THEOLOGY AND POLITICO-LEGAL POPULARIZATION OF MARTYRDOM IN THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSAL MONARCHY

Abstract

The choice of the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas to formulate a theory of martyrdom present in the Hispanic Modern Age corresponds to the evident fact of its value as foundation of the Second Scholasticism theology, in the quality of builder of the philosophical and theological tendency that laid the foundations for the renovation of natural Law: an intellectualist iusnaturalism, contrary to voluntarism, which meant the Catholic orthodoxy and constituted, under the counter-reformist spirit, the basis of a  reinterpretative and original thinking embodied by the modern jurists and theologians in their treatises and commentaries in order to acquire a political and legal connotation with regard to the legitimation of the nature and aims of Universal Monarchy.