Mariana, Juan de

Abstract

The Jesuit theologian Juan de Mariana was the leading historian and one of the most distinguished political and economic theorists of early modern Spain. His political and historiographical work earned him fame, even notoriety already during his lifetime. His intellectual legacy is characterized by its endurance and complexity.

Mariana’s political writings – De rege et regis institutione libri III (1599) and some of the essays collected in Tractatus VII (1609) – probe, challenge, and widen contemporary notions of monarchical authority, political ethics, economic policy, and Spanish identity. De rege stands out as a prime example of Spanish literature of reason of state, especially for the way in which the Jesuit blends scholastic legal and constitutional theory into a language of political prudence. The short treatise De monetae mutatione (printed in Tractatus VII) presents an incisive critique of the monetary policies of the Spanish government during the early 1600s. Mariana did not hesitate to speak his mind and did not spare his own order either, as testified by a critique of the government of the Society of Jesus first published posthumously in French in 1625. His monumental work of historiography – Historiae de rebus Hispaniae (1592) – was much less controversial and immediately acknowledged as a major milestone in Spanish historiography. Translated and published in the vernacular in 1601, it made him a household name in Spain and a principal authority on Spanish history well into the eighteenth century.

The Jesuit combines great insight and integrative understanding of a wide range of subject matters with sharp political analysis and often acerbic critique of governing elites. The political thinker, historian, economist, theologian, and philologist in Mariana cannot easily be separated from one another. He straddles different fields of knowledge and deliberately intertwines and evolves scholastic and humanist traditions, terminologies, and modes of enquiry. Mariana is the contemporary of Giovanni Botero, Jean Bodin, and Justus Lipsius as much as Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez and can no longer simply be aligned as a member of the so-called School of Salamanca.