Sanctus Franciscus Borgia, Quartus Gandiae Dux et Societatis Iesu Praepositus Generalis Tertius (1510-1572) (review)

This sixth volume in the Monumenta Borgia is a truly exceptional collection. It comes after a long lapse in the publication of this series on the life of Francisco Borgia, "aristocrat-saint," friend of Charles V and Isabel of Portugal, Duke of Gandía, viceroy of Catalonia from 1539 to 1543, and later in his life third leader of the Jesuit order. The first five volumes in the Borgia series, currently out of print, appeared as volumes 2, 23, 35, 38, and 41 of the MHSI almost a hundred years ago. García Hernán, now with Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, is the first non-Jesuit editor in the Borgia series, but he has acquired a well-deserved reputation as an outstanding specialist in the field. Trained in modern ecclesiastical history and theology in Spain and Italy, his doctoral thesis (2000) on Francisco Borgia's diplomatic work for the papacy in the 1570's won the Gregorian University's Bellarmine Medal.

This volume contains an important introductory biographical study in addition to the collection of mostly unpublished documents relating to the period between Ferdinand the Catholic's ennobling of the family in 1485 and 1551, the year Francisco announced his membership in the Jesuit order. Although García Hernán has collected more than one thousand documents, a significant number are cited but not reproduced in their entirety. Occasionally, the inevitable choices García Hernán has had to make, though understandable, are frustrating, as is the case with the antepenultimate incomplete document, a letter constituting the first example of Borgia describing himself as "Francisco, a sinner." On the other hand, the care with which García Hernán has edited this collection is evident in the voluminous cross references, definitive bibliographies, and attention to detail—ciphered text used in particularly sensitive royal correspondence, for example, is translated. This is all welcome material for research into Italian and Spanish social, political, diplomatic, religious, and cultural history.

In his prologue, Thomas M. McCoog, S.J., the director of the MHSI, announces plans to re-issue the first five volumes of the Monumenta Borgia and rightly praises García Hernán for encompassing a more complex understanding of Francisco Borgia than the traditional image of him as an "aristocrat-saint." Indeed, García Hernán's introductory study is clearly more than a presentation of Borgia's life up to 1551; it delves critically into the historiography concerning his viceregency and draws innovative conclusions concerning Borgia's evolving ambitions. The sources are drawn principally from the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, the "Fondo Osuna" in the Archivo Histórico Nacional (Toledo, kept in the Hospital de Taverna, Archivo de la Nobleza, Toledo), and the Archivo General de Simancas, but they are complemented by a selection from another fourteen archives—some private and rarely visited—in Spain, Italy, and France. Borgia's relationship with the important political figure of the Viscount of Evol, for example, is re-created using correspondence in the under-utilized Biblioteca Francisco de Zubálburu y Basabe in Madrid. The exhaustive scope of García Hernán's archival work, moreover, permits him to present the political and ecclesiastical ambitions of Borgia's complex father, Don Juan de Borja, as a critical backdrop to the young Francisco's own evolution. Another example of García Hernán's scholarship is his discussion of the special relationship the Borgias maintained with the Saint Clare convents in Spain and Italy. Finally, scholars of the Society will benefit from new information concerning the period between the death of Francisco's wife on March 27, 1546, and his decision to become a Jesuit under the tutorship of Father Fabro on May 22, a...