Juan de Mariana

Juan de Mariana SJ (2 April 1536 – 17 February 1624) was a Spanish Jesuit priest, Scholastic, historian, and member of the Monarchomachs. Born in Talavera de la Reina, he studied at the Complutense University of Alcalá de Henares and was admitted at the age of 17 into the Society of Jesus. In 1561, he began teaching theology in Rome. Among his pupils was Robert Bellarmine, who became a cardinal. He traveled to Sicily. In 1569 he was sent to Paris, where his expositions of the writings of Thomas Aquinas attracted large audiences. In 1574, owing to ill health, he obtained permission to return to Spain; the rest of his life passed at the Jesuits' house in Toledo in vigorous literary activity. He died in Madrid. Juan de Mariana's great work, *Historiae de rebus Hispaniae*, first appeared in twenty books at Toledo in 1592; ten books were subsequently added (1605), extending the work to the accession of Charles V in 1519. In a still later abstract the author covered the accession of Philip IV in 1621. It was so well received that Mariana was induced to translate it into Castilian (the first part in 1601; completed, 1609; English translation by J. Stevens, 1699). Mariana's *Historiae*, though in many parts uncritical, is regarded for its research, accuracy, sagacity and style. Of his other works the most interesting is the treatise *De rege et regis institutione* (*On the king and the royal institution*, Toledo, 1598). In its sixth chapter, the question whether it is lawful to overthrow a tyrant is freely discussed and answered in the affirmative, a circumstance which brought much odium upon the Jesuits, especially after the assassination of Henry IV of France, in 1610. A volume entitled *Tractatus VII. theologici et historici* (published by Mariana in Cologne in 1609, containing in particular a tract, *De morte et immortalitate*, and another, *De monetae mutatione* (*On the Alteration of Money*), where Mariana criticized the royal monetary politic, was put upon the Index Expurgatorius. This led to the confinement of its author by the Inquisition and to a process of *lèse-majesté*. Allegedly, either the *De rege et regis institutione* or the *De monetae mutatione* influenced Chapter 29 of Part One of Cervantes's *Don Quijote*. During his confinement, his papers were discovered to include criticism of the Jesuits. This was published after his death as *Discursus de erroribus qui in forma gubernationis societatis Jesu occurrunt* (*A discourse on the sickness of the Jesuit order*, Bordeaux, 1625), and was reprinted by order of Charles III when he banished the Jesuits from Spain. According to Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, an academic economist specializing in the School of Salamanca, Juan de Mariana and other Spanish scholastics provided much of the theoretical basis for Austrian School economic thought.