Laura Beck Varela, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Index and Constitution. Natural Law and Catholic Constitutionalism in the Iberian American World (1700-1837)
Constitutionalism is typically linked to the era of secularism, individual rights, the establishment of the modern nation-state, and a body of ideas and doctrines which originated in the French and North American centers and were exported to the rest of the world. A recent historiography focusing on the dissolution of the Spanish empire has challenged these views. Concepts like ‘Catholic Legal Tradition’ (Garriga 2019), ‘Catholic Constitutionalism’ (Lorente & Portillo 2011; Clavero 2007), or ‘Hispanic Catholic Republicanism’ (Entin 2016), among others, question the conventional teleological narratives that portray early Latin American constitutional experiences as mere ‘failed’ or ‘distorted’ imitations of Northern models. The emphasis on the Catholic nature of this transition contends that political emancipation from the imperial Catholic Monarchy did not signify a break from the Catholic religion or from the old colonial juridical order (Portillo, 2018; Garriga, 2010). The new concept of citizenship was still closely tied to membership in a Catholic community, and Catholicism (rather than freedom of worship) was a right to be safeguarded. Electoral processes and the convening of representative assemblies were conducted according to the Catholic rites.
This paper explores the extensive dissemination of early modern natural law and moral philosophy books in the Iberian American space within the context of political emancipations. Translations and editions of these works, especially the creative adaptations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European authorities like Pufendorf, Heineccius, or Vattel, played a pivotal role in the creation of a political lexicon in the transition from the old imperial Monarchy to the emerging Catholic nations in the Americas.
Laura Beck Varela is Associate Professor of History of Law at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid since 2013. She studied Law and Philosophy in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and accomplished her PhD studies in the University of Seville and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main/Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the EHESS (Paris, 2012), and the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, 2019). Together with Knud Haakonssen and Frank Grunert, she is currently co-director of the international research network “Natural law, 1625-1850” (Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) and a member of the research project “Censura, expurgación y lectura en la primera era de la imprenta. Los índices de libros prohibidos y su impacto en el patrimonio textual” (PdC2022-133136-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministery of Science and directed by María José Vega.
Her research interests are related to the history of legal education, gender history and book, authorship and censorship studies. She has explored the impact of church censorship on the circulation of Protestant legal literature in eighteenth century Iberia in her book Literatura Jurídica y Censura. Fortuna de Vinnius en España (Valencia, 2013) and in other contributions, such as “La enseñanza del derecho y los Índices de libros prohibidos. Notas para un panorama ibérico, 1583-1640”, in: Le università e la Riforma protestante. Studi e ricerche nel quinto anniversario delle tesi luterane (Bologna, 2018).
