WHEN FRANCISCO DE Osuna published Norte de los estados in 1531 his career as a spiritual writer was on the rise. He was living in Seville then, intensively producing didactic works for a wide audience, poised to become a well-known religious author in Europe. A Franciscan friar from Andalