The document provides an overview of a MOOC offered by Universidad Francisco Marroquín on the School of Salamanca. The 5-chapter MOOC covers the origins and intellectual influences of the School of Salamanca, including its contributions to thinking on human rights, politics, economics, and its influence on modern Western civilization. It is offered in English through an online e-learning platform. The document also discusses why studying the School of Salamanca is useful, providing context on its early modern liberal ideas that influenced Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Montesquieu.

2. The School
of Salamanca
MOOC
The School of Salamanca is a
MOOC offered by Universidad
Francisco Marroquín that consists
of five chapters: an introduction, a
chapter each on the contributions
to thinking about human rights,
politics, and economics; and a
conclusion. It is an overview of
the School of Salamanca, the
main intellectual current of early
modern Spain. Learn about the
origins of the Hispanic liberal
tradition as well as the scope of its
fundamental influence on modern
Western Civilization. Win a badge
by successfully completing the
activities of the course.
In 2018 the course launches its
first edition: salamanca.ufm.edu

3. If you are interested in fields
like economics or politics, the
School of Salamanca is just
good homework. Studying
early modern thinking about
concepts like price inflation or
republicanism can help us to
understand and evaluate them.
Moreover, as an early modern
type of Hispanic liberalism, the
School of Salamanca can help
us to understand the ideas of
Enlightenment thinkers who
were influenced by them, such as
Locke, Montesquieu, or Jefferson.
Why should
we study
The School
of Salamanca?

4. The mission of Universidad
Francisco Marroquín (ufm.edu) is to
teach and disseminate the ethical,
legal, and economic principles of
a society of free and responsible
persons. In recent years the
university has expanded its use of
innovative technology in order to
encourage the learning experience
both on and off campus.
About Universidad
Francisco Marroquín

5. Eric Clifford Graf is a professor of literature at
Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He graduated
from the University of Virginia in 1997 with a PhD in
Spanish language and literature . He has worked at the
University of Virginia, The College of William & Mary,
the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Smith College, Wesleyan University,
and Kershner Trading Group. He specializes in the
history of the novel, medieval and early modern Spain,
and literary, political, cultural, and economic theory.
He is author of the book Cervantes and Modernity
(Bucknell UP, 2007). In addition to numerous academic
essays on the poetry, theater, and narrative of Miguel de
Cervantes, he has also published on The Poem of the
Cid, Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan de Mariana, El Greco, San
Juan de la Cruz, Pedro de Calderón, José de Cadalso,
Vicente Aleixandre, Julio Cortázar, and Sigmund Freud.
Published academic essays
ufm.academia.edu/EricCliffordGraf
Other online courses
Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha
donquijote.ufm.edu/en
EricCliffordGraf
Professor

6. The course consists of five chapters
that students complete as they
use the e-learning resources in the
platform. This learning experience
is offered in English to disseminate
the ideas and cultural values around
the world.
Language
English
Effort
3 hours per week
Lenght
5 weeks
program
Academic

7. Course Syllabus
Chapter 1 Introduction
The School of Salamanca’s predecessors,
historical factors, and its founder, Francisco
de Vitoria
Chapter 2 Human Rights
Late-scholastic opinions on the rights of
indigenous peoples, women’s rights, religious
liberty, and slavery

8. Chapter 3 Politics
Late-scholastic thinking on regicide, popular sovereignty,
legal codes, parliamentary bodies, taxes, jurisdictional
conflicts, and constitutionalism
Chapter 4 Economics
Late-scholastic points of view on property rights,
monetary policy, free markets, theories of value, foreign
exchange, liquidity, etc.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
Juan de Mariana and the impact that the School
Salamanca has had on subsequent generations of
Europeans and Americans

9. Chapter 5MarianaIn this final chapter Professor
Graf reviews the importance of
one of the School of Salamanca’s
climactic figures, Juan de
Mariana, paying particular
attention to his dramatic struggle
against Philip III, the Duke of
Lerma, and the Inquisition. Graf
discusses the School’s influences
on subsequent generations of
Europeans and Americans, as
well as certain questions that
remain unresolved.
The online course includes a
series of resources to facilitate
your learning. Below is a list of
activities you will perform.
1. Watch the videos about
the overarching themes that
interested the School of
Salamanca.
2. Read the material provided in
PDF format in order to review the
chapter’s main ideas.
3. Share your impressions with
your colleagues by participating
in the discussion forums.
4. Reinforce your knowledge by
taking the quizzes.

