PALAFOX Y MENDOZA, JUAN DE AND JUAN DE MARIANA (1 résultats)

Second Spanish editions. (Two anti-Jesuit tracts bound together.) Quarto, pp 167; 2ff, pp 308, 1f. The first volume is a collection of letters between Palafox and the Jesuit provincial in Mexico. Of this dispute perhaps it is sufficient to say that it revolved around the privileges that had been granted the Jesuits in Mexico by the King , and which Palafox thought infringed upon his jurisdiction as bishop. The Pope agreed with him, on several occasions. A bitter enmity developed between the Jesuits and Palafox as a consequence. Palafox was reputed to be a very saintly man, and was (apparently still is) proposed for sanctification, a process which the Jesuits always thwarted. [Palau #209696] // Father Mariana (1536 - 1624) was an important Jesuit and a member of the Spanish scholastic (Thomist/ Natural Law) philosophers of that period, who wrote several important books on economics and political science, as well as a monumental history of Spain. His treatise on the rights and responsabilities of kings, went so far as to say that a king could be justifiably murdered by the people if he was tyrannical -- a revolutionary concept for the time. Shortly after his book was published, King Henry III of France was indeed assassinated; the book was publicly burned in Paris, in lieu of its author. He also wrote another important book, our Discurso de las enfermedades de la Compania (A discourse on the sicknesses of the Jesuit order), which was published posthumously. In this book, Mariana criticizes the military hierarchy established in the Jesuit order, and broaches the larger political issue that it is impossible to endow state commands with a coordinating content due to lack of information. In Mariana's words: "Rome is far away, the general does not know the people or the facts, at least, with all the circumstances that surround them, on which success depends. . . . It is unavoidable that many serious errors will be committed and the people are displeased thereby and despise such a blind government.It is a great mistake for the blind to wish to guide the sighted." Mariana concludes that, when there are many laws, "as not all of them may be kept or known, respect for all of them is lost." The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of him at length, with a noted bias: "Some time later [after 1598] Mariana, when internal dissensions prevailed in the order, was engaged in the preparation of a memorial, which it is highly probable he intended to forward to Rome. According to Astrain ("Historia de la Compañia de Jésus", III, 417), it must have been written in 1605. The author took great care of the manuscript; there are no indications it was ever intended to be published. But on his arrest in 1610 all of Mariana's papers were seized, and in spite of his request nothing was returned.After his death the memorial was published at Bordeaux by the opponents of the order in 1625 under the title "Discursus de erroribus qui in forma gubernationis Societatis occurunt". After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain it was often reprinted again (1468 [sic; obviously an error], 1841) in Spanish [this statement is not borne out at all by Palau, who locates only the edition of 1630, published in Bourdeaux but with Spanish translation of Latin text, the present edition, and another printed in 1931] and named "Discorso de los enfermadades de la Compañia". [Palau #151730] Fine copy in amateurishly repaired contemporary vellum binding, with remnants of ties.