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Bible Encyclopedias
Mariana, Juan
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or 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.)
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Mariana, Juan'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/m/mariana-juan.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
