Mariana, JUAN

Mariana, JUAN, a Spanish historian, was born at Talavera in 1536, entered at eighteen the then rising order of the Jesuits, and afterwards taught in the Jesuit colleges at Rome (where Bellarmine was one of his scholars), in Sicily, and finally in Paris. After seven years of labour in Paris he was driven by ill-health to Toledo, and there he lived in unbroken literary labours till his death, at an extreme old age, in 1624. His Historiæ de Rebus Hispaniæ first appeared in 20 books in 1592, and was supplemented by 10 additional books, carrying the narrative down to the accession of Charles V., in 1605. Its admirable Latinity and undoubted historical merits give it an abiding value. Mariana himself published a Spanish translation (1601-9), which still remains one of the classics of the language. His Tractatus VII. Theologici et Historici (1609) roused the suspicion of the Inquisition. But the most celebrated of the works of Mariana is his well-known treatise De Rege et Regis Institutione (1599), which raises the question whether it be lawful to overthrow a tyrant, and answers it in the affirmative, even where the tyrant is not a usurper but a lawful king. This tyrannicide doctrine drew much odium upon the entire order of Jesuits, especially after the murder of Henry IV. of France by Ravaillac in 1610; but it is only just to observe that, while, upon the one hand, precisely the same doctrines were taught in almost the same words by several of the Protestant contemporaries of Mariana, on the other, Mariana's book itself was formally condemned by the general Acquaviva, and the doctrine forbidden to be taught by members of the order.