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In De rege et regis institutione libre tres (1599), the Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1536-1624) offers a comprehensive analysis of European monarchical government. Mariana examines and refutes contemporary ideas of monarchical absolutism together with the legalistic cultures from which they arose. Mariana weighs doctrines from scholastic natural law theory and Roman law against historical experience and conceives a language of political prudence or Catholic reason of state that puts the pursuit of political consensus over conflict and the unrestrained exercise of royal power. De rege offers a political understanding that respects the plurality of political cultures within the Spanish Habsburg monarchy and a political language that reflects the reality of governing an early modern poly–centric body politic.

This article explores the place and importance of Catholic Augustinian political anthropology in the work of the Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1535-1624). Mariana, arguably one of the most original early modern Spanish political thinkers, is able to adapt and absorb doctrines of reason of state into Catholic political theology and ethics. Catholic Augustinian conceptions of human nature in particular drive and direct the way in which he develops realist and pragmatic modes of political thought and action. Through the prism of Juan de Mariana, then, this article seeks to differentiate our understanding of the genesis, contexts and scope of reason of state and its relationship to moral theology in early modern Spain and Europe. It is also a contribution to the continuing debate about the genesis and characteristics of European modernity, secular theories of the state, and rationalist modes of political thought.