This extract from Vitoria's lectiones of 1534 – 5 on ST II-II. 10 ‘On unbelief in general’ shows the development of Vitoria's political ideas in connexion with the problem of evangelization in the two years leading up to the composition of the relections on the ‘barbarians’. His lectures on this quaestio make it clear that Vitoria was led to consider the topic as much by the problem of the moriscos and conversos (Moslem and Jewish converts in Spain) as by the American conquests. On the American Indians began as a re-reading of Article 12 ‘Whether it is lawful to baptize the children of non-Christians against the wishes of their parents’. The lectio translated here is on the more interesting Article 8. For convenience it has been divided into five sections (§§).

Reportata of the 1534–5 course survive in a number of MSS. As if to prove the connexion with the Indian question, the anonymous Madrid Biblioteca de Palacio MS from which the following extract is taken includes, between Vitoria's lectures on II-II. 10. 8 and 9 (fols. 65v–75v), a copy of a relection On the Caribbean Indians (De insulanis) by Father Domingo de las Cuevas, OP, Minor Professor of Thomist Theology in the university of Alcalá. In it, Cuevas quotes Vitoria's ideas on the ‘affair of the Indies’ as ammunition against a relection De Indis of another Alcalá professor, Father Domingo de Santa Cruz, OP.