Juan de Mariana (redirected from Mariana, Juan)

Mariana, Juan de 

Born in 1536 in Talavera; died Feb. 16, 1624, in Toledo. Spanish historian and theologian. Member of the Jesuit Order.

Mariana taught theology in Rome, Palermo, and Paris. In 1574 he moved to Toledo. In his treatise The King and the Education of the King (1599), Mariana set forth the idea of a monarchy whose rights would be limited by an assembly of representatives of the various social estates; he criticized absolutism as a “tyrannical distortion” of monarchical power. In his principal work, General History of Spain (written in Latin and subsequently translated by the author himself into Spanish; Russian translation, 1779-82), Mariana was the first to attempt to summarize the material of the Spanish chronicles. In the treatise On the Defects of the Order (published posthumously in 1625) he criticized certain faults in the Jesuit Order.

WORKS

Obras, vols. 1-2. Madrid, 1931.

REFERENCE

Ballesteros Gaibros, M. J. de Mariana, pensador y politico. [Madrid] 1939.