Alfonso de Castro

This article deals with the Spanish theologian Alfonso de Castro. For the Portuguese colonial administrator, see Afonso de Castro

Alfonso de Castro, statue in Zamora

Alfonso de Castro OFM (* 1495 in Zamora ; † 1558 in Brussels ), also known as Alphonsus a Castro , was a Franciscan theologian and lawyer. He belongs to the group of theologians-jurists of the Spanish Late Scholasticism or School of Salamanca .

Life

Alfonso de Castro joined the Franciscan Order at the age of 15 and earned the reputation of a good preacher. After studying theology and philosophy at the University of Alcalá , he became a professor at the University of Salamanca , where he founded the “renaissance of theology” alongside Luis Carvajal and Francisco de Vitoria . In 1532 he stood up against the Lutheran doctrine in Bruges. He pursued the same concern with his work as an advisor to Charles V and Philip. II. Through his engagement at the Council of Trent 1545-47 and 1551-52 he became an advocate of the Spanish imperial interests and the Catholic faith against the Lutherans . Philip II, whom Castro had accompanied to England for their wedding in 1553/54, made him Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela at the end of 1557 , but Castro did not take up this office. In the last years of his life, Castro worked as a preacher in Antwerp .

Works

In his works, Castro dedicates himself above all to the criminal defense of “true faith”. Castro benefited from the independence of his approach. The criminal law received considerable systematic impulses through him, so that he is considered in the Spanish literature as the founder of the criminal law - padre y fundador del Derecho Penal . Outside of Spain, Castro is so far almost unknown.

His first work, Adversus omnes haereses libri XIV (Paris 1534, Antwerp 1556), is an alphabetical encyclopedia of heresy in which more than 400 species are listed. The work became the basis for heresy persecution and was translated into French in 1712. In 1537 and 1540 Castro published two books, Sermones .

Through the work De iusta haereticorum punitione libri III , published in Salamanca in 1547 and dedicated to Charles V , Castro became so famous that he was called the "scourge of heretics" ( azote de herejes ). With theological and legal principles he determines the just middle between Pharisaic condemnation and cowardly toleration of heresy, the way of returning to the true faith, the punishment of persistence and the socio-religious reasons for heresy.

Castro deals with the equality of magic and heresy in his short commentary on Malleus maleficarum ( witch's hammer ), De impia sortilegarum, Maleficarum, & Lamiarum haeresi, earumque punitione Opusculum (Lyon 1568). According to Castro, magic is a heresy and how to punish it with death by fire. The core of the accusation is the pact with the demon, which contradicts the Catholic faith, in that the magician worships the demon and not Christ and offers him power over his will. But Castro takes the moderate standpoint of canon law ( Canon episcopi ), as represented by many theologians and lawyers in the 16th century. According to this, the devil is not a physical being, but only a spirit being. Correspondingly, the devil's pact, devil's coitus and witch's sabbath are only present in the imagination, but not in reality.

The De potestate legis poenalis libri duo (reprinted Madrid 1961), published in Salamanca in 1550 , in which he deals in detail with the concept of the penal law, with the nature and purpose of punishment, and with the relationship between offense and punishment, can be considered Castro's main criminal law work . In it, Castro not only develops the prohibition of analogy under criminal law and the principle of restrictive interpretation, but also, in his own radicalism, sharpened the term punishment (poena) entirely to the guilty penalty and for the first time equips it with a moral rebuke. This punitive term, which was tinged with moral theology, found its way into canon law via Martin de Azpilcueta and Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva and from there into secular criminal law.

After Castro's death, the collected works were published in Paris in 1565 in four volumes.

literature

German literature

• Harald Maihold: Castro, Alfonso de . In: Lexicon for the history of witch persecution, ed. v. Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Moeller and Jürgen-Michael Schmidt
• Harald Maihold: Punishment for someone else's guilt? The systematization of the concept of punishment in the Spanish late scholasticism and natural law theory . Cologne u. a. 2005.
• Harald Maihold: Systematist of the heresies - memory of Alphonso de Castro (1492-1558) , in: Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kan. Abt. 118 (2001), p. 523ff.
• Daniela Müller : Heresy and heresy punishment in the work of Alfonso de Castro , in: Frank Grunert and Kurt Seelmann (eds.), The order of the practice. New studies on Spanish late scholasticism , Tübingen 2001, p. 333ff.

Spanish literature

• Eloy Bullón y Fernández: Alfonso de Castro y la ciencia penal , Madrid 1900.
• Santiago Castillo Hernández: Alfonso de Castro y el problema de las leyes penales, o, la obligatoriedad moral de las leyes humanas , Salamanca 1941.
• Manuel de Castro: Fr. Alfonso de Castro, OFM (1495-1558), consejero de Carlos V y Felipe II , in: Salmanticensis 6 (1958), pp. 281-322.
• Odilo Gómez Parente: Hacia el cuarto centenario de Fray Alfonso de Castro, fundador del derecho penal (1558-1958). Conferencia pronunciada el 26 de Marzo de 1957, en la casa de Zamora de Madrid , Madrid (1958).
• Andres de la Mañaricua Neure: La obligatoriedad de la ley penal en Alfonso de Castro , in: Revista Española de Derecho Canónico 4 (1949), p. 35ff.
• José María Navarrete Urieta: Alfonso de Castro y la ley penal , in: Revista de la Escuela de Estudios Penitenciarios 141 (Madrid 1959), pp. 1405ff.
• Teodoro Olarte: Alfonso de Castro (1495-1558). Su vida, su tiempo y sus ideas filosóficas-jurídicas , San José, Costa Rica, 1946.
• Marcelino Rodríguez Molinero: Origen español de la ciencia del Derecho penal, Alfonso de Castro y su sistema penal , Madrid 1959.
• Domingo Savall: Fray Alfonso de Castro (1495-1558). La orientación voluntarista de su Derecho Penal in: Archivo Ibero-Americano 38 (1935), p. 240ff.
• Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana , Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona 1905-30, tom. XII, p. 877.

Web links

• Stephen Donovan:  Alphonsus de Castro . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Volume 3, Robert Appleton Company, New York 1908.
• Hispánica

Individual evidence

1. ^ Harald Maihold: Castro, Alfonso de . Online at historicum.net on August 27, 2013. Accessed August 30, 2013.