Atlantic Expansion and the Reformation: Impact on Europe
**8. Introduction**
**8.1. The Fracture of the Christian *Res Publica* and Atlantic Expansion**
These facts are linked to the traditional division of history into ages.
1. Importance: Reforms represent a break with incalculable consequences for a Christianity that saw itself as a universal order. The discovery of America is another event of extraordinary importance, as is the Atlantic expansion in general. This represents a break with the global geography of Europe.
2. To what extent does it break continuity? From the judicial point of view, we are not in a discontinuity because both phenomena were incurred from tradition with the categories available to the tradition. New facts are redirected to traditional interpretive schemes.
**Atlantic Expansion**
New World versus the Old World. There are reports of new territories from the 15th century. For the first time, in a brutal way, one must take care of a different humanity living under a different order and customs. This generates two controversies:
- In what measure is it lawful to do or not to do war with these people?
- How to grasp what status you have to give the Indians?
The colonization of these lands is made pursuant to the order of things, religious rules, and theological rules. To solve these problems (first half of the 16th century), Christian doctrine that had formed during the late Middle Ages in European expansion into the East is applied. It is an orderly world; there is an objective order to unavailable principles. According to these principles, Indians are not entitled to their own right. According to this notion, the family order is key because inequality starts from the family. One’s status depends primarily on the position one occupies in the family. Thus, indigenous status is recognized by the concurrence of three traditional statuses:
- Rustic: This implies that those who do not have that condition are due to be subject to public law, may continue to be guided by their own customs, and the courts can resolve discretion.
- Miserable: Those who cannot fend for themselves. Traditionally and currently, they had the orphans, widows, and those newly converted to Christianity. This status determines special protection by the religious authorities and the king. There should be special protection of the powerless.
- Children: Disabled to govern itself by lack of capacity. Applied to the Indians, it is assumed that it is necessary to post about them, which has a subject complement. In Europe, the family goes to the father. But here, some tutors have to deal with this (guardianship figure). Under the traditional order, the Indians did not have the independence conferred on family law and, therefore, are entrusted to the Church or the secular charges. Therefore, the rights that are indigenous to the confluence of these three statuses. Apart from that, the Indians did not lose their right and ability of government as they are consistent with the order. This humanity is reduced and captured the order to apply the traditional categories.
**The Fracture of the Christian *Res Publica***
It occurs to protest the reform of the traditional Catholic order. In the late 15th century, Erasmus of Rotterdam (Humanism) raises criticism of the traditional order of the Church. In this context, the reform starts with Luther, with a renewal of the theological issues that will lead to the theology of justification by faith, that is, the doctrine of good works; merit for salvation cannot be. This has immediate political relevance in the context of the rule to the extent that the reform was taken by some princes within the Empire but not by the emperor, with which took place a constitutional conflict within the empire. It was resolved under the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which underpins the principle that the ruler determines the religion of the subjects. Following the principles of reform leading to the direct attachment of the sacred texts without knowledge of the religion after the Lutheran Reformation, reforms opened new internal conflicts that led to the reform movement itself. Calvinism is interesting from the standpoint of legal and political. It takes place mainly in Geneva. They emphasize two principles:
- Theory of predestination: Eternal decree of God from the beginning of time, there is a plan for every man, without God giving mankind corrupted his own grace.
- Doctrine of vocation: Man is called to act in the world for the greater glory of God.
With these principles, it spans much of the European territories. From the Catholic view of the Counter-Reformation, it is articulated in the Council of Trent. It reaffirms the Catholic tradition. Weight is recognized as a scripture that has a tradition of the Church and the idea that faith can only come from salvation. The fracture of Christianity (Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism) involves a conflict of political legitimacy. There are subjects who do not recognize the king as legitimate. The only way out was implemented because traditional solutions were not worth the wars of religion that desolated Europe until the mid-17th century. The most significant occurs in one part of the Empire, leading to the Thirty Years’ War.
- France (1562-1598): With a turning point on August 24, 1572, on the night of St. Bartholomew, which ravaged the Huguenots. It ends with the Edict of Nantes (1598), which establishes a separation between Catholics and Huguenots.
- England: The configuration of the Anglican Church.
- Netherlands: Calvinism determines the course of the conflict.
In all these conflicts that shaped the Thirty Years’ War, it was accompanied by the establishment of any legal doctrine policy regarding selecting the most appropriate documents within the framework of tradition. In short, the movement started by the Reformation from the political and legal point of view does not break the traditional order. The innovations move through the ius commune. As a result of the breakdown of the res publica Christian, there are two camps:
- Catholicism
- Protestantism
In territories that assume the reformed religion by the very characteristics of this, it will be better able to seek a different order of traditional medieval background in general. In modern times, there are two trends:
- Downward: Trend propagation of status. In addition, there are a multitude of corporations that are given because the major political bodies are formed with the integration of children without making them disappear. They are intended to meet the new social situations that are creating the modern centuries.
- Upward: More or less successful efforts to strengthen the sovereign vertex given the breakdown of the Christian res publica will lead to two different developments within the same tradition:
- Absolutism
- Constitutionalism
**9.2. Absolutism and Constitutionalism**
They are both historiographical terms. The term “absolutism” arose in the context of the French Revolution. They are defined largely in relation to each other and are opposed because they both combine relatively elements of the legal and political tradition itself differently. The figure of the princeps is the key to understanding these terms. Two specific qualities are predicated of the princeps that distinguish it from any other subject of the legal system:
- The king is the origin of any political power within the political space. Any holder of public authority in the political space is understood that his power is derived directly or indirectly from the prince.
- The ability to abrogate the substantive law and, therefore, to modify the individual rights conferred by the objective right. Has the ability to unilaterally modify the order and thus to modify the status of different subjects.
Names that match the power of the prince are being sought: fullness of power. Ubaldi, Baldo of the princeps clearly separated from the rest of the institutions empowered to act without legal limits, therefore, not subject to the law. Any other holder of political power has to act under the law. The set of powers that are encapsulated in the terms of the absolute power of law unconnected with power to amend the law. It is understood that the princeps may have the law through acts of imperative will. The central idea that dominates the judicial conception of the holder of political power is maintained. The princeps should act in the order does not mean its absolute set. Power is not limitless power. With absolute power by one or the other way against the power of the princeps, the corporate legal order always enforces representation. We go to see that the function has the King as head of the body politic, that is, to respect the autonomy and ensure that smooth operation of each of the parties, ruling and not to amputate parts of the body politic. This power of the prince is configured as unquestionably supreme, but only because there are other instances of political power. Absolutism emphasizes the top ruler to highlight especially the originating status of power. It is based on two principles:
- Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem.
- Legitimus solutus est Princeps.
The prince’s assertion of power comes into play more than other political mechanisms. But when we talk about constitutionalism, which primarily seeks to highlight is the set of limitations on the power of the king by the right (traditional constitution). The limit of this contractarian constitutionalist political system in the traditional sense is in the corporate base that forms the kingdom. His maxims are:
- Quod omnes est tangit Omnius appropetus.
It mainly emphasizes the role that has stratified and corporate representation in the assemblies that aim to restrict the authority of the monarch. Ultimately, both move in the same tradition and simply highlight one area or another of the same.