Introduction

Summary

Although all too often ignored by students of political thought, the Spanish contribution to the history of political ideas in the sixteenth century is not only impressive but ‘up-to-date’ enough to satisfy the most demanding among critics. All the themes which the age inherited from the medieval tradition and which constitute the composite heart of Renaissance political theory were extensively studied by the publicists of the Spanish school. To argue that their answers are largely based on a foundation of Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, Augustinian, or Thomist vintage merely confirms how much they have in common with their own age.

In addition the Spanish school concerned itself with a question prompted by the fact that at this juncture Castile strives to play three political parts at times drastically incompatible with each other: a modern state in its early evolutionary stages forced by the vagaries of dynastic arrangements into a framework of the medieval imperial idea, while simultaneously becoming the nucleus of a rapidly growing and new form of empire. The political theme created by these circumstances revolves around the role to be played by the individual and autonomous commonwealth, not as an isolated entity precariously surviving in a hostile and anarchic world but as a responsible member of an international community of sovereign states.