Guerra santa y catolicismo militante en el antimaquiavelismo español: El tratado del príncipe cristiano (1595) de pedro de ribadeneyra*.

This paper analyzes the religious and political implications of Pedro de Ribadeneyra’s criticism of Machiavelli in his Tratado de la Religión del Príncipe Cristiano (1595). More precisely, it analyzes the Machiavellian affirmation according to which the Christian religion makes men incapable of military virtues. Against this thesis, Ribadeneyra defends the Christian strength as indissoluble of a providential conception of history, proposing the Spanish monarchy as a global advocate of Christianity against the enemies of the faith. The paper approaches this conception of religion and, in the first place, its theoretical antecedents; secondly, it analyzes the way in which this criticism implies a renewal of the idea of holy war; thirdly, it argues the importance of this question for Ribadeneyra from a cosmological point of view. In this way, we hope to make a contribution on the role of the Society in the construction of a political-theological concept of the monarchy, fully in force in the 17th century.