Juan de Mariana

From Hispanopedia
Not to be confused with Juan de Mairena.
Juan de Mariana
Father Juan de Mariana, by Matías Moreno. c. 1878. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).
Born
Juan de Mariana

(1536-04-02)2 April 1536
Talavera de la Reina
Died17 February 1624(1624-02-17) (aged 87)
Toledo
Alma materUniversity of Alcalá de Henares
Signature

Juan de Mariana (Talavera de la Reina, 2 April 1536 – Toledo, 17 February 1624) was a Spanish Jesuit, theologian and historian.

Together with Baltasar Gracián, Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and Francisco Suárez, he is a highly representative example of the Spanish writers and intellectuals of the Society of Jesus during the Golden Age.

Biography

He was the natural son of Bernardina Rodríguez and of Juan Martínez de Mariana, dean of the collegiate church of Talavera de la Reina. For this reason, he was baptized in La Pueblanueva, a village within its judicial district, on 2 April 1536. This humble extramarital origin brought him many affronts throughout his life, which he endured with stoicism.

It must be borne in mind that the Council of Trent had not yet been held; one of its results, among others, was to enshrine the celibacy of priests.

At seventeen he went to study Arts and Theology at Alcalá de Henares, in an atmosphere saturated with Humanism. On the very day of his enrollment, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus together with Luis de Molina. There he was under the tutelage of Saint Francis Borgia, and he took his vows in 1554 in Simancas. He completed his priestly training at the Jesuit college in Rome, where from 1561 he was one of its best professors, counting among his students the future Cardinal Bellarmine, who was a protector of Francisco Suárez. Four years later he went to Loreto and was then sent as a professor to Palermo in Sicily, so that he spent a total of eight years in Italy. In 1569 he went to Paris, where he received his doctorate and remained for five years teaching Thomist Theology at the Sorbonne. His time in the Parisian lecture halls coincided with the well-known St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, in which numerous Huguenots were murdered; two years later, in 1574, his resignation from the chair was accepted for health reasons and he returned to Spain by way of Flanders.

He settled in the Society's college in Toledo, and in that semi-retirement he devoted himself to writing his books. In 1578 he was commissioned to report on the alleged heterodoxy of the eight volumes of the polyglot Biblia Regia, whose edition the humanist Benito Arias Montano had directed in Antwerp between 1568 and 1572, in particular on the Syriac version of the New Testament; his report, which took him two years of study, was favorable. Around that time he became friends with his fellow native of Talavera García Loaysa y Girón, who was his disciple, friend and protector (in the mid-1580s García was appointed tutor to Prince Philip, the future Philip III, and was later even appointed Archbishop of Toledo). He already had such a reputation that from then on he was entrusted with other similar and equally delicate tasks, such as the supervision of the Manual para la administración de los sacramentos, the reworking of the Actas of the diocesan councils of Toledo of 1582, and the drafting of the Índice expurgatorio of 1584.

While carrying out these commissions and an edition of the Works of the Visigothic polymath Isidore of Seville, he set about writing a monumental history of Spain in thirty books, which began to appear in Toledo in 1592 under the title Historiae de rebus Hispaniae Libri XXX, an expanded edition of which was published in Mainz in 1605. In the meantime, his own translation into Castilian was printed in Toledo under the title Historia general de España (1601). The work extends up to the death of Ferdinand the Catholic, because, in his own words, "I did not dare to go further and recount more modern matters, so as not to hurt some if I told the truth, nor fail in my duty if I concealed it."

Death overtook him in Toledo at the age of eighty-seven, in 1624, while he was, as always, working, in this case on some Escolios al Antiguo y Nuevo Testamento (Scholia on the Old and New Testament), a work of biblical exegesis based on the text of the Vulgate.

His Historia de España was read avidly in the 17th and 18th centuries, during which it was regarded as something like a canonical or official version of the subject until the 19th century. At that point, his work was replaced by the liberal-inspired Historia General de España (1850–1867) of Modesto Lafuente; despite this, it continued to be widely read in various editions also produced in that century, and especially in an Obras del padre Juan de Mariana printed in 1864 in vols. XXIX and XXX of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles with a prologue by Francisco Pi y Margall.

It is worth noting that the name of Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, derived from Juan de Mariana. His thought and his name reappeared during the French Revolution in a pejorative sense, since the supporters of the Ancien Régime —counter-revolutionary aristocrats— called the revolutionary representatives of the people marianos, alluding to the influence of Juan de Mariana's thought.[1][2]

The square in which the Town Hall building of Talavera de la Reina stands and a promenade (Paseo) in the same city bear his name, as does the square in which the Jesuit church stands in the City of Toledo, among others. In 2005 the Instituto Juan de Mariana was founded in his name.[3]

Juan de Mariana (portrait by Francisco Javier de Santiago Palomares, made in 1752).

Work

The independence of judgment of his writings and his hypercriticism caused him serious troubles with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, although he was only harassed on two occasions.

