La Compañía de Jesús en la Salamanca universitaria … represents a substantial contribution to the tradition of microhistorical studies of Jesuit institutions in Spain. This extensive study of the Colegio del Espíritu Santo (later the Colegio Real del Espíritu Santo) in Salamanca is based on León Perera’s doctoral dissertation, which won the 2019 Premio Humanidades from the Real Academia de Doctores de España. The volume uses archival sources to describe daily life in the community, the physical spaces in which it took place, and the colegio’s pedagogical mission, and this school’s relationship to the Universidad de Salamanca and other Jesuit educational institutions in the province of Castile. (The other Jesuit school in Salamanca, the Colegio de San Patricio, the Irish college, is mentioned when it relates to the Colegio del Espíritu Santo). The author also details the religious activities undertaken by the Jesuits at Espírirtu Santo: preaching, mission work, and the congregations and sodalities affiliated with the colegio. Although León Perera could not locate the account books for the institution, other aspects of the Colegio del Espíritu Santo’s economic situation, including significant donations made to it and the extensive investments the institution made in property in the city of Salamanca and the surrounding area, is a significant theme in the volume.

In point of fact, this book is at its most compelling when analyzing archival sources. To mention only one such instance, based on manuscripts in the Biblioteca General de la Universidad de Salamanca, León Perera recounts the daily schedule for the community in 1648. As the author observes, Jesuits put aside academics in order to participate in public penitential ceremonies in which they flagellated themselves in the streets of Salamanca on important feast days (345–48). This is only one of many such moments in which León Perera relates striking and detailed anecdotes about life in this colegio. Anyone interested in religious culture in Spain from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries will find details relevant to their research areas. And León Perera’s review of archival materials relating to the Colegio del Espíritu Santo will be of great interest to researchers of this particular school.

As anyone familiar with the history of the Society of Jesus is well aware, any historiographical study of the order must face lacunae. León Perera does an admirable job of interpreting scant data and sometimes contradictory information in sources. For example, in considering whether Ignatius of Loyola attended classes at the University of Salamanca, León Perera rightly signals that the university’s records would only list those officially enrolled there; but unfortunately, the matriculation records from that period are not extant. When considering 1624 documentation from the university that designates Ignatius of Loyola as a “son of the university,” León Perera observes that Loyola only could have attended classes for several weeks before his legal difficulties interrupted (85). I quibble with León Perera’s conclusions based on archival documentation on only one occasion, namely when he asserts that he did not find evidence of a single Jesuit in this Salamanca community who engaged in lascivious conduct (264). León Perera less frequently cites from the sources, specifically correspondence between Rome and Jesuit provincials, where I most often find references to prohibited sexual behaviors.

León Perera’s arguments beyond archival materials occasionally overemphasize the ontological at the expense of other factors. After noting fewer requests for additional penitences and more conflicts with superiors among seventeenth–century Jesuits when compared with their sixteenth–century counterparts, the author connects these changes to the “disenchantment” that characterizes the baroque. While this intellectual condition may be a factor, it seems more likely that the economic challenges of the seventeenth century may have moved some men to join the Society for survival rather than religious motives and that such individuals would request fewer penances and be less respectful towards their superiors.

At times, the public for whom the book is written seems unclear. The reader of an 852-page book most likely is a specialist in the field who therefore would be familiar with the Society’s departures from the practices of older religious orders and the social structure of Spain. A reader knowledgeable about the field would not require the detailed review of published historiographical works at the beginning of this study. Perhaps León Perera has an undergraduate readership in mind; although undergraduates in Spain may be able to read the volume’s Latin passages, this is not the case in the US.

The volume’s appendices are extensive, including photographs of the physical space of Salamanca’s Colegio Real and selected artworks, transcriptions of documents, and graphs. Some correspondence transcribed in the appendices already has been published in the Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, as León Perera notes, and therefore its inclusion seems unnecessary. Many of the other transcribed documents are less well–known materials relevant to this colegio, such as the passages from Margarita of Austria’s will that specify her bequests to the institution. Other transcribed documents from archives and libraries in the Salamanca area treat quotidian matters concerning this establishment, including a list of those in residence at the time of the expulsion.

This section also contains a number of graphs and charts that synthesize information that León Perera compiled from archival sources, largely concerning the domestic economy and demographic data about the Espíritu Santo and its inhabitants. Unfortunately, in a couple of cases, the color choices in the graphics make it difficult to interpret them properly. For example, in the pie chart in appendix 52 that represents the percentages of resident Jesuits who took particular types of vows, the color swatches in the key are so small and the two shades of blue so similar that I could not determine which part of the population took two vows versus those who took four vows. Perhaps the colors could be adjusted in a future printing.