Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain brings together twenty-five essays by renowned historian Terence O'Reilly. The essays examine the interplay of religion and humanism in a series of writings composed in sixteenth-century Spain. It begins by presenting essential background: the coming together during the reign of the Emperor Charles V of Erasmian humanism and various movements of religious reform, some of them heterodox. It then moves on to the reign of Philip II, focusing on the mystical poetry and prose of St John of the Cross. It explores the influence on his writings of his humanist learning - classical, biblical and patristic. The third part of the book concerns a verse-epistle by John's contemporary, Francisco de Aldana. One chapter presents the text with a parallel version in English, whilst two others trace its debt to Florentine Neoplatonism, particularly the thought of Marsilio Ficino. The final part is devoted to the humanism of the poet and Scripture scholar Luis de Leon, and specifically to the confluence in his work of biblical and classical motifs. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern Spanish history, as well those interested in literary studies and the history of religion.

The 16th century saw the rise of movements of religious reform which, in Spain as elsewhere, contributed to make the history of the period such a ferment. In these essays Terence O'Reilly is concerned with the writings produced by these movements, notably Illuminism, the early Jesuits, Erasmianism, and the Carmelite reform, and with the mixture of medieval and new literary conventions that they display. The book first deals with Ignatius Loyola and his Spiritual Exercises, examining its origins in his experience of conversion and the books he read, and locating him not in the period of the militant Counter-Reform, but in an earlier world, linked to the teachings of 16th Spanish Erasmians and illuminists. One study, hitherto unpublished, presents the lost treatise in which the Dominican Melchor Cano argued that Ignatius was an alumbrado. The following sections move to the later the century, considering the connections between spirituality and literature in works such as the ode to Salinas and, above all, in the mystical poetry of John of the Cross and its basis in exegesis and liturgical and devotional texts.