Mariana, Juan
Mariana, Juan
Jesuit, born Talavera, Toledo, Spain, 1536; died Toledo, 1624. He taught theology at Rome and Paris, but from 1574 was engaged in literary work in Spain. His voluminous “History of Spain” is his masterpiece, but his “De rege et regis institutione,” dedicated to Philip III of Spain, and “worthy of all respect from kings themselves as from their educators,” writes the Protestant Dr Leutbecher, has caused him to be one of the most maligned Jesuits, owing to a misconstrued observation in favor of the assassination of Henry III and the justification under very exceptional circumstances of the deposition and killing of tyrants. The book was at once officially condemned by the Jesuits and its correction ordered, and the members of the Society were forbidden to preach such a doctrine. No objection was raised in Spain but in France ten years later the work was ordered to be burnt by the Parliament. Mariana was again in difficulties owing to his desire to make changes in the Jesuit constitutions. He wrote several valuable commentaries and spent almost his last fifteen years a prisoner for courageously opposing the depreciation of Spanish currency in his “De monetae mutatione.”
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Mariana, Juan
Author and Jesuit, b. at Talavern, Toledo, Spain, probably in April, 1536; d. at Toledo, 16 February, 1624.
He is one of the most maligned members of the Jesuit order, owing to the opinions expressed in his book, “De rege et regis institutione”, on the killing of despots. He joined the order 1 January, 1554. Nothing more is known of his parentage or his family history.
It is an evidence of his talent that, as early as 1561, after finishing his studies, he was called by his superiors to Rome, where he taught theology for four years. After a further short sojourn in Sicily, he occupied the chair of theology in Paris (1569-1574), but was obliged through illness to return to Spain. There he spent a great number of years at Toledo, occupied almost exclusively with literary work.
Among his literary labours the most important is undoubtedly his great work on the history of Spain, which is still remembered to-day. There was published as late as 1854, in Madrid, an improved and richly illustrated edition continued up to that year. The work first appeared as “Historiæ de rebus Hispaniæ libri XX. Toleti, typis P. Roderici, 1592”. A later edition of the compiler himself, carried on still further is “De rebus Hispaniæ libri XXX”, published at Mainz in 1605. This edition bears the imprimatur of the order for the thirty books, given by Stephan Hojeda, visitor from Dec., 1598, and of the provincial from 1604. The author had in the mean time converted a Latin edition into Spanish and this appeared complete, containing the thirty books of the Latin edition, at Toledo in 1601. This went through a number of editions during the lifetime of the author and through others after his death.
The second work published is that mentioned above, “De Rege et Regis institutione libre III et Phillippum III Hispaniæ Regem Catholicum, 1599”. The work was written at the solicitation of the tutor of the royal princes and at the expense of Philip II (Garcias de Loaysa), but was dedicated to Philip III, who had become king in the meantime. It was not objected to by the King nor anywhere else in Spain; it was obviously calculated to bring up the King as the true father of his people and as a pattern of virtue for the whole nation. The Protestant Dr. Leutbecher (Erlangen, 1830) expressed his judgment of the book in the following terms: “Mariana’s excellent mirror for kings . . . contains more healthy materials for the education of future kings than any other princely mirror, and is worthy of all respect as much from kings themselves as from their educators. . . . Would that all kings were as Mariana wanted them to be.” The book certainly contained a misconstrued observation in favour of the assassination of Henry III of France, and defended, though with many restrictions and precautions, the disposition and killing of a tyrant. That did not escape the Jesuits in France and they drew the attention of the general of the order to it. The general at once expressed his regret, stating that the work had been published without his knowledge, and that he would take care that the book should be corrected. In 1605 there really appeared a somewhat altered edition at Mainz; to what degree the book had been corrected by the order is hard to discover. Mariana himself had not prepared another edition. But in 1610 a real storm broke loose against the book in France; by the order of Parliament the book was publicly burnt by the hand of the public executioner, while in Spain it continued to enjoy the royal favour. The general of the order forbade members to preach that it is lawful to kill tyrants.
There was still a whole series of smaller works from the pen of Mariana; many of them are only in manuscript. Some of his published works are not without value in political economy — his work “De ponderibus et mensuris” for example, which appeared at Toledo in 1599 and at Mainz in 1605, and his little “De monetæ mutatione”, which appeared in a general collection of his works in 1609. In a criticism of this small publication Pascal Duprat (Sommervogel, V, 592), a French economist, declared as late as 1870 that Mariana had set forth the true principles of the money question far better than his contemporaries. This work, however, proved fatal to the author. The fact that he had opposed with genuine courage the depreciation of the currency laid him under a charge of treason to the king, and Mariana, then seventy-three years old, was actually condemned to lifelong imprisonment, which took the form of a committal to a Franciscan convent. He was only to be allowed freedom shortly before his death.
