The School of Salamanca () is the Renaissance of thought in diverse intellectual areas by Spanish theologians, rooted in the intellectual and pedagogical work of Francisco de Vitoria. From the beginning of the 16th century the traditional Catholic conception of man and of his relation to God and to the world had been assaulted by the rise of humanism, by the Protestant Reformation and by the new geographical discoveries and their consequences. These new problems were addressed by the School of Salamanca. The name refers to the University of Salamanca, where de Vitoria and other members of the school were based. The juridical doctrine of the School of Salamanca represented the end of medieval concepts of law, with a revindication of liberty not habitual in Europe of that time. The natural rights of man came to be, in one form or another, the center of attention, including rights as a corporeal being (right to life, economic rights such as the right to own property) and spiritual rights (the right to freedom of thought and to human dignity). The School of Salamanca reformulated the concept of natural law: law originating in nature itself, with all that exists in the natural order sharing in this law. Their conclusion was, given that all humans share the same nature, they also share the same rights to life and liberty. Such views constituted a novelty in European thought and went counter to those then predominant in Spain and Europe that people indigenous to the Americas had no such rights. History and leading figures The School of Salamanca in the broad sense comprises two successive schools of thought, the largely Dominican Salmanticenses, then from the end of the 16th century the Jesuit Conimbricenses of the University of Coimbra, reflecting the general transition of intellectual leadership in the Catholic Church from the Dominicans to the Jesuits. The first school began with Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), and reached its high point with Domingo de Soto (1494–1560). Leading Conimbricenses were Luis de Molina (1535–1600), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), and Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), who would continue the tradition in Italy. The leading figures of the school, theologians and jurists Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Francisco Suárez, Martín de Azpilcueta (or Azpilicueta), and Tomás de Mercado were all scholars of natural law and of morality, who undertook the reconciliation of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas with the then new political-economic order.