Hugo Grotius’s Views on Consent, Contract and the Christian Commonwealth – Introductory Remarks

In textbooks on international law, Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis is frequently cited as proof of the Protestant origins of international law. Reaching back to Enlightenment commentaries on Grotius, this claim was reinforced at the threshold of the twentieth century and has prospered ever since, thanks to Hamilton Vreeland Jr.’s influential biography designating Grotius as the ‘father of the modern science of international law’.1 Not unlike Weber’s account of the ‘Protestant origins of capitalism’, this claim has developed into a grand narrative about the ‘Protestant origins of modern international law’ that has become popular not only among jurists, but also historians, philosophers and political scientists. Yet, this claim must be nuanced,2 and against the background of growing confessional rivalry between Protestants and Catholics at the turn of the twentieth century, it has also been subject to criticism. Catholic jurists trying to vindicate the importance of their own tradition have developed a counter-narrative. James Brown Scott, the American ‘dean of international law’, played a crucial role in this endeavor. He emphasized the fundamental contribution to the rise of modern natural and international law by Catholic teólogos-juristas, notably Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez.3 Scott’s endeavor, however, was born not out of mere academic