St. Gregory's College, Seville, 1592-1767 ed. by Martin Murphy (review)

108BOOK REVIEWS to the historian to construct meaningful categories and to interpret and explain die data. Michelle M. Fontaine University ofArkansas at Little Rock St. Gregory's College, Seville, 1592-1767. Edited by Martin Murphy. [Catholic Record Society Publications (Record Series), Volume 73- ] (Available from William Dawson and Sons Ltd., Cannon House, Park Road, Folkestone, Kent CT19 ISW, England. 1992. Pp. viii, 223. 843.00.) "This weU researched volume provides much valuable information concerning a relatively little-known English coUege in Andalucía. Founded by Robert Persons during the last decade of the Elizabedian war against Spain, when Seville was die commercial center of a grand overseas empire, this college was dedicated (along with others in Douai, Rome, VaUadolid, and later Lisbon) to preparing priests to minister to the embattled Cadiolic community at home. For its first half-century St. Gregory's reputation flourished and attracted students drawn by the city's cultural ambience and its proximity to die Spanish Jesuit faculty at the college of St. Hermenegild. It benefited particularly by the generosity of die municipal and diocesan leadership as weU as of merchants and local aristocrats. However, after the 1640's the college's finances were jeopardized when die Andalucian economy plunged into a deep depression, whUe die English civil war and the piracy and naval warfare of the Atlantic made the difficult voyage to SeviUe far more perilous than usual, so that enrollment faltered badly. "By 1693 the college ceased to be English in all but name." For die next twenty years, it received no students from the British Isles and later, from 1710 to 1767, "St. Gregory's was defacto an Irish College," as Ireland sent a small but regular number of students while England did not. In 1767 with die suppression of the Jesuits die college was closed, but most of its archives and revenues were transferred to the English college at VaUadolid. Murphy's editorial scholarship is exemplary. His introduction includes a concise history of die coUege and it humanistic course of studies proved by its success in die various literary competitions in SeviUe. There are full detaUs of die surviving resources of its archive, Usts of the contemporary English Jesuits serving the EngUsh merchants and travelers in the region, and tides of die pamphlets printed in SeviUe about EngUsh Catholic affairs. Unfortunately, the official register of the coUege has not survived, but Mr. Murphy has painstakingly traced from a wide range of sources die names and backgrounds of its English and Irish members over its 1 75 years of existence. A brief sample of the noteworthy would include: Andrew White, the pioneer chaplain of die Cadiolic colonists of Maryland; WiUiam Atidns, the author of die earliest Eu- BOOK REVIEWS109 ropean account of die pirate state of Saley in Morocco,* and Thomas Hussey, founder and first president of Maynooth college. Two others later stirred up the fires of controversy: Richard Smith, the future bishop of Chalcedon, and Thomas White, alias Blacklow, a close friend of the Jansenist Arnaud, whose books were also condemned in Rome. There is a long appendix of rare documents on various phases of die college's troubled history. This is a slender volume, sed multum in parvo. AlbertJ. Loomie, SJ. Fordham University The Americas in the Spanish World Order: TheJustificationfor Conquest in the Seventeenth Century. By James Muldoon. (PhUadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1994. Pp. xii, 239. $32.95.) This book is a careful summary and analysis ofJuan de Solórzano Pereira's defense of Spain's title to the New World in his De IndiarumJure (16291639 ), better known by scholars in its Spanish version, Política indiana ( 1647). The work has long been regarded as an audioritative commentary on and digest of the Laws of die Indies. Muldoon's study concentrates on the second book of the first volume ofDe Indiarumfure, dealing with die legitimacy of the Spanish conquest of America and assessing the ten basic arguments defenders of the conquest had offered in the past to justify it. Muldoon observes that the format ofdie work is that of a medieval legal treatise, "posing questions, arranging arguments pro and con, citing audiorities, and, finaUy, drawing conclusions in the manner...