VITORIA, FRANCISCO DE

born , probably 1486, Vitoria, lava, Castile died Aug. 12, 1546 Spanish theologian best remembered for his defense of the rights of the Indians of the New World against Spanish colonists and for his ideas of the limitations of justifiable warfare. Additional reading Vitoria's contribution to international law is treated in James Brown Scott, The Spanish Origin of International Law, vol. 1, Francisco de Vitoria and His Law of Nations (1934). Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth-Century Spain (1963), compares Vitoria's ideas with those of his contemporaries.