Taxation

Was the transgression of fiscal laws sinful? Since the middle ages theologians, following Aquinas’ footsteps, examined the legitimacy of taxation along four questions: its licit cause, i.e. the legitimate authority of who levied the tax; its necessity and use; the object and subject of taxation and its proportionateness. Moreover, despite Christ’s word ‘Render unto Caesar…’ (Mk 12:17), taxation continued to be understood as an extraordinary event which the monarch had to negotiate with the representatives of his realm in case of urgent necessity, e.g. in case of war. Hence, the danger of sin initially concerned the monarch who overstepped the limits of natural law, not the taxpaying Christian. This interpretation was overturned during the early modern period and in particular amongst the scholastics writing in the Spanish Empire confronted with bloating debt, caused by the ever expanding costs of war and growing state administration. The privatisation of the commons and the increase of the fiscal burden caused a vivid debate. The category of restitution (the demands on the faithful guilty of male ablata and turpe lucrum), for example, could address questions of the payment of indulgences (the cruzada) as well as state tax. The lively controversy, engaging theologians and jurists, extended into the royal councils. Some theologians and canonists like Francisco de Vitoria and Martín de Azpilcueta relied on the doctrines of Jean Gerson and Angelo of Chivasso to deny that tax evasion was necessarily sinful, in particular if such taxes were levied on poor people or if they violated customary law and ecclesiastical immunity. Others, like Gabriel Vázquez and Francisco Suárez, however, emphasized the duty to obey civil law in conscience as well as the authority of sovereigns to increase taxation, and by consequence they condemned tax fraud and downgraded the contractual power of the Cortes. The article will contextualise these controversies up to the probabilistic crisis in the middle of the seventeenth century and analyse how the semantics of scholasticism changed as theologians processed questions raised in auricular confession and in political decision-making within the Spanish imperial context. Furthermore, the article will explore the underlying conflict between secular law and moral theology defending the indirect power of the Church over the political sphere ratione peccati. Scholastic theology and casuistry indeed insisted on the role of the clergy to interpret the binding force of positive laws over the conscience, vindicating the primacy of canon law and of confession with regard to the validity of secular norms.