The Requerimiento and the Theological “Knot” of European Expansionism: Jews,Muslims,and the Arawakan-speaking peoples of the Caribbean in Juan López de Palacios Rubios’s Juridical theory of Dominion (1512)

Abstract

Juan López de Palacios Rubios (1450–1524) was a very influential jurist in the court of Queen Isabella I of Spain (r. 1474-1504). In the Libellus de insulis oceanis (1512), he defended the right of the Spanish crown to wage war and enslave the Amerindians. The argument presented here elucidates that he did not rely on the Aristotelian theory of the natural slave, illustrates how the Dominican protest of December 1511 became embroiled in the “Pleitos Colombinos,” and how López de Palacios Rubios aligned with the arguments of the Dominican friar, Matías de Paz (c.1468–1519). This article sets the Libellus de insulis oceanis against the backdrop of Spanish exploitative and genocidal policies against the Arawak-speaking people of the Caribbean and shows how he made a correlation between Arawak-speaking people, Iberian Jews, and Muslims. The article also demonstrates López de Palacios Rubios reliance on the fifteenth-century Veronese jurist Bartolomeo Cipolla (c. 1420–1475).