Francisco Xavier Martinez Marina (1754–1833) was a noted Spanish jurist

Jurist

A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...

, historian and priest.

Born in Oviedo

Oviedo

Oviedo is the capital city of the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain. It is also the name of the municipality that contains the city....

, capital city of the Principality of Asturias

Asturias

The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...

 in northern Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, he was director of the Real Academia de la Historia, an institution dedicated to the study of Spain's political, civilian, ecclesiastical and military history

Military history of Spain

The military history of Spain, from the period of the Carthaginian conquests over the Phoenicians to the current Afghan War spans a period of more than 2200 years, and includes the history of battles fought in the territory of modern Spain, as well as her former and current overseas possessions and...

. He also served as director of the Real Academia Española

Real Academia Española

The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...

 (Royal Spanish Academy), an institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

.

During his lifetime, Marina published a number of well-known texts, including a treatise on the history and geography of Asturias, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de Asturias, and a study of principles of morality

Morality

Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

 as they relate to legal policy and legislation

Legislation

Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...

, Principios naturales de la moral, de la política y de la legislación.

Marina also wrote diverse works on the history of Spanish law, including Ensayo histórico-crítico sobre la legislación y principales cuerpos legales de los reinos de León y Castilla especialmente sobre el código de las Siete Partidas de D. Alonso el Sabio (a study of the Siete Partidas

Siete Partidas

The Siete Partidas or simply Partidas was a Castilian statutory code first compiled during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile , with the intent of establishing a uniform body of normative rules for the kingdom. The codified and compiled text was originally called the Libro de las Leyes...

, Spain's seven-part legal code that was followed for centuries both there and in Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

), and a work entitled Juicio crítico de la Novísima Recopilación (Analysis of the Latest Compilation).

Marina died in 1833, a resident of Zaragoza

Zaragoza

Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...

, the capital city of the autonomous region

Autonomous communities of Spain

An autonomous community In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian .*Galician .*Basque . The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "nationalities and regions" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".Political power in Spain is...

 and former kingdom of Aragon

Kingdom of Aragon

The Kingdom of Aragon was a medieval and early modern kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to the modern-day autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain...

in Spain.