Mariana

Summary

[Historians in the age of Louis XIV were strongly affected by the massacres of the Wars of Religion, and by the memory of the assassinations, by Catholic extremists, of two sovereigns in their recent history: Henry III in 1589, and Henry IV in 1610. After 1598 politiques and Huguenots insisted, in opposition to Catholic majoritarian doctrine, that the sovereign's first duty was not to impose one religion, but to protect all law-abiding citizens from extremist violence. Mariana, a Spanish Jesuit, had responded to the politiques in 1598 with a defence of the people's right to overthrow and replace a tyrant. Bayle's politique rejoinder in 1697 provides a clue to his caution in respect of England's Protestant Revolution of 1688. Mariana's defence of tyrannicide, he observed, could support any popular revolution whatsoever – Catholic, Protestant or pagan. The obligation to oppose tyranny could be taken for granted; the issue, however, was about defining it.]

Mariana (Jean), born at Talavera in the diocese of Toledo, became a Jesuit on 1 January 1554. He then studied at Complutum until he was twenty-seven years of age. He became one of the most brilliant men of his age. He was a great theologian, a great humanist, profound in his knowledge of both ecclesiastical and profane history, a Greek scholar, and learned in the holy tongue. He went to Rome in 1561 where he taught theology. Four years later he went to Sicily, and taught there for two years.