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Juan de Mariana and Early Modern Spanish Political Thought (Hardcover, New Ed)
Loot Price: R4,517
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Juan de Mariana and Early Modern Spanish Political Thought (Hardcover, New Ed)
Series: Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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The Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1535-1624) is one of the most
misunderstood authors in the history of political thought. His
treatise De rege et regis institutione libri tres (1599) is
dedicated to Philip III of Spain. It was to present the principles
of statecraft by which the young king was to abide. Yet soon after
its publication, Catholic and Calvinist politiques in France
started branding Mariana a regicide. De rege was said to empower
the private individual to kill a legitimate king. Its 'pernicious
doctrines' were blamed for the murder of Henry IV in 1610, and it
was burned at the order of the parlement of Paris. Modern
historians have tended to build on this interpretation and consider
De rege a stepping stone towards modern pluralist and democratic
thought. Nothing could be further from the truth. The notion of
Mariana as an uncompromising theorist of resistance is in fact
based on the distorted reading of a few select sentences from the
first book of the treatise. This study offers a radical departure
from the old view of Mariana as an early modern constitutionalist
thinker and advocate of regicide. Thorough analysis of the text as
a whole reveals him to be a shrewd and creative operator of
political language as well as a champion of the church and bishops
of Castile. The argument as a whole is informed by a
Catholic-Augustinian view of human nature. Mariana's bleak, at
times downright cynical view of man imparts focus and coherence to
a text that challenges well established terminological boundaries
and political discourses. In the first instance, his deeply
pessimistic appraisal of human virtue justifies his disregard of
positive law. He is thus able to mould diverse elements extracted
from Roman and canon law, scholastic theology and humanist
literature into a deliberately equivocal discourse of reason of
state. Finally, this secular interpretation of the world of
politics is cleverly yoked to a thoroughly clerical agenda of
reform. In fact, reason of state is made to propagate an episcopal
monarchy. De rege is exceptional in that it strings together a
curious scholastic theory of the origins of society, a conservative
ideology of absolute monarchy and a breathtakingly radical vision
of theocratic renewal of Spanish government and society. Juan de
Mariana and Early Modern Political Thought elucidates the
differentiated nature of political debate in Habsburg Spain. It
confirms the complexity of Spanish political life in the later
sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Complementing recent work
on Catholic political thought, the European reception of
Machiavelli, and Spanish Habsburg government, this study offers a
more complete and holistic picture of early modern Spanish
political culture.
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