Vitoria’s Ideas of Supernatural and Natural Sovereignty: Adam and Eve’s Marriage, the Uncivil Amerindians, and the Global Christian Nation

In examining the potentially lawless core of Vitoria’s ideas of sovereignty, I argue that Vitoria traces civil sovereignty to his concept of a fourth dominium (obligatio-dominium), originating in mankind’s first marriage and embodying bivalent legal and moral values. Vitoria’s obligatio-dominium unites the Thomist/Aristotelian and neo-Augustinian threads of his argument, which are tied to legal obligation and lawmaking freedom. Reflecting this duality, Vitoria envisions a doubled natural law and doubled ius gentium, which empower constituent communities to overthrow legally constituted commonwealths by invoking mankind’s inalienable lawmaking power. Thus, Vitoria morally justified the conquistadors' supernatural Christian nation, while disenfranchising Amerindian civil communities.