The vehement character of Mariana, which strove against real or intended wrong, had also its dark side. The period of his old age coincided with a stormy time in the history of the order. In the order, which had just them begun to flourish, there were a nu mber of members who were not satisfied with the approved principles of the founder and the Holy See, especially as there was a good deal in them that did not correspond with the principles of the older orders. Even the solemn Bulls of Gregory XIII, which again expressly confirmed the points criticised from within and without the order, did not altogether bring quiet, so that in the year 1593, under the government of Acquaviva, there was a general congregation for the purpose of expelling some of the members. Juan Mariana, for a long period at least, was numbered among the dissatisfied and the advocates of change. In the year 1589 Mariana had already prepared a manuscript to defend the order against the attacks of some of his opponents; the general, Acquaviva, was inclined to have it published, but as it was desirable not to disturb the momentary calm that had come in Spain, this “Defensorium” was never printed. Some time later Mariana, when internal dissensions prevailed in the order, was engaged in the preparation of a memorial, which it is highly probable he intended to forward to Rome. According to Astrain (“Historia de la Compañia de Jésus”, III, 417), it must have been written in 1605. The author took great care of the manuscript; there are no indications it was ever intended to be published. But on his arrest in 1610 all of Mariana’s papers were seized, and in spite of his request nothing was returned.After his death the memorial was published at Bordeaux by the opponents of the order in 1625 under the title “Discursus de erroribus qui in forma gubernationis Societatis occurunt”. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain it was often reprinted again (1468 [sic], 1841) in Spanish, and named “Discorso de los enfermadades de la Compañia. Since the publication of all the editions was the work of opponents of the order, there is nor guarantee that the original text has been reproduced whole. Astrain, nevertheless, showed (op. cit. III, 560, note 3) that the copies of the manuscript which had passed through his hands agreed with the printed work. The original text was thus published without being essentially altered. It is but the effusion of a dissatisfied member of the order. The further development of the order and the further papal confirmation of the principle of the order show Mariana to have been wrong in his criticisms, though his subjective culpability is much lessened by the circumstances. He never left the order; and there seems to have been an entire reconciliation in his last years.
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SOMMERVOGEL, Bib. de la Comp. de Jésus (Brussels and Paris, 1894), 1547 sqq.; CASSANI, Verones ilustres, V, 88-98; DUHR, Jesuitenfabeln (Freiberg, 1899), n. 25; ASTRAIN, Historia de la Compañia de Jésus, III (Madrid, 1909).
AUG. LEHMKUHL
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IXCopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Mariana, Juan
a distinguished Spanish Jesuit, was born at Talavera, in the diocese of Toledo, in 1537. In 1554 he joined the Jesuits, and soon acquired great reputation for his historical, theological, and philological learning. In 1561 he taught theology at Rome (where the celebrated Bellarmine was one of his pupils), and in 1565 in Sicily; in 1569 he went to Paris, where he remained five years, and lectured on Thomas Aquinas. In 1574 he returned to Spain on account of his health, and died there in 1624. Among Mariana’s works we notice De rege et regis institutione (Toledo, 1598), written at the request of Garcia de Loayso, and dedicated to Philip III. In this work he expresses his views on royalty with the greatest freedom, even going so far as to maintain that, under certain circumstances, it may be legitimate to put a king to death. The sixth chapter of the first book is entirely taken up with the question whether it is allowable to assassinate a tyrant, and he concludes affirmatively. Mariana begins by an account of the murder of Henry III, and quotes the divers opinions expressed by others on this event, but it is easy to perceive that he approves of the deed. From this individual fact he passes to the general theory, which he bases on the principle that regal power is intrusted to a king by his people under certain conditions, and that the nation therefore retains the supreme right of making kings accountable for their conduct, and revoking them if need be. From this principle, that sovereignty resides essentially in the nation, he deduces the following consequences:
1, according to theologians and philosophers, every citizen has a right to kill a prince who has usurped sovereign authority without the consent of the nation (perimi a quoconque, vita et principatu spoliari posse);
2, if a prince regularly elected, or who has regularly come on the throne by succession, seeks to overthrow religion or the laws, and refuses to listen to the remonstrances of the nation, he is to be got rid of by the surest possible means; 3, the surest way is to assemble the states-general, who will depose him, and, should he resist, proclaim him an enemy of the country, and treat him accordingly;
4, the states-general have the right to condemn to death a prince declared the enemy of the country, and every citizen has then a right to kill him;
5, if it is impossible to assemble the states-general, and yet it is the wish of the nation that the tyrant perish, then a citizen is not guilty who accomplishes this general wish (qui votis publicis favens eum perimere tentavit haudquaquam inique eum fecisse existimabo). Mariana, however, puts one restriction to the exercise of this terrible right he declares that the judgment of one or several citizens is not sufficient; that the general wish of the nation must have been clearly expressed, and that the advice of serious and well-informed men should also be taken. After thus justifying the assassination of kings under certain circumstances, Mariana examines the means by which it may be accomplished. All means, he thinks, are allowable, but such as will be least likely to commit the nation or the individual are to be preferred. He shows some partiality for poison, yet maintains that it should not be administered in the food, but rather placed in things of daily use, such as the clothes, etc. The appearance of this work created quite a sensation in France. The Sorbonne and Parliament informed against his book; the Jesuits’ congregation of the province of France condemned Mariana, and the condemnation was approved by general Aquaviva (Mariana had formerly opposed him in Spain) until the book should be revised. SEE JESUITS.
