Monumenta Borgia, Vol. VII: (1550–1566). Sanctus Franciscus Borgia Quartus Gandiae Dux et Societatis Iesu Praepositus Generalis Tertius (1510–1572) (review)

Volume VII of the Monumenta Borgia follows 2003’s volume VI, also edited by Enrique García Hernán. These volumes are the most significant scholarly contributions among several works celebrating the quincentennial of the birth in 1510 of St. Francis Borgia, duke of Gandía in the province of Valencia and superior general of the Society of Jesus. It is not hyperbole to say that García Hernán’s work will transform our understanding of the early Jesuits and the order’s interaction with early-modern politics and society.

Volume VI of the Monumenta Borgia, with its 1060 documents spanning the years 1478 to 1551, places the saint and the Society of Jesus in a larger Iberian and European context. Volume VII continues the work of volume VI, with 1792 documents from 1550 to 1566 (the one exception is a previously unknown 1539 document from Emperor Charles V naming Borgia as a caballero de Santiago). As García Hernán did in volume VI, he includes important and relevant documents from archives both inside and outside of the order’s own. Among the archives represented in the reviewed volume are the Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu de Madrid, Spain’s Archivo Histórico Nacional, the Archivo de la Compañía de Jesús in Alcalá de Henares, the Archivo General de Simanca, and the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus. The documents are arranged chronologically, with placeholders of related correspondence from other volumes of the MHSI.

Volume VII begins with an excellent introduction of almost forty pages that includes the most recent literature on Borgia and his age. Throughout the rest of the volume, García Hernán clarifies the text in editorial notes, but balances the critical apparatus with making room in the volume for as many documents as possible. His success with this can be seen in the extraordinary range of the subjects covered by these letters: the Jesuit education ministry, court life under King Philip II, the Inquisition, the papal war with Spain, Rome’s conflicts with France and the Ottoman Empire, missionary activity around the world, and the roles of both Europe’s elite and conversos in the Society of Jesus.

The letters of volume VII cover Europe and missionary activities, but priority was clearly given to Borgia’s Spain. Either directly or indirectly, documents refer to Borgia’s entrance into the Society of Jesus (1547), his trip to Rome (1550), his service as a Jesuit in the province of Guipúzcoa (1551–53), his role as commissary to Spain (1554), his influence as confessor to Juana of Austria, his troubles with the Spanish Inquisition (1559), his arrival in Rome (1561), his ongoing contact with his family and the affairs of the Duchy of Gandía, and his election as superior general in June 1565 after the death of Diego Laínez in January of that year. Borgia’s service spans an important period of transition for the Society of Jesus, one in which the identity of the order was formed during a process of expansion and consolidation. The documents in this volume speak more to Borgia’s administrative, political, and social contributions to the Society than they do to issues of spirituality, but these documents are fundamental to an understanding of how he and the other early members of the Society centralized a worldwide order, with Jesuits in Brazil, South Asia, the Far East, and across Europe.

García Hernán has provided an important collection of archival sources that is useful for a broad range of fields and issues. Scholars of Jesuit studies, organizational studies, and sixteenth-century Spain and Europe will find much of value here. The documents...