10. -1-
Philip II
Duke of
Lerma
Mariana
With an epic career that spanned more than four
decades, Mariana was the leading Salamancan at the beginning
of the seventeenth century. His genius as a synthesizer of previous
work on a wide range of topics makes him an ideal indicator of the
scope of the type of thinking unleashed by Vitoria.
Mariana opines on everything from bullfights to
monetary policy to blood purity laws to the
right to self-defense.
Mariana also gives a good measure of
the radically confrontational and political
nature of late-scholastic thought. Jailed
by Philip III and the Duke of Lerma, he
was put on trial by the Inquisition
for lèse-majesté by way of his
menacing monetary treatise of
1609. Mariana is even supposed
to have authored a treatise that
criticized the hierarchal nature of
the Jesuit order.

11. -2-
Resistance to the
Inquisition
The reform-minded
humanists of the
Low Countries were
not the only ones to
rail against the Tribunal
of the Holy Office.
Both the first modern
Spanish historian rejected the
institution’s politics of racial
purity and its persecution of
individuals like the theological
poet Fray Luis de León.
1
Fray Luis
de León
The
Inquisition

12. -3-
In De rege, Mariana defended Jewish converts: “All those families
that today shine forth with pure lineage had obscure and humble
origins; if the door had been closed to plebes and converts, today
we would have no nobility” (3.4).
Lope
de Vega
Fray Luis
de León

13. Against Censorship
Complementing his confrontations with the Inquisition, Mariana
shocked many when he approved of Benito Arias Montano’s edition
of the polyglot Biblia Regia (1572). He was also personally familiar
with evading censorship. The 1605 edition of his De rege, contained
a single new chapter on money, called De moneta, which was
radical enough that Mariana had to publish it in Maguntia, Germany.
How do we know it was radical? This single chapter would be the
basis for the even more polemical De monetae of 1609, which, for
its part, had to be published in Cologne, Germany, and even then,
Habsburg authorities still arrested the author. Given the other
connections between Mariana and Cervantes, the presence of “the
Queen Doña Maguntia” in Don Quijote 2.38 likely alludes to the city
where Mariana published the second edition of De rege.
2
Queen
Doña Maguntia

14. -5-
3
Mariana
Vitoria
Right to Self-Defense
Natural law was the essential
grounds for late-scholastic
thinking. Nowhere is this clearer
than in arguments regarding
the right to self-defense. In
De rege, Mariana not only
defended the right of freemen
to bear arms, he argued that
they must be allowed “to
strengthen their bodies through
military exercises” (1.5). Vitoria’s
abstract, international emphasis
on natural law starts to sound
formal, proto-constitutional
in Mariana. In other words, he
underscores that autocrats
are kept in check through the
nobility’s right to bear arms. The
is the same animus behind the
Second Amendment to the US
Constitution.

15. -6-
4
Mariana
Philip III
Limits on the Power of Kings
Mariana wanted checks on
monarchical power. This
should come as no surprise:
the scholastics emphasized
the popular origins of
sovereignty and many of their
preferred medieval sources,
such as Aquinas, approved of
tyrannicide. As usual, Mariana
was more radical than his peers
regarding this issue, not only
insisting in De rege on the right
to kill tyrants but broadening
his definition of a tyrant to
include the prince who inflates
the money supply. He went on
to argue in favor of killing kings
so that these would recognize
the limits of their power and the
punishment that awaited them
if they turned to tyranny:
“It is, however, salutary for princes
to be persuaded that if they
oppress the realm, if they make
themselves intolerable due to
their vices and their crimes, then
they can have their lives taken
from them, not only by right but
also thus earning the applause
and fame of future generations”
(1.6).

16. -7-
One can understand Cromwell’s
appreciation for Mariana here
as a Jesuit version of the radical
Protestant perspective on how
to deal with unruly kingly power.
Cromwell
Charles I
De Rege
— Mariana

17. -8-
Aristotle and Plato
Another way to understand the
mentality of the late scholastics
is via their preference for Aristotle
over Plato. This early modern
polemic is often overstated,
but it remains true that, when
thinking about governments, the
humanists followed Plato in their
emphasis on cosmic idealism,
abstract speculation, and a
curriculum of study designed to
improve the character of princes;
whereas the scholastics followed
Aristotle in their emphasis on
realism, historical perspective,
economic issues, multiple political
systems, and the need for formal
limits on the power of kings.
5
Plato
Aristotle
Virtueoftheprince
Mechanationsofgovernment

