CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JUAN DE MARIANA

Mariana's treatise De rege has a markedly different intellectual style from that of either Ribadeneyra or Juan de Torres. The argument is not structured on the paradigm of the four cardinal virtues (although certain of these are considered in Book III). Topics and themes tend to recur at different points in the work. Arguments and assertions are generally not bolstered with long sequences of quotations and illustrations; in fact Mariana gives relatively few names of writers whom he has followed or from whom he has borrowed, and for the most part is content to speak in his own name. In doing so he dis• plays little of the religiously motivated animus that is so manifest in Ribadeneyra. He says little about the Protestants and, in alluding to those of Jewish origins in the of his time, displays—as we shall see—a degree of understanding for their social situation wholly absent from his colleague's remarks. Nor does his own treatise voice hos• tility towards Machiavelli or the politiques. What he owes to them will be considered later. Mariana's areas of interest, and the emphases of his treatise, are likewise distinct, in many respects, from those of his two fellow Jesuits. Thus, he says little about Divine Providence and its operation in the affairs of rulers; therefore he does not—as Ribadeneyra does—see it as the king's first duty to base his conduct on trust in that Providence rather than on human calculation. Again, he says little about the religious attitudes at large requisite in the king, whether in terms of public ideology or personal dispositions. With Torres he shares an interest in the education of the prince that finds no place in Ribadeneyra's treatise; on the other hand he displays a still greater interest than Ribadeneyra does in the administrative aspect of go• vernment, in economics, agriculture, and in ways in which the poor and needy can and should be helped. Beyond that, Mariana makes manifest at the outset an interest in issues of political theory that can be compared, among the treatises studied here, only with that found in Castillo de Bobadilla's Politica para conegidores.

* * * 316 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In Book I Mariana devotes chapters to topics that had featured over the centuries in treatises de regimine pnncipum: that monarchy is the form of rule to be preferred over all others; that a king and a tyrant are contrary to each other in a wide range of respects. Here, how• ever, these topics are set in a larger discussion of issues of political theory: the origins of political and of kingly authority and power; the limits that those origins set to the latter; of kingly succession; the respective authority of rulers and subjects; the right of subjects in certain situations to remove and replace their rulers, even, in extremis, by an act of . It is this aspect of the treatise—in particular Mariana's defence of tyrannicide—that has received most attention from of poli• tical thought, and readers of this present study are referred to these for detailed consideration of the nature and context of the political arguments set out in this First Book of Mariana's De rege.1 However, it is relevant to note here that, in this First Book, the people over whom the king rules are seen in two contrasting ways. On the one hand, Mariana repeatedly stresses that royal authority is something derived from the people and, in consequence, is both limited by, and conditional upon, that relationship. This is the basis of Mariana's celebrated assertion (in terms clearly recalled from 's De offlciis, 111,32) that it can be legitimate (albeit as a last resort) even for an individual man to remove a tyrant from human society by killing him (p. 81/p. 484b). On the other hand, in tracing the emergence of civil society through the establishment of laws, Mariana sees it as a great step forward that now 'the evil-intent of men was restrained by the majesty [of the ruler], the arms of his attendants, the sever• ity of laws and fear of legal tribunals, so that, fearing punishment, individuals refrained the more readily from shameful deeds' (p. 23/ p. 469a). Nothing is more excellent or admirable than man when thus kept under discipline and control; but nothing is more mon• strous and savage than he when the fear of laws and the courts is removed (p. 22/p. 468b). Kingly majesty is the safeguard of in society (p. 39/p. 473a). We are thus introduced at an early point to a kind of discourse that becomes prominent later.

1 The principal study of Mariana's political thought remains that of Lewy (1960); but see also Mesnard, 1952, pp. 552-59; Skinner, 1978, ii, 345-47; Burke, 1991, pp. 240-41, 272. A recent wide-ranging and stimulating study of Mariana, where the De rege in various of its aspects receives extensive treatment, is that of Ferraro (1989).