Juan de Mariana

Juan de Mariana (1536–1624) was a Spanish Jesuit theologian and historian of the School of Salamanca. He studied at Alcalá de Henares and joined the Society of Jesus at seventeen. From 1561 he taught theology in Rome, and from 1569 lectured on Thomas Aquinas in Paris.

In poor health, he retired to Toledo in 1574 and spent the next fifty years in literary work. His treatise De rege et regis institutione (1599) argued that a people may depose, and even kill, a tyrant, numbering him among the Catholic Monarchomachs.