The influence of Francisco de Vitoria on De iure praedae, an unpublished book by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius

Francisco de Vitoria, the founder of the School of Salamanca, whose fifth centenary we are currently commemorating, was a theologian and university professor of wide renown in the sixteenth and seventeenth century throughout Europe. Within the Catholic world in particular, his Relectiones and his Commentaries on Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae became standard references in universities and religious institutions. Yet his intellectual influence extended beyond Catholic circles and reached authors associated with the emerging Reformed churches as well.

This article examines Vitoria’s presence in one of Hugo Grotius’s lesser-known works, De iure praedae, a treatise that remained unpublished during Grotius’s lifetime, with the exception of Chapter XII, which appeared separately as Mare liberum (1609). Our study situates the composition of this work in its historical and intellectual context and offers a close analysis of the passages in which Grotius draws on and cites the thought of the Dominican theologian.