After the murder of Henry IV the Parliament condemned the book to be publicly burned, July 8, 1610, and his treasonable doctrines, as they were called, continued during the whole of that age of loyalty and part of the following to furnish a common subject of animadversion, and a chief ground of accusation against the Jesuits. It is, however, but just to add here that like doctrines were taught also by Protestant contemporaries of Mariana, and that by no means should the Society of Jesus be held accountable for the propagation of such views (Compare Hallam, Literary History, 3:130-140). The Jesuits have, indeed, occasionally supported the claims of the people against their rulers, but always with a view to the interests of their own body only. Mariana, on the contrary, discussed this subject on better and higher grounds. Mankind occupied his thoughts, and had a much stronger hold on his affections than the interests and plans of his order. When Leon de Castro questioned the orthodoxy of Arias Montanus for introducing rabbinical readings and commentaries into the Plantina Regia or Philippina Polyglot, a new edition of the Conplutensis which Montanus had undertaken at the command of Philip II, Mariana silenced the noisy polemic by his historical, ecclesiastical, and Biblical lore, as well as by the fair and candid tone of his discussion; but by this step he lost all chance of preferment, which, however, he was glad to exchange for learned leisure and the gratification of his love of historical research. Mariana published next, in 1599, his imperfect work, De Ponderibus et Mensuris, a subject which his countrymen Lebrija, or Nebrija, Diego Covarrubias, Pedro Ambrosio Morales, and Arias Montanus had treated before, and which Eisenschmidt, Freret, Paucton, etc., have pursued much further since.
Observing that the sudden rise and ascendancy of Spain excited a general interest and curiosity abroad, while its origin and causes were either unknown or misunderstood, and that the Spanish historians, though numerous, were at that time little read, and some of them hardly known, he came forward with a History of Spain (in twenty books, under the title Historiae de rebus Hispaniae, Toleti. 1592, lib. xx, fol., but subsequently extended to thirty books, in the complete edition of 1605, publ. at Mayence). This is a compact and lucid exhibition of an unbroken chronological narrative, from the origin of the Spanish nation to the death of Ferdinand the Catholic (a period of twenty- five centuries at least), and embraces the history of all the Spanish kingdoms, which had hitherto been treated separately. A subject so extensive, expressed in classical Latin, met with universal favor and acceptance. A Spanish translation soon became necessary, and fortunately Mariana accomplished the task himself, and carried the work through four successive Spanish editions in his lifetime. Mariana has been charged with credulity; but traditions held sacred in times past, although rejected in the present ageprodigies which formed part of history, and which Mariana could not dismiss with the disdainful smile of modern criticism, are spots which will never obscure the brilliancy of his digressions on some of the most important events of the world-events which appear as great causes when so admirably interwoven with those peculiarly belonging to the history of Spain.
