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The Americas 58.2 (2001) 318-319



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Book Review

Relación de la vida y milagros de San Francisco Solano. By Luís Jerónimo de Oré, O.F.M. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1998. Pp. xxxix, 78. Notes. Index. $7.00 paper.

Gerónimo de Oré's biography of the life of his fellow Franciscan, Francisco Solano, was written to promote the cause of the latter's beatification. Both the author and the subject of this colonial classic, published in 1614, were well known: Oré was an accomplished man of letters, and Solano was a popular preacher and a man revered as a saint. Solano was one of the five canonized saints who lived in Lima around 1600. The others are Rose of Lima, Martin of Porres, Toribio de Mogrovejo, and Juan Masías. Solano, like Toribio and Masías, was born in Spain, where he had already won fame for his preaching and asceticism before going to Peru in 1589. He spent many years working in Tucumán and Paraguay before establishing himself in Peru. When he died in 1610, he was widely esteemed for his asceticism, works of charity, and preaching. Oré, originally from Huamanga, won recognition for his pastoral manuals, dictionaries, and grammars in Quechua and Aymara. In 1613, while visiting Spain for the purpose of recruiting volunteers for America, he was commissioned by his order to write a biography of Solano.

His Relación is a blend of factual objectivity and baroque hagiography. With meticulous detail, Oré narrates Solano's life and includes many testimonies from people who knew him. He is also careful to note that Solano came from old Christian blood. But when it comes to miracles, Oré, the critical man of letters, becomes a collector of popular beliefs. The medieval-baroque world of miracles, relics, apparitions, and mystical raptures comes vividly alive in Oré's portrayal of his fellow Franciscan. In Lima alone, Oré claims, Solano was responsible for 195 miracles. Most of all, the author is at pains to cast Solano as a new St. Francis. According to one miracle story, he healed a dove that had been attacked by a fox. In another, Solano's saintliness is demonstrated by the power of his relics: a group of fishermen calmed the raging sea by casting a bit of cloth from Solano's habit upon the waters.

Yet, all of these miracles alone would not have made Solano a saint. As professor Noble David Cook points out in his introductory study, Solano's beatification process was actually an important test case based on new procedures laid down in Rome. Smitten by the reformers' criticism of popular Catholicism, and moved by misgivings over its own naiveté in accepting miracles stories, the post-tridentine church established new and more rigorous criteria and procedures, such as calling for a lengthier time to elapse between death and the initiation of the beatification process. The purpose, of course, was to review a person's life more carefully and dispassionately. In this case, miracles stories, entertaining though they may be for the modern reader, were not sufficient. Solid testimony about one's virtue and charitable works was crucial to the process. In this case, Oré drew upon the testimonies of the archbishops and bishops of Seville, Granada, Lima, Córdova, and Málaga, and that of the general of the Franciscan order. The Franciscan order did well in appointing an accomplished author to write Solano's biography, and Oré was under [End Page 318] pressure to argue his case well. In fact, Solano was not beatified until 1675. Canonization followed in 1726.

Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J.
Pontifical Catholic University of Peru
Lima, Peru



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