The Global Impact of the Early Modern Thomistic Revolution and the Scholastic Grammars of Daily Resistance Within Institutions

This chapter focuses on the progressive erosion of Aristotelian criteria of tyranny in the Iberoamerican world (fifteenth-seventeenth centuries). It shows how after the comunero revolt (1521) and the implantation of Thomism as official political paradigm, royal petitions of extraordinary tributes became common. Approaching this political turn from a global perspective, I show how Thomist discourse on common good was frequently used to justify the seizure of Natives’ goods. Despite these changes, political resistance did not disappear. Violent opposition tended to be replaced by an erudite resistance (juridical, moral and theological) carried out through institutional channels.