JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XXVII (2025), nr. 4

 

(image source: brill)

Alberico Gentili’s ‘Silete theologi in munere alieno’: The Full Quote (Alain Wijffels)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10130
Abstract:

Alberico Gentili wrote addenda and corrigenda to his De iure belli libri tres (ed. pr. 1598), which were not included in the later, posthumous, editions of that work. The additions the author directed to be inserted after his exhortation ‘Remain silent, theologians, on an issue which is not your responsibility’ (Book 1, Ch. 12) suggest that he intended to emphasise the illegitimacy of wars on religious grounds, especially in international relations with the Ottomans, who in any event provided sufficient other grounds for waging war against them. Gentili’s remark did not preclude the use of theological literature in jurisprudence, although he considered that jurists had a specific competence for scholarship on the governance of human relations.

Peace Treaties in the Confines of the Spanish Empire The Spanish-Mapuche Parliaments during the 17th Century (Fernando Pérez Godoy)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10142
Abstract:

This article aims to analyze the practice of early modern law of nations – rather than its well-known doctrinal debate – in the Spanish empire. To do so, I focus on Hispano-Mapuche parliaments held in the south of colonial Chile during 1605, in which certain native customs, such as Mapuche polygamy, were temporarily recognized after concluding a series of peace agreements. Thus, this article claims that Hispano-Mapuche peace depended on validating some indigenous legal customs, which opposed even the ius commune foundation of the Castilian law. As the main analysis factors, I consider the need for a new basis of legitimacy to establish interethnic relationships and the weakness of the Spanish imperial expansion during the 17th century.

Resisting the Ordinance of God. The Augustinian Just War Tradition in the Work of Balthazar de Ayala (1548–1584) (Martijn Vermeersch)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10137
Abstract:

In his De Jure et Officiis Bellicis et Disciplina Militari libri tres, the Dutch-Spanish jurist Balthazar de Ayala (1548–1584) took it upon himself to develop a just war theory carefully tailored to the exigent circumstances of the Dutch Revolt. Given how the conflict was undoubtedly fueled by fervent disagreements on matters of faith, it is remarkable how Ayala’s dissertation seems to have provided the blueprint of a practicable just war doctrine unshackled from its moral tethers. Rather than solely focusing on what was just, Ayala instructed Farnese on the finer points of what rendered a war legal, simultaneously trying to keep the restoration of the one true faith clearly in view. Through a careful analysis of his source material, this article will attempt to demonstrate that – despite the obfuscation caused by his Augustinian frame of reference – Ayala’s treatise contains an innovate attempt at secularisation of just war theory.

Book reviews

• The Mixed Arbitral Tribunals, 1919–1939: An Experiment in the International Adjudication of Private Rights, edited by Hélène Ruiz Fabri and Michel Erpelding (Karin Van Leeuwen)
• The Cambridge History of Latin American Law in Global Perspective, edited by Thomas Duve and Tamar Herzog (Julia Galera Oliva)
• The Influence of Public International Law upon Private International Law: In History and Theory and in the Formation and Application of the Law, written by Mario Oyarzábal (María Julia Ochoa Jiménez)
• L’essor et la chute du droit international humanitaire: Une brève histoire de la codification de la protection des civils en temps de guerre (1899-1977), written by Jochen von Bernstorff (Etienne Henry)

Read the full issue here.