A natura vel a lege: o instituto da servidão e a sociedade neo-esclavagista no ensino ético-jurídico de cosme de Magalhães, SJ (1551-1624)

In their lessons of Moral Theology, the Jesuit Masters of Coimbra and Évora systematically addressed the subject of the origin and transfer of private property and civil power. The manuscripts of their courses dedicate a significant space to them in the treatise De Dominio, with exhaustive dissertations that, dealing with topics as subjective rights or the legitimation and limitation of power, can, still today, offer relevant principles of social and political philosophy. It was within this treatise de Dominio that they faced the subject of slavery in a modern society which, like the Ancient one, had become economically slavish. From their propositions, follows not only a justification of the legal institute of slavery in the light of Roman Law but also, in the light of moral Philosophy and Theology, such a regulation that, in the long term, it could not but imply its intolerance. Et servi habent jura, a natura vel a lege (“slaves also have rights, either by virtue of nature or by virtue of the law”). We will report in this regard some excerpts from Codex 5995, in which we can find the course taught by Cosme de Magalhães, SJ in 1598.