The piece of the month of November 2011

DE IUSTITIA ET IURE OBTENTIONIS AC RETENTIONIS REGNI NAVARRE
 

Mercedes Galán Lorda
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

In 1514, a work entitled De iustitia et iure obtentionis ac retentionis Regni Navarrae was published in Salamanca. Its author, Juan López de Palacios Rubios, was a renowned jurist of the time, advisor of Ferdinand the Catholic, particularly known in the field of History of Law in relation to the question of the just titles of acquisition of territories.

This is a problem that had already arisen in the medieval legal world: how to justify or legitimize the acquisition of a territory from the point of view of law. If the traditional titles of inheritance, marriage, election by the people, and pontifical or imperial concession were not discussed in the Middle Ages average , in the 16th century the revision of these medieval titles, particularly the pontifical concession, will be raised.

The trigger for the revision of the traditional doctrine of just titles was the status in the American continent. The problem of the attention to the natives of the New World led the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, in 1539, to propose the substitution of these old arguments, valid from the point of view of the right to acquire the dominion of a territory, for new ones.

In 1512, the year of the conquest of Navarre, the jurists of the time continued to invoke the papal concession. In fact, Palacios Rubios was in that same year editor of the famous Requerimiento, a text in which the natives of the American continent were notified of the papal donation made in favor of the Catholic Monarchs on their lands. This papal donation, made through the bulls of Alexander VI, assumed that the kings of Castile were their legitimate lords. With the reading of this Requerimiento to the natives, their submission was sought, threatening them with war in case of disrespect.

The essay of this text and the active participation in its elaboration of Palacios Rubios allows us to understand the approach followed by this jurist in the work we consider: De iustitia et iure obtentionis ac retentionis Regni Navarrae, published two years after the conquest of Navarre.

With this work, Palacios Rubios seeks to justify, from the point of view of law, the conquest of the kingdom of Navarre in 1512 and its subsequent retention.

At the beginning of the text there is a beautiful engraving, in which Ferdinand the Catholic is supposed to be represented receiving the work from the hands of its author.

Cover of De iustitia et iure obtentionis ac retentionis Regni Navarrae, work of the jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios. Salamanca, 1514.
This work is the legal opinion commissioned by Ferdinand the Catholic to justify the conquest of Navarre in 1512.
file Real y General de Navarra, Library Services, FBA 306 (1)]
 

The text can be considered a legal opinion of the time, in which the Catholic king would try to support his pretended rights over Navarre after the conquest carried out by the Castilian troops in 1512. From August of that same year, Ferdinand the Catholic was titled king of Navarre, when the last privative kings of Navarre, Juan de Albret and Catalina de Foix, were considered dispossessed of their dominions.

The work of Palacios Rubios tries to explain and justify the deprivation of the Navarrese kings in favor of King Ferdinand.

The opinion consists of a prologue and six parts. In the prologue, the author introduces himself as a doctor of law and advisor to the king, and dedicates his work to the Catholic king. He also states that it was the king who commissioned him to write about the occupation and retention of the kingdom of Navarre, a task that he found very difficult, but which he undertook trusting in the justice of the cause.

Throughout the text, the author will support his argumentation in the defense of the Church and in the condition of schismatics of the kings of Navarre, Juan and Catalina. As allies of the schismatic king of France, Louis XII, confronted with the Holy League in 1511, they were deprived of the kingdom of Navarre by the papal authority, which awarded it to Ferdinand the Catholic.

The truth is that the kings of Navarre found themselves in the middle of an international war that confronted, on one side the Pope, Ferdinand the Catholic, the Duke of Venice and Henry VIII, and on the other the King of France Louis XII and the Emperor Maximilian. It was understood that the Holy League, composed of the former, defended the interests of the Church.

Although, at first, the kings of Navarre tried to maintain their neutrality, their interests in France made them lean towards an alliance with the French king, signing the Treaty of Blois on July 18, 1512.

Two days later, Pope Julius II issued a first bull in which he threatened to sanction the allies of the schismatics with excommunication and confiscation of goods. However, the specific application of these sanctions to the kings of Navarre took place months later, already in 1513, by means of a second bull entitled Exigit contumacium and dated February 18, 1513.

In his opinion, Palacios Rubios considers this second bull as an authentic sentence that served to deprive the Navarrese kings of their dominions and to award them to Ferdinand the Catholic.

He does not doubt the legitimacy and rightfulness of this action, since the kings of Navarre not only did not fulfill their obligation to defend the Church, but also allied themselves with the schismatic French king, and even made it difficult for the Catholic king Ferdinand to come to its rescue.
Despite the attempt to legitimize the conquest and subsequent retention of the kingdom of Navarre with his opinion, the argumentation of Palacios Rubios was called into question with the revisionist thesis of Francisco de Vitoria a few years later, not considering valid the degree scroll of pontifical concession. Thus the need to arbitrate other legitimizing titles arose.

In any case, the work of Palacios Rubios has the great interest of being a legal opinion of entity, commissioned by Ferdinand the Catholic himself in the early sixteenth century. It allows us to approach in our days to what was the way of arguing of an official advisor at the time.