On Civil Power, probably delivered at Christmastide in 1528, is the earliest of Vitoria's surviving relections. The textual discrepancies between the two recensions represented by P and the printed editions are more extensive than those of any other of Vitoria's lectures. Some of the variants are spectacular, such as the four-folio excursus at 1. 11 which failed to appear at all in the printed editions, others are trivial; but every paragraph offers some differences in phrasing. The scribe of P used Vitoria's original ‘written text of the relection’, together with other autograph papers (1. 11 ad fia, footnote 55). Unusually, however, he failed to preserve the author's rubrics to the relection's propositions; the division into questions and articles has therefore to be supplied by deduction.

The Second Recension, represented by L, preserves a version not only corrupt but heavily cut. One motive for the omissions may have been the removal of controversial or historically obsolete points (see footnote 42, perhaps 21 and 44-5; for prima facie evidence of a correction made after 1530, see especially footnote 60).

A separate textual problem is the ‘Prologue’ printed at the beginning of the relection in L, which is absent from P. In the light of Vitoria's stated aversion to preambles of any kind the Prologue's inclusion is curious; but there are similar proems preserved in at least two other relections, which may mean that Vitoria prefaced the viva voce delivery of his lectures with a short occasional introduction not intended for inclusion in the permanent text of the originale.