SOURCE: Quirk, Robert E. “Some Notes on a Controversial Controversy: Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Natural Servitude.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 34, no. 3 (August 1954): 357-64.

In the following essay, Quirk argues that Sepúlveda has been wrongly condemned for having argued for the enslavement of American Indians, maintaining that Sepúlveda was really recommending that natives be treated like the free serfs of Europe.

The heat engendered by the debate between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 at Valladolid has long since subsided. What the two formidable antagonists said there is recorded history.¹ How to interpret what was said is another matter. On this point another controversy has arisen to revive issues dead for 400 years as Lewis Hanke, new apostle, and Edmundo O'Gorman, neo-humanist, re-enact with amiability but determination the drama of the argument between the sixteenth-century cleric and Aristotelian...