Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (11 June 1494 – 17 November 1573) was a Spanish Renaissance humanist, philosopher, theologian, and proponent of colonial slavery.

In 1533 and 1534 Sepúlveda wrote to Desiderius Erasmus from Rome concerning differences between Erasmus's Greek New Testament and the Codex Vaticanus. He was the adversary of Bartolomé de las Casas in the Valladolid Controversy in 1550 concerning the justification of the Spanish Conquest of the Indies. Sepúlveda was the defender of the Spanish Empire's right of conquest, of colonization, and of evangelization in the so-called New World. He argued on the base of natural law philosophy and developed a position which was different from the position of the School of Salamanca, as represented famously by Francisco de Vitoria.

Sepúlveda translated several of Aristotle's works into Latin (e.g. Parva naturalia 1522, Politics or De re publica 1548).

The Valladolid Controversy was organized by King Charles V (grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella) to give an answer to the question whether the indigenous peoples of the Americas were capable of self-governance, during the Spanish colonization of the Americas.