18. -9-
For this reason, historians like Joseph Schumpeter, Murray
Rothbard, and Quentin Skinner have located the origins of modern
political theory in thinkers like Vitoria, De Soto, Molina, Suárez, and
Mariana. The latter is again a good example. There are neo-platonic
moments in De rege, but Mariana operates best when writing as
a jurist and an historian, i.e., in the neo-Aristotelian mode. In Don
Quijote, Cervantes articulates this same contrast through a series
of allusions to Plato’s allegory of the cave, which he renders absurd
by way of the scholastic motto in the knight’s letter to Governor
Sancho Panza: “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas” (1.51),
which means “Plato is a friend, but truth is a better friend.”
Nostalgia for Medieval
Fueros and Cortes
In Don Quijote we encounter anxiety about the lack of
constitutionalism in early modern Spain. Before Governor
Sancho Panza departs for the Isle of Barataria, Don Quijote gives
him extensive political advice. In the end, the knight expresses
horror at his squire’s inability to read or write.
6

19. There is also a play on words
between two senses of the
term “documents” (2.42-43),
which mean “instructions” but
also “written texts.” Sancho
underscores the political
importance of the second
definition: “it will be necessary
that they be given to me in
written form.” Later, we have
the chaos contained in “The
Constitutions of the Great
Governor Sancho Panza” (1.51),
which present serious moral
challenges to any reader with
training in constitutional law.
Sancho
Panza

20. -11-
It is Mariana who helps us to
understand the specificity of
these anticipations of modern
constitutionalism in Don Quijote
as well as just what all this has
to do with Zaragoza, the city
most mentioned in the novel.
In De rege Mariana articulates
tragic nostalgia for the controls
on monarchical authority
that were once sustained
by the charters (fueros) and
parliaments (Cortes) of the
medieval period. He points to
the investiture traditions and
the local laws of the Kingdom of
Aragón as model institutions and
laments the brutal repression
of the nobility there by Philip II
in 1591. One of the great ironies
of the narrative trajectory of
Spain
Philip II
Madrid, Spain
Philip II
kingdom of Aragón
Don Quijote is that the hidalgo
would have had actual political
representation in the Aragonese
parliament, whereas he was
excluded from the Castilian
body, which never granted seats
to the low nobility and which
had already succumbed to the
growing absolutist power of the
Habsburgs.

21. -12-
History Versus Legend
Mariana is considered the first
modern Spanish historian for
good reasons. In Mariana’s vision
of Spanish History, traditional
heroes like Alfonso X ‘the Wise’
and Enrique II ‘the Honorable’
and villains like Pedro I ‘the
Cruel’ changed places as per
the metallic content of their
respective coins. The Jesuit
historian discovered that Alfonso
X misrepresented the value of his
coins and that the coins of Pedro I
were superior to those of his rival
Enrique II. Mariana deployed a
scientific analysis of the historical
record of monetary policy as a
desideratum of loyalty to the
kings of Spain.
7
Alfonso X
Enrique II
Pedro I

22. Cynicism
Mariana had a generally baroque,
disillusioned, and anti-imperialist view of
politics. Thus, his interest in the classical
example of Diogenes of Sinope, one of the
founders of Cynic philosophy. Diogenes
famously preferred the company of dogs
to men and once mocked Alexander the
Great by asking him to stand aside and
quit blocking the philosopher’s view of
the sun. In the prologue to De monetae
mutatione, Mariana portrays himself as
Diogenes and thus unafraid to speak out
against the monetary manipulations of
King Philip III and the Duke of Lerma. This
is the same cynicism in the proximity
of monetary policy that is found in
Cervantes’s La novela y coloquio de los
perros of 1605.
8
Mariana
Philip III

23. -14-
Economic and Monetary Policies
Mariana grasped the fundamental
importance of economic
freedom, both as a general
moral imperative and a means of
enriching the citizens of Spain.
Mariana considered monetary
manipulation to be tyranny. For
Mariana this awareness grew to
fruition over the course of nearly
twenty years of investigation. In
his Historia de España of 1592, he
examined the coins of medieval
kings. In the chapter he added
to the 1605 edition of De rege,
he announced that Habsburg
monetary manipulation was the
principal basis for his political
disillusionment. Finally, in 1609
he disseminated the same
criticism in aggressive fashion in
De monetae.
9
Alfonso X
Pedro I
Enrique II

24. -15-
Mariana and the Novel Form
Mariana’s chapter “De moneta”
in the De rege edition of 1605
probably still deserves more
attention than it has received.
For example, it is my thesis
that some version of this
essay is the most likely source
for Cervantes’s attention to
10 monetary manipulation and
Habsburg tyranny in La novela
y coloquio de los perros and
Don Quijote, which were
both composed in the same
year of 1605. It is also likely
that Mariana’s even more
radically confrontational
essay De monetae of 1609 is
reflected in the Lion Episode
of Don Quijote part two of 1615.
Mariana and Cervantes. These
two intellectual giants, the
climactic figure of the School
of Salamanca and the inventor
of the modern novel, appear
to have read each other very
carefully. They also both appear
to have experienced intense
degrees of disillusionment with
many of the governing policies
of Philip II and Philip III.

