Martín de Azpilcueta

Martín de Azpilcueta
Martín de Azpilcueta
Born	December 13, 1492; Barásoain, Kingdom of Navarre
Died	June 21, 1586 (aged 93); Rome

Martín de Azpilcueta Jaureguízar, C.R.S.A., also known as Doctor Navarrus (Barásoain, Kingdom of Navarre, December 13, 1492 – Rome, June 21, 1586) was a Navarrese priest, theologian, philosopher and economist.

In an apologetic letter to the Viceroy Alburquerque in 1570, Martín de Azpilcueta described himself as follows:

Navarre begot me; New Castile educated me at Alcalá; France made me a man; Old Castile exalted me at Salamanca; Portugal honored me and made me illustrious [...] Finally [...] I came to Italy, the most choice land in the whole world, and I reside in the mother and teacher of the world, Rome.

— Apologetic letter to the Viceroy Alburquerque, 1570.^[1]

Biography

Martín de Azpilcueta [also Azpilicueta] y Jaureguízar was born into a noble Agramontese family of Baztanese descent. He was the son of Martín de Azpilcueta and María de Jaureguízar, natives of the palaces bearing their surnames located in the Baztan Valley. He was a second cousin of María Azpilicueta Aznárez de Sada, who was married to Juan de Jaso Atondo; that is, the parents of Francisco de Jaso y Azpilicueta.^[2] He was the uncle of the Jesuit missionary Juan de Azpilcueta Navarro.

He studied Grammar in Navarre; between 1509 and 1516 he studied Arts, Philosophy and Theology at the University of Alcalá, founded by Cardinal Cisneros.^[3] From there he went on to study Canon Law at the University of Toulouse, the most famous at that time for the study of this discipline. In 1518, at the age of 26, he obtained the Chair of Canons at that university, teaching there as well as at the University of Cahors, where he remained for a year, around 1522.

During his stay in Toulouse he was ordained a priest, returning to Navarre in 1523 despite the offers he had received to remain at that university. On the return journey he stopped at Roncesvalles, whose prior at that time was Francisco de Navarra, where he took the habit of the Order of Canons Regular of Saint Augustine at the age of 30.

In the company of the Prior of Roncesvalles he went to the University of Salamanca in 1524. While in Salamanca, and even before obtaining any chair there, he was promoted by Charles V to a seat on the Royal Council of Navarre, and the Emperor also granted him a canonry in the Cathedral of Pamplona, although he declined both posts. In Salamanca he was obliged to take his doctorate in Canons again, since this university did not accept degrees obtained at others.

He was a professor at Salamanca for fourteen years, during which the Emperor Charles V once came to hear him, and before him he lectured on the democratic origin of power. He trained disciples, among whom were Diego de Covarrubias (1512–1577), the Portuguese jurist Arias Pinelo, Francisco Sarmiento and Pedro de Deza (1526–1600).

By order of the Emperor, in 1538 he moved to the University of Coimbra (Portugal), recently founded by the Portuguese monarchs. Once there, King John III granted him in 1538 the Prime Chair of Canons and an annual income of eight hundred and fifty ducats, in addition to a precentorship in the cathedral of that city.

During his stay in Coimbra, in addition to his teaching activity, he exercised influence on Portuguese public life as an adviser and confessor to illustrious figures. He was consulted on various matters by the tribunals of the Inquisition, and there was a wish to give him a bishopric, which he declined. After sixteen years of teaching at that University, in 1554, at the age of 62, he retired from the University of Coimbra.^[4]

On his journey back to Navarre he stopped in Valladolid, where the Princess Regent Joanna entrusted him with the visitation of two monasteries. One of them was that of San Isidoro de León, which he had already visited twenty years earlier. On this occasion he was charged with resolving the differences that the religious of the monastery had with their abbot, a task he carried out with great prudence.

Once in Navarre, he settled in his birthplace in Barásoain from 1556 to 1562, where, in accordance with the customs of the time, he took charge of three nieces, daughters of two of his deceased brothers, in order to arrange their marriages, taking on the payment of their generous dowries, which ranged between one thousand and one thousand five hundred ducats, on the condition that they marry «with my consent and opinion».^[5]

In 1561 he was appointed defense counsel for Bartolomé de Carranza, also a Navarrese, from Miranda de Arga, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain since 1557, who had been accused of heresy by the Inquisition and imprisoned for it in 1559. He devoted himself to this task for fifteen years, until Pope Gregory XIII pronounced the definitive sentence in April 1576, partially acquitting Carranza, since he was declared vehemently suspected of heresy. Exhausted by imprisonment and the bitter trial, Bartolomé de Carranza died a few days later. In 1567 the case had been transferred from the Spanish Inquisition to Rome, which obliged Azpilcueta, following his client, to move to that city. There he established his permanent residence and spent the last 19 years of his life. He died at the age of 93 on June 21, 1586.

Azpilcueta was twice proposed for elevation to the cardinalate, but this was prevented by the opposition of Philip II, who acted in Rome through Cardinal Francisco Pacheco and the ambassador Juan de Zúñiga.

