Sacred Habitat: Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic by Ran Segev (review)

Reviewed by: Sacred Habitat: Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic by Ran Segev Luis Millones Figueroa Sacred Habitat: Nature and Catholicism in the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic. By Ran Segev. Iberian Encounter and Exchange Series. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2023. Pp. xvi, 213. 129. 95. ISBN 978-0-271-09533-2. ) Based on a Ph. D. dissertation for the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, Sacred Habitat offers close readings of narratives that show an interplay between early modern scientific inquiries about the New World and a Catholic worldview. In particular, the author focuses on cosmography, geography, and natural history by Carmelite, Franciscan, and Dominican writers within the context of the debates at the Council of Trent and the scientific initiatives to promote Spanish imperial expansion. Among the close readings, I find the analysis of Sor María de Jesús's early work Redondez de la tierra (chap. 3) and of Antonio Vázquez de Espinoza's Compendio y descripción de las Indias Occidentales (chap. 4) to be the most insightful. However, the book includes plenty of interesting interpretations of how religious aims find a place in works of cosmography, astronomy, and navigation such as Esphera del universo by Ginés Rocamora y Torrano, Repertorio de End Page 436 los tiempos y historia natural desta Nueva España by Enrico Martínez, or Compendio del arte de navegar by Rodrigo Zamorano (chap. 2). Because Ran Segev believes that the attention given to Jesuits' accounts that deal with nature and religion have overshadowed contributions by other Catholics authors, the book concentrates on non-Jesuits writers. Nonetheless, the zoological ideas and theories on the origin and distribution of animals in the New World of several Jesuits (for instance José de Acosta, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, and Athanasius Kircher), which indeed have received plenty of scholarly attention, are contrasted and compared with those presented by the Dominican Gregorio García in his Origen de los Indios del Nuevo Mundo e Indias Occidentales (chap. 5). Before the textual analyses, the author makes the case for approaching works that may have been seen primarily as either scientific or missionary under the new lens of an intentional interplay that enlightens us about the evolution of Catholic thought (chap. 1). I expect more studies of Catholic authors of the early modern Spanish Atlantic that will benefit from the approach and ideas in Segev's book. And further and varied examples may be needed to fully explain how, and to what extent, the empirical investigations of the Spanish imperial enterprise impacted "the constitution of a new Catholic knowledge" (5) during a period of challenges and renewal in the Catholic faith beyond the cases presented in the book. In the meantime, more than one professor will be grateful for the chance to assign a chapter or two from this book, which provides a fresh perspective on works that continue to ask for novel readings. In fact, several other disciplines and areas of study that explore how knowledge of the natural world influences narratives with religious worldviews may well also find inspiration in this carefully argued and easy-to-read book. Luis Millones Figueroa Colby College Copyright © 2024 The Catholic University of America Press