25. Politics
It remains a hotly debated topic, but a good case can be made
that we have probably underestimated the impact that the School
of Salamanca had on the political thought of English, French, and
American classical liberals like John Locke, Fédéric Bastiat, and
James Madison, just to name three. The political legacies of late
scholastics like Mariana and Suárez in Northern Europe, the United
States, and Latin America will likely grow upon further examination.
For adamantly contrary views, see the work of Odd Langholm and
Francisco Gómez Camacho.
Human rights.
The School of Salamanca represents the beginning of a
long incremental process toward ending slavery and racial
discrimination, securing women’s rights, ensuring property rights,
etc. Perhaps the greatest legacy is the novel form, which becomes
a major sociological apparatus for soliciting and disseminating
empathy.
Conclusions
-16-
1
2

26. Economics
The modern Austrian School of
Economics traces its roots to the
School of Salamanca. Austrians who
have signaled this relation to various
degrees would include Menger,
Dempsey, Schumpeter, Grice-
Hutchinson, Roover, Rothbard, etc.
Rothbard
Menger
Dempsey
Roover
Schumpeter
Grice-Hutchinson
3

27. -18-
Literature
Many great authors from the Spanish Golden Age –Lope,
Quevedo, and Cervantes, just to name three– were heavily
influenced by the late scholastics of the School of Salamanca.
Mariana was probably the most important here, as it appears
several of these writers even visited Mariana when he was under
house arrest by the Inquisition. Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la
Mancha (1605/1615) contains the contours of each of the specific
debates over usury in 1541-44 and slavery in 1550-51 as well as
the same deep nostalgia for an Aristotelian approach to politics
and economics that characterized the School of Salamanca.
This might explain why liberalism has been more of a literary
phenomenon in the Spanish-speaking world.
4

28. -19-
Relation to humanism?
What was the extent
of the influence of
Erasmus?
Vitoria
Erasmus
5

29. Hispanic
World
Anglo
World
-20-
Comparative History?
Why didn’t the late scholastics have more success? Why was the
School of Salamanca essentially forgotten? Can the fate of the
Salamancans help explain the different economic and political
trajectories of modern England and Spain or their colonies in the
U.S. and Latin America? Intellectuals have long attempted
to explain these sorts of differences between the Anglo and
Hispanic worlds: see Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rodó, Unamuno, Rand,
Vargas Llosa, Elliott, Sowell, Pérez-Reverte, Diamond, and Ferguson.
6

30. Diamond
Elliot Vargas-Llosa Rand
Rodó
Pérez-Reverte
Sowell
Voltaire
Monstesquieu
Unamuno
Ferguson

31. Analyze the content of the comic and participate in the
discussion forum.
Why would a benevolent God allow evil to exist? Is not free will a
prerequisite for politics? In what ways can religion be political?
To enrich your learning experience it is important that you ask
interesting questions, formulate relevant comments, and respond
to the contributions of your classmates.
Chapter 5 Activity

34. UFM New Media production
Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Executive Director
Script and Proffesor
E-learning Coordinator
Illustration
Editorial design
Comic Illustration
Stephanie Falla
Eric Clifford Graf
Carlos Rodríguez
Lisa Quan
Sergio Miranda
Gabriella Noar
Sandy Rodríguez
Sandy Rodríguez

35. Website salamanca.ufm.edu
Direction Calle Manuel F.Ayau (6ta Calle
final), zona 10 Guatemala, Guatemala 01010
Phone Number (+502) 2338-7849
Guatemala, October 2017
UFM thanks the following sponsors for their
generous support of this MOOC: Smith Family
Foundation, The Bottoms Family
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
(CC-BY-NCSA 3.0) Copying, distribution and public communication
is allowed, providing that the acknowledgement of the work is
maintained and it is not used for business. If it is transformed or
a secondary work is generated, it can only be distributed with an
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