The manly feelings of the historian, his noble indignation against crimes, his bold exposure of the misdeeds of princes and their abettors, deserve still higher commendation. Yet he, as well as Ferreras and Masdeu more recently, has spared a gross instance of queen Urraca’s licentious conduct; but, on the other hand, the defense of queen Blanca’s honor is highly creditable to Mariana. It is true also that Mariana did not always examine all the original authorities, as Ranke observes in the Kritik neueere Geschichtsschreiber; but to institute an inquiry into every minor detail, to comprehend a wide field of inquiry, and yet to open new and to disdain all trodden paths, would have required the perusal of whole libraries, and a single life would not have been sufficient to complete the undertaking. And if others had been invited to join in the labor of the investigation, a motley compilation might have been the only result of so much research, which it is almost impossible ever to combine into one harmonious whole. Mariana’s portraits of lords and favorites were found too original and faithful by the living, as in the case of the detestable Fernandez Velasco, of Castile, and his worthy secretary Pedro Mantaono. The secretary, after having been a panegyrist of the new historian, tried to serve his master by his attack on Mariana, entitled Advertencias a la Historia de Marsians. He was discovered, however, and roughly treated by Tamayo Vargas in La Defensa de Mariana. Probably to this criticism may be traced many improvements in Mariana’s second Spanish edition of his history, which appeared at Madrid in 1608. It is on this edition, and the various readings selected from the editions of 1617 and 1623, that the edition of Valencia is based, which contains ample notes and illustrations (1783-96, 9 vols. 8vo). This edition also closes, like the original, with the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic (1515-16). There have subsequently been published at Madrid
1. The continuation of Mariana by Mifiana, translated from the Latin by Romero (1804, fol.);
2. A complete Mariana, continued down to the death of Charles III, 1788, by Sabau y Blanco (1817-22, 20 vols. 4to);
3. Another by the same, brought down to the year 1808 (9 vols. 8vo, with portraits).
The profound erudition of Mariana is also displayed in another publication, his Tractastus Septem (Cologne, 1609). The second of these treatises, De Editione Vulgatta, is an epitome. of his report on the fierce controversy between Ariastloiltanus and Leon de Castro. The fourth, De Mutatione Monetae, provoked the indignation of the duke of Lerma and his partners in the system of general peculation and frauds which Mariana exposed. He foretold the calamities which threatened the Spanish nation; and his words, which had been disregarded, were remembered when the opportunity was gone. As a reward for proclaiming such unwelcome truths, at the age of seventy-three he suffered a whole year of judicial trickery, humiliations, and confinement in the convent of St. Francis at Madrid. In searching his papers another exposure was found, entitled Del Gobierno de lea Comnpania, or on the defects of his order, in which he also pointed out the means of correcting them. Copies of this MS. had multiplied so alarmingly that, the year after the author’s death, the general of the Jesuits, Vitaleschi, issued a circular, dated Rome, July 29, 1624, enjoining the collection of such papers in order to be burned. Still that measure did not prevent its being printed at Bordeaux in 1625, and reprinted elsewhere in several languages.
This curious circular was found in the archives of the Jesuits of Valencia at the time of their sudden expulsion from the Spanish dominions in 1767. After his persecution he made an epitome of the Bibliotheca of Photius, translated some homilies, revised his History of Spain, and published a supplement, or, rather, a summary, of concise annals of Spain from 1515 to 1612. At the age of eighty-three he published his Scholia on the Old and New Testament, availing himself of the best Hebrew commentaries, and some valuable and very early MSS., which dated from the age of the ancient Gothic dominion in Spain. This work, though written at this advanced stage of life, displays a degree of vigor and of learning which might well provoke the admiration of modern Biblical students. It secured for him a place among the best commentators in the Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament of the hypercritical father Simon, who is usually unfavorable to Spaniards. Bayle, in his Dictionary, supposes Mariana to be also author of a work Republica Christiana, but neither Alegambe nor Nicolas Antonio, both of them Spaniards, mentions it. Stevens, the English translator of Mariana’s history, misstates some particulars of the author’s life, and very unaptly compares him with Raleigh. Mariana left MSS. of at least twice the extent of all his publications. He died Feb. 6, 1623, in the eighty-seventh year of his age and the forty-ninth of his retirement to Toledo. See Mondejar, Advertencias a Mariana; Juicio y Noticia de los Historiadores de Ispana; Andrade, Vidas de Mcariana; Acosta,Vida de Marina; Andr. Schot., Ilispsan. Illustrat.; Baronius, Annal. Ecclesiast.; Bernard. Gerald., Pro Senatu Veneto, quoted in Colomesius, Hispavnia Orientalis; Rene Rapin, Reflexions sur Histoire.; Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispanonova; Saaveelra, Republica Literalria; Tamayo de Vargas, Vidan del P. Julai Marianat; Alegambe, Biblioth. script. societatis Jesu; Bayle, Hist. Dict. s.v.; Prosper Marchand, Dictionnaire: Freher, Theatrumn Virorum claorum, 1:347; Woltmann, Gesch. u. Politik, 1801, 1:265; Sismondi, Litterature du Middle. l’Europe, 4:100; Bouterweck, Hist. de la Litterature Espagnole, 1812, vol. ii; Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, 3:143; Ranke, Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber (1824); Herzog, Real-Encyklopadie, 9:105 sq.; Pierer, Universal-Lexikon, 10:884; Engl. Cyclopaedia, s.v.; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 33:618 sq. (J. N. P.)