devoted to 'Salamanca and the Law of Nations', I could think of no better way to begin than by revisiting those words, despite the time that has elapsed since I first spoke them on no less solemn an occasion than the one that brings us together today.Because the idea of totus orbis, of the whole world, encapsulates, in Vitoria's own words, the understanding of the law of nations as a world order, as he devised it and as it was further developed by his followers at the University of Salamanca and even by those who, like Francisco Suárez, did not, strictly speaking, belong to the school associated with that city, but did, together with it, belong to the Spanish school of the law of nations or, as it is often called beyond our borders, 16 th -and 17 th -century Spanish moral theology.Vitoria's conception of the law of nations as a universal order had precedents and premises in theology and history, which the aforementioned lecture sought to elucidate.Naturally, I will not reiterate here what I said then, although certain references cannot be avoided.Instead, I will attempt to trace the genesis of these unavoidable doctrinal and factual precedents for Vitoria's work in the great Dominican's thought and to offer an overview thereof.