Biography of deogracias valladolid debate

Two positions reveal the predominant division in the sixteenth century between theories attempting to define the humanity of the Indians and the methods of conquest used in America, namely those of Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginès de Sepúlveda.

Summoned in 1550 by Emperor Charles V to the chapel of the Colegio San Gregorio, before a junta of renowned theologians including Domingo Soto, Melchor Cano, Bernardino de Arévalo, members of the Council of Castile and the Council of the Indies, and officers of the Spanish government, they had to provide an answer for the question of a just war against the Gentiles.

On the first day, Sepúlveda spent three hours presenting arguments from his treatise Democrates alter, sive de justis belli causis apud Indos, which had circulated widely a few years before the debate.

In his work he inferred that the Spanish, by virtue of their superiority, had the right to dominate and impose what was good onto the natives, who in the event of refusal or