Brief Notices

Wills, Garry. Augustine's Confessions: A Biography. [Lives of Great Religious Books.] (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2011. Pp. x, 166. $19.95. ISBN 978-0-691-14357-6.)

Even though it is called "a biography," this book is rather a book about a book: the Confessions. Biographical materials are found, but they do not appear to be the intended focus. Its rapid development of thorny issues suggest that it requires a reader who has read widely enough to recognize when sweeping statements or clever words hide a disputed issue. It does contribute a valuable reference to some aspects of present-day scholarship, but there also is an annoying repetition of some idées reçues that should have been seen as such.

Chapter 8 sees books 11-13 of the Confessions as culmination, not addendum. Searching into the meaning of the first verses of the book of Genesis, St. Augustine is already letting his faith seek understanding of the God in whose name he was baptized: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What he describes elsewhere as "a theological profession of faith" (p. 27) applies well in this context.

To say that Augustine once saw St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, as a "demagogic miracle monger" (p. 22) is great prose and terrible history. No text is provided to check on the source of such an "insight." The chapter on Ambrose has much to recommend its omission. It casts their relationship in negative terms—saying that Ambrose "had no time for Augustine" (p. 50). It overstates the importance of Augustine's "Neoplatonist readings" (p. 55). It sets St. Monica's question about fasting in a Donatist context—as if anyone can now say that her initial piety was not Catholic (p. 44). A more careful reading of the Confessions would narrate those experiences with less bias.

The book is one more addition to the vast number of publications on Augustine and his work, but it is not the place for an uninformed reader to begin to know Augustine's Confessions. ALLAN FITZGERALD, O.S.A. (The Augustinian Institute, Villanova University)

Poole, Stafford. Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571-1591. Second edition. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2011. Pp. xiv, 365. $45.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-806-14171-8.)

Stafford Poole's political and intellectual biography of Mexico's first inquisitor general and later archbishop first appeared in 1987. Poole's Pedro Moya de Contreras appeared as a deeply researched and nuanced study of a complex man, firmly situated in the historiography of institutional church history. As trends and fads have come and gone or come and become part of the scholarly lexicon—cultural studies, post-structuralism, cultural history—Poole's biography has come to be one of those works that stand out as an exemplar for those seeking an understanding of the religious politics of sixteenth-century Mexico. It ranks among the best institutional histories we have for the subject and the period along with Robert Ricard's Spiritual Conquest (Berkeley, 1966), Richard Greenleaf's studies on Juan de Zumárraga and the Inquisition, and John Schwaller's studies of the clergy. It is driven principally by archival evidence and a desire to understand the man (Moya de Contreras) and the time (Mexico's Church as it emerged in its more formalized period in the broader context of the Council of Trent and Spanish imperial projects).

This second edition reflects two important qualities of the original work: (1) its commitment to provide a broad understanding of religious politics,and (2) its firm commitment to deep and perspicacious archival research. Anyone looking for an examination of this formative period of the Mexican Church would be hard pressed to find a better single book. This second edition also showcases Poole's formidable research skills. In particular, this second edition expands the original book's scope on three fronts. First, Poole has drawn on recent research by Julio Sánchez Rodríguez on the earlier career of Moya de Contreras in the Canaries. Second, recent efforts by the Colegio de Michoacán and Alberto...