The voluntary servitude of Brazilian Indians and modern political thought

Abstract

This article analyses the influence of the debates which took place among missionaries in Brazil in the 16th century on the voluntary servitude of the Tupi Indians in the development of the moral theology of major writers in the Thomist tradition at the beginning of the 17th century, in particular the Jesuit Luís de Molina. It is argued that the hermeneutic solutions which the missionaries found for the problem of voluntary servitude of the Indians in the New World shaped the transition from an objective concept of law (ius) used by Dominican theologians of the Second Scholastic such as Vitoria and Soto, to a subjective concept of law, as used by their successors in the development of a Thomist moral theology, the Jesuits.