Along with the work required by the defense of the Archbishop of Toledo and the publication of his own works, he joined the Supreme Tribunal of the Penitentiary as a consultor, at the proposal of Pius V and Charles Borromeo. He was also highly esteemed by the pontiffs Gregory XIII and Sixtus V, who frequently turned to Martín de Azpilcueta for advice. He also maintained a close relationship with Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Philip Neri.^[6]

As he had stipulated in his will, executed on September 7, 1582, he was buried in the Church of Saint Anthony of the Portuguese in Rome.

Thought

As an expert in Moral Theology, he advocated the supremacy of popular power over royal absolutism, emphasized the Law of Nations as the embryo of International Law and the necessary separation between the power of the papacy and that of kings; at the same time he proclaimed peaceful coexistence among the Christian monarchies, and denounced attitudes among students that today would be branded as xenophobic nationalism; furthermore, he opposed torture as a tool of the judicial power and the abuses of the conquest of America.^[7]

The seventh respect that makes money rise or fall, which is there being a great lack and need or an abundance of it: it is worth more where, or when, there is a great lack of it (...) as experience shows that in France, where there is less money than in Spain, bread, wines, cloths, and the hands and labors of men are worth much less; and even in Spain, at the time when there was less money, saleable things and the hands and labors of men were given for much less than after the Indies were discovered, which covered it with gold and silver. The cause of this is that money is worth more where and when there is a lack of it than where and when there is abundance.

— M. de Azpilcueta. Comentario resolutorio de cambios (1556)^[8]

He is regarded at once as a theologian, jurist and economist. He was the author of numerous essays. He belonged to the so-called School of Salamanca, together with other Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans, long before the founders of Classical Economics (the 18th-century British Adam Smith and his followers, among others), who are generally regarded as the initiators of modern economics, without being so.

He studied the economic effects of the arrival of precious metals from America, being the first formulator in history of the quantity theory of money; he pointed out the difference in the purchasing power of money in different countries according to the abundance or scarcity of precious metals in them. He defined what came to be called the scarcity theory of value in the following terms: «All merchandise becomes dearer when its demand is stronger and its supply is scarce».

He recognized that money is one more commodity and, as such, has a value and must be paid for: the interest on a loan.

Works

His most important works are:

Comentarii de Poenitentia, Coimbra, 1542.^[9]
Si quando de Rescriptis in causa propria. Coimbra, 1543.
Comentario [...] sobre el capítulo Inter Verba, Coimbra, 1543.
Relectio sive iterata praelectio [...] de resit. Spoliat, Coimbra, 1547.
Relectio in cap. Novit [...] de iudicis, Coimbra, 1548.
Commento o repetición del capítulo Quando de consecratione, Coimbra, 1550; Zaragoza, Pedro Bernuz, 1560.^[10]
Relectio cap. ita quorundam de Iudaeis, Coimbra, 1550.
Relectio in Levitico, Coimbra, 1550.
Manual de confesores y penitentes or Enchirindion confessariorum, Portuguese edition, Coimbra, 1550; Spanish edition, Salamanca, 1556; Pamplona, Adrián de Amberes, 1566;^[11] 1566; Latin edition, 1573. In 1577, 25 years after its first appearance, he commissioned the Plantin printing house in Antwerp to publish his Manual de Confesores, for which he set a print run of three thousand copies, but its high cost forced him to hand over a third of the print run to the printer, while he took charge of selling the rest.^[12]
Cinco comentarios, Salamanca, 1556.
Comentario resolutorio de usuras, Salamanca, 1556. Pamplona, Adrián de Amberes, 1565.^[13]
Repertorio sobre hurtos, Salamanca, 1556.
Tratado sobre las rentas de los beneficios eclesiásticos, Valladolid, 1566.^[14]
Adiciones al Manual de confesores, 1569.
Commentarii in tres De Poenitentia, 1569.
Capítulo veyte y ocho de las adiciones del Manual de confesores, Valladolid, 1570.
Respuesta [...] a De redditibus ecclesiasticis, 1571.
Commentarius de spoliis clericorum, Rome, 1572.
Tratado de alabanza y murmuración, Valladolid, 1572.^[15]
Commentarius [...] de religiones sine debito, Rome, 1574.
Comentarius de silentio in divinis Officciis, 1580.
Miscellanea centum de oratione, praesertim de Psalterio et Rosario. Rome, 1586.
Discurso del silencio que se deue guardar en los Diuinos Oficios, principalmente en el Coro, Salamanca, Pedro Lasso, 1588.^[16]
Commentaria [...] Gregorii IX, c. 1595.
Consiliorum sive Responsorum, Rome, 1602.
Enajenación de las Cosas Eclesiásticas.
Comentario sobre los expolios de los clérigos.
Cuatro Comentarios de Regulares.
Capitulo Humanae Aures.
Tractatus de Finibus Humanorum Actuum.
Tratado de Penitencia.
Tratado de Indulgencias y Jubileo.

His complete works were published in Venice (1598) under the title "Compendium horum omnium Navarri operum".