MARIANA, JUAN. - Jesuit, theologian and humanist, b. at Talavera (diocese of Toledo) in 1536, d. at Toledo on 16 February 1624. From 1561 he taught exegesis in Rome; theology from 1564 in Sicily and from 1569 in Paris. In 1574 he moved, for reasons of health, to Toledo, where he devoted himself to the composition of his works.
His history of Spain is considered his masterpiece, written first in Latin: De rebus Hispaniae (Toledo 1592, the first 20 books; Mainz 1605, the complete work in 30 books), later reworked and translated by himself into Spanish: Historia general de España (2 vols., Toledo 1601). Other works: De ponderibus et mensuris (ibid. 1609); Tractatus septem (Cologne 1609); Scholia in Vetus et Novum Testamentum (Madrid 1613).
But two works made his name more widely known: De rege et regis institutione libri tres (Toledo 1599), in which he discusses the lawfulness of tyrannicide (l. I, cap. 6) and where, going further than several medieval theologians (who maintained that the action of one who, to free his country, killed a usurper was meritorious, provided there was no higher power capable of pronouncing the condemnation), he extends the doctrine also to the case of a legitimate sovereign who gravely abuses his position, bringing his country to ruin and despising the public laws and religion. M., however, expressly qualifies this judgment of his as personal. In fact the general C. Aquaviva, warned by the superiors of France of M.'s opinion, undoubtedly reprehensible, notwithstanding its many limiting clauses, deplored the publication and ordered it corrected (cf. Jouvaney, op. cit. in bibl., nos. 86-87, 157). And when the assassination of Henry IV by the hand of Ravaillac roused the French Parliament against M. and the Jesuits, as the cause of that regicide, he again forbade under penalty of excommunication (6 July 1610) every member of the Order to maintain publicly or privately, as counselor or teacher or in writing, the lawfulness for anyone, under any pretext of tyranny, of killing kings or princes or of attempting their lives; and a little later (14 Aug. 1610), he specifically prohibited all writings for or against M.'s book (ibid., no. 157). The other work that caused a stir was: De monetae mutatione (4th treatise of the work Tractatus septem). In it M. openly accused the ministers of Philip III of ruining the people by debasing the value of the currency; for this he was shut up, as in a prison, in a Franciscan convent and released only a year later. His surly character also led him, from as early as 1593, to take sides against the general Aquaviva and in favor of a separatist movement of the Order in Spain (cf. his Discursus de erroribus qui in forma gubernationis Societatis Jesu occurrunt, published posthumously at Bordeaux in 1625). In 1888 his native city erected a monument to M.