Masculinity, War, and Pursuit of Glory in Sepúlveda’s Gonzalo

The Dialogus de appetenda gloria qui inscribitur Gonsalus (1523) is Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s first reflection on the moral aspects of war. In it, he addresses whether it is morally licit for Christians to desire worldly honor and glory, a question that Christian mystics, Irenicists, and humanists like Desiderius Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives posed in writings through which they sought to renew and reform spiritual practices in Christendom. Their skepticism was linked to a larger doubt over the compatibility of Christian principles that commanded men to love one another and the state’s injunction to kill one’s fellow man. In redressing those concerns, Sepúlveda advances a theory that embraces the pursuit of glory and that serves as the foundation for his justificatory theories of war in subsequent writings. His discourse on glory accommodates social mobility, simultaneously inscribing a martial moral code on the terrain of the masculine self and the male body.