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Alfonso de Castro (1495, Zamora, Spain – February 11, 1558, Brussels, Belgium), known also as Alphonsus a Castro, was a Franciscan theologian and jurist. He belongs to the group of theologian-jurists of the Spanish Late Scolasticism or School of Salamanca. Alfonso de Castro entered, at the age of 15, the Franciscan Order and quickly became known as a good preacher. After his studies of theology and philosophy at the University of Alcalá which was established in these years, he became professor at the famous University of Salamanca, where, next to Luis Carvajal and Francisco de Vitoria, he founded the "Renaissance of Theology". According to his commitment in Bruges in 1532 against the doctrine of the Lutherans, he became counselor of emperor Charles V and of the Spanish king Philip II. As he took part in the Council of Trient in 1545-47 and again in 1551-52 he appeared to advocate both the Spanish-imperial interests and the Catholic faith. Philip II, whom Castro accompanied in 1553 and 1554 to his marriage in England, nominated him in 1557 as Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, but Castro did not assume that office. In his last years, Castro acted as a preacher in Antwerp. In his works Castro attended himself, basically, to the defense of "true faith" through criminal law. He gave enormous systematic impulses to the criminal law, so that in Spanish literature he was called the "father and founder of criminal law" - padre y fundador del Derecho Penal. Outside of Spain, however, Castro remains nearly unknown. His first work, Adversos omnes haereses libri XIV (Paris 1534, Antwerp 1556), an alphabetical encyclopedia of heresy, collocates more than 400 species of this crime. This became one of the foundations of persecution of heretics in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was translated into the French language in 1712.
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