The first was over his De rege et regis institutione (Toledo, 1599), which was solemnly burned in 1610 as subversive by the Parlement of Paris after the assassination of Henry IV of France, and which he had written at the request of the tutor of Philip III of Spain, García Loaysa. According to his accusers, this work had given legitimacy to tyrannicide, since its doctrine was linked to the earlier assassination of Henry III of France by Friar Jacques Clément in 1589, although Ravaillac, the assassin of the French King Henry IV of France, declared that he did not know the book.

This treatise, written with the aim of countering political naturalism or Machiavellianism, as Pedro de Rivadeneyra had done four years earlier in his Princeps christianus adversus Nicholaus Machiavelum (1595), first sets out what a monarchy should be like and the duties of the King, who must subordinate himself, like any vassal, to the moral law and to the State. He then sets out the education of the Christian Prince, closely following the theories of Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Enchiridion. He proposes as the highest value of a Monarch the cardinal virtue of prudence, in its Aristotelian sense, and above all the Monarch must prevent taxes from suffocating the productive classes of the country. Drawing on Saint Thomas Aquinas, he also, like him, justifies revolution and the execution of a King by the people if he is a tyrant.

The purpose of the work is to establish clear limits on political power, basing itself on the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, according to which society is prior to political power and therefore can recover its original rights if the Government is of no use to it. For this reason he develops the doctrine of tyrannicide, widely accepted among scholastic authors, extending the right of any individual to kill the tyrant. But he goes even further, and some have seen fully liberal principles sketched out in many of his ideas,[4] although always subordinated to religion.

As regards the political theory implicit in Juan de Mariana, it can be said that he was a figure of the classical Hispanic tradition, which at that time opposed Protestantism and centuries later would oppose liberalism. He sets out his ideal of Law and Religion clearly and forcefully:

If each prince in his kingdom left to his own discretion, or to that of his subjects, what ought to be felt and thought in religious matters, how could it be achieved that there be harmony and unity among all nations, so that the German and the Spaniard would not think differently about God and the immortality of the soul? How could it be achieved that the opinion of the Frenchman and the Italian, and of the Sicilian and the Englishman, be one and the same, their thought one and the same and their words the same? Would it not soon come to pass that the religious opinions scattered throughout the world would be as many, the sacred rites as diverse, the form of ecclesiastical organization as varied, as the judgments of men are varied and diverse? For this reason the need was recognized to establish a single head, to whom would be entrusted the organization of the Church, the preservation of the ancient ceremonies and the defense of the laws, a head whom all the princes of the earth would obey and all would respect

— (Year 1599)

Father Juan de Mariana, etching by Francisco Muntaner after a drawing by José del Castillo, 1790, Retratos de españoles ilustres.

The second trouble he suffered was when he was imprisoned for a year and a half in Madrid, in 1607, by order of the same Philip III and of his favorite the Duke of Lerma, on account of his book De monetae mutatione, the fourth of his Tractatus septem (Cologne, 1609), which was denounced for its allusions to the ministers who had altered the weight of the coinage. In that treatise, one of the seven contained in the book, he harshly denounces the theft committed by those rulers who used the expedient we would today call inflation to finance the expenses of the State.

The contents of the Seven Treatises are as follows: "I, 'De adventu Jacobi apostoli in Hispania, or On the Coming of Saint James to Spain'. II, 'Pro editione Vulgatae, or On the Edition of the Vulgate'. III, 'De spectaculis, or On Spectacles'. IV, 'De monetae mutatione, or On the Alteration of the Coinage'. V, 'De die mortis Christi, or The Day of Christ's Death'. VI, 'De annis arabum, or On the Years of the Arabs'. VII, 'De morte et inmortalitate, or On Death and Immortality'." As can be seen, outside history, his interests ranged from chronology to philology, economics or morals. These essays do not include one published earlier.

Of lesser importance were the frictions with his order. Thus, his Discurso de las cosas de la Compañía earned him the animosity of its hierarchy. A very busy man, he produced an edition of the work of Saint Isidore of Seville, and also worked on works of oriental philology and as a preacher, censor of exegesis, collaborator on the Index and consultant to the Inquisition.

File:Talavera de la Reina - Monumento a Juan de Mariana 1.jpg
Monument to Juan de Mariana, in the square of the same name in Talavera de la Reina.

His principal work is the Historiae de rebus Hispaniae libri XX (Toleti, typis P. Roderici, 1592). A later, more advanced edition by the compiler himself is De rebus Hispaniae libri XXX, which was published in Mainz in 1605. During this time the author had rendered the Latin edition into Spanish, and this appeared complete in Toledo in 1601, containing the thirty books of the Latin edition. The last edition he was able to revise and correct (for he was not blind, as Gregorio Mayáns believed), in two volumes, was published in 1623; the first in Madrid by the famous printer Luis Sánchez, and the second in Toledo, by Diego Rodríguez.[5] The work extends from the remotest antiquity to the era of the Catholic Monarchs. Juan de Mariana was a historian obsessed with the truth who pushed the criticism of earlier chronicles as far as was possible in his time; although he writes in the international Latin of the age, the root of his thought is patriotic, since he seeks to set forth the greatness of his country by narrating together the deeds of all the Hispanic kingdoms around Castile. The work established the model of historiographical prose for the following centuries, vigorously emphasizing everything that can captivate and attract the reader's attention; it pays special care to the descriptions of the places where events occur and to the pathos of the harangues and epistles, as well as to reflections on the fickleness of fortune, taking Titus Livius, Tacitus and Thucydides as models. In Spain it was a work reprinted many times, and for nearly two centuries it was the most widely read historical work. In the rest of Europe the work was read above all in Germany and much less in other countries; it was translated into English in 1699 by John Stevens.

In addition to the works mentioned, his correspondence, his notes to the edition of the works of Saint Isidore and his reports as a consultant to the Holy Office, ten volumes of manuscripts by this author are preserved. In his Scholia in Vetus ac Novum Testamentum (Antwerp and Paris, 1620) are his versifications in Latin distichs of several sacred books: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs.

Bibliography

Manuscripts

  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Tratado del gobierno de la Compañía de Jesus, Madrid BNE, Ms. 2480, 46 f. (18th-century copy) ; Barcelona BUB, Ms. 1010, f. 18-28; Discurso de las cosas de la Compañía, Madrid BNE, Ms. 3470-I, f. 2-69; Ms. 5516 [ed. in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles XXX, 595-617]; Id., Ms. 3470, f. 2-69.
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Compendio y traducción en latin de la Biblioteca Griega de Phocio (17th century), Madrid BNE, Ms. 9203, 361 f.
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Tratado y discurso sobre la moneda de vellón, Madrid BNE, Ms. 2187

Printed works

  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Historia de rebus Hispaniae, Toledo, 1592; The Hague, 1733 ; Historia general de España, Toledo, 1601; Madrid, 1608; Madrid, 1617; Madrid and Toledo, 1623; Madrid, 1650; Antwerp, 1751; Madrid, 1780-82; ed. Benito Monfort, Valencia, 1783; Madrid, 1794
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., De Rege et regis institutione, Toledo, 1599 (repr. Aalen 1969) ; Mainz, 1605
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., De ponderibus et mensuris, Toledo, 1599
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Scholia in Vetus et Novum Testamentum, Madrid, 1619; Paris, 1620
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Tractatus septem: De adventu Jacobi Apostoli in Hispaniam; Pro editione vulgata; De spectaculis; De monetae mutatione; De die mortis Christi; De annis arabum; De morte et immortalitate, Köln, 1609
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Tratado y discurso sobre la moneda de vellón, Madrid, Inst. Est. Fiscales, 1987
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., De monetae mutatione, 1609
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Discurso de los grandes defectos que hay en la forma del gobierno de los Jesuitas, Bordeaux, 1625; Discurso de las enfermedades de la Compañía de Jesus, 1768; Tratado de los casos íntimos de la Compañía de Jesus, 1931

Translations

  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Del rey y de la institutición real, Madrid, 1950 (BAE, vol. 31)
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., Über die Münzveränderung, lateinisch-deutsch, Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Josef Falzberger, Heidelberg, 1996
  • Mariana, Juan de, S.J., The King and the Education of the King, transl. George Albert Moore, Washington, D.C., 1948

References

  1. ↑ Carlos Abel Suárez, Las huellas de Marianne o el itinerario republicano en el Sur de América, 18/11/12, in Sin Permiso
  2. ↑ Florence Gauthier, De Juan de Mariana a Robespierre. Entrevista, 15/10/06, Sin Permiso
  3. ↑ "El IJM". Instituto Juan de Mariana (in español). 8 April 2014. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  4. ↑ Murray N. Rothbard, El erudito extremista: Juan de Mariana in his Historia del pensamiento económico, vol. 1, El pensamiento económico hasta Adam Smith; in Mises Daily Articles 20-I-2010
  5. ↑ Moreno Gallego, Valentín (2008). "Juan de Mariana ante la imprenta de Luis Sánchez El textus receptus de la Historia General de España". Bulletin Hispanique, 110-1 (in español).

Further reading

  • Malavialle, Renaud (2024). « El momento Juan de Mariana en las concepciones de la historia del primer Siglo de Oro español: apuntes sobre un arte de la composición historiográfica », in Écrire l’histoire au Siècle d’or : rôles, usages et pratiques du récit historique dans l’Espagne des Habsbourg (XVIe et XVIIe siècles), Paris: e-Spania, February 2024, [En ligne], 47. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/e-spania/49822 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/e-spania.49822
  • Guy, Alain (1985). Historia de la Filosofía Española. Barcelona: Anthropos.
  • Ballesteros Gaibroi, M. (1939). Padre Juan de Mariana. Pensador y político. Madrid: Ediciones FE.
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