Solórzano Pereira, Juan de (1575–1655)

Juan de Solórzano Pereira (b. 1575; d. 1655), Spanish jurist and author. Solórzano studied civil and canon law at the University of Salamanca and taught there before being named oidor of the Audiencia of Lima in 1609. In Peru he oversaw the rehabilitation of the Huancavelica mercury mine, married a creole woman from Cuzco, and mastered legislation related to the Indies. By the time he returned from what he considered exile in the New World as fiscal of the Council of the Indies in 1627, he was the foremost authority on the laws of the Indies. He published De Indiarum iure from 1629 to 1639 and, in 1647, a modified five-volume version, Política indiana, for readers of Spanish. Solórzano also was a major contributor, in 1636, to the final draft of the Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias, which was finally published in 1681. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Solórzano considered public office to be a public trust rather than a piece of property.

See alsoCouncil of the Indies; Huancavelica.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D. A. Brading, The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867 (1991), chap. 10.

John Leddy Phelan, The Kingdom of Quito in the Seventeenth Century: Bureaucratic Politics in the Spanish Empire (1967).

Additional Bibliography

Muldoon, James. The Americas in the Spanish World Order: The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

                                  Mark A. Burkholder