Diego Laínez (1512–1565) and his Generalate: Jesuit with Jewish Roots, Close Confidant of Ignatius of Loyola, Preeminent Theologian of the Council of Trent ed. by Paul Oberholzer, S.J. (review)

This fine volume is the last of three that have been published since 2004 by the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome that deal in reverse chronological order with the three Superiors General of the Society of Jesus following the death in 1556 of the founder and first Superior General, St. Ignatius Loyola. The Mercurian Project: Forming Jesuit Culture, 1573–1580, edited by Thomas McCoog, S.J., and co-published with the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis in 2004 treated the generalate of Everard Mercurian (reviewed ante, 93 [2007], 405–06). Francisco de Borja y su Tiempo: Política, Religión y Cultura en la Moderna, edited by Maria del Pilar Ryan and Enrique Garcia Hernán and co-published by the Consejo Superior de Investigationes Cientificas in Valencia in 2011, looked at the life and times of St. Francis Borgia, who was Superior General from 1565 to 1572 (reviewed ante, 99 [2013]: 559–62). Diego Laínez served as vicar general from 1556 to 1558 and was elected Superior General at the first general congregation of the Society in 1558. The current volume is divided into seven parts: Introductory Reflections; Personality and Ministry; Political and Social Milieu; Works and Networks; Catholic Reform; Culture and Education; and the New World, and it includes thirty-four contributions by twenty-seven authors in five languages along with an extensive bibliography. All three of these volumes contribute substantially to our understanding of the foundational period of the Society of Jesus.

Paul Oberholzer maintains that Laínez had “a particular and personal relationship” (p. 23) with Ignatius; he was the only one of the six who took vows at Montmartre in Paris in 1534 or the ten who arrived in Rome in 1537/38 to remain a close confidant of Ignatius up until the founder’s death. According to Pedro Ribadeneira, Ignatius’s first biographer, he was the choice of the founder to succeed him as Superior General. Ignatius himself testified that Laínez had provided the most accurate description of his own vision at La Storta outside Rome in 1537, in which God the Father placed Ignatius with his Son, a vision that has had great significance for Jesuit identity. Laínez stood out as a theologian as well as a preacher and diplomat who dealt with secular and ecclesiastical officials. But Ignatius did not consider him as one of the most adept at giving the Spiritual Exercises. Oberholzer suggests that Laínez has remained at the second level in Jesuit historiography because of his converso background and because of the large number of autograph letters that remain unedited in the Roman archives of the Jesuits, partly due to the extreme difficulty in deciphering his handwriting, despite the eight volumes of the Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu devoted to his correspondence.

Laínez served as a papal theologian during the first two periods of the Council of Trent and as Superior General of a religious order in the final period. Interestingly, according to Oberholzer’s account of the first two periods, neither he nor Ignatius expected much from Trent in the way of Catholic Reform, and Ignatius early on wanted to recall him for the more important ministry of preaching in Italy. Both Ignatius and Laínez saw Trent more as an opportunity to impress the bishops there and so open doors for the Society’s ministry. Yet Nicholas Steiner, S.J., in his appraisal of Laínez’s role at Trent that includes the third period, considers it as important as that of Karl Rahner or Joseph Ratzinger at the Second Vatican Council. He supported the curial...