NEWS
NORMAN, Okla. – The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded University of Oklahoma Professor Luis Cortest with a Chairman’s Award to Individuals for his project, “Juan de Mariana, the Last Great Spanish Thinker.”
Cortest is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences. Through the NEH fellowship, he will continue his research and writing for a biography highlighting Mariana, a Spanish priest and historian who lived from 1534-1624.
Mariana’s legacy was marked by both great achievement and controversy during his time. He was a member of the Jesuit Order, a distinguished scholar of the original Biblical text languages and a highly esteemed author of Spanish history.
But he also clashed with Jesuit leader Claudio Acquaviva over his choice of a General of the Order. Mariana also defended the teaching of tyrannicide – the killing of tyrants – which Cortest said was because Mariana believed that a monarch’s subjects hold more combined power than their monarch.
Cortest’s project will take a renewed look at Mariana’s life, especially around the priest’s treatise to Acquaviva that criticized aspects of the Jesuit Order and his role in editing the famed Antwerp Polyglot Bible.
“This is one of the great figures, for me, of 16th-century Spain,” Cortest said, “an age of great writers, great thinkers and great universities.”
Utilizing his past research to supplement the project, Cortest aims to submit the biography for publication by 2027. He is also excited to use the NEH fellowship to make significant writing progress throughout summer 2026.
“There's nothing like getting an award like this,” Cortest said. “It's very exciting and it almost gives you a new lease on life.”
About the research
“Juan de Mariana, the Last Great Spanish Thinker” is funded by a $30,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Award No. FEJ-310338-25.
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. For more information about the university, visit www.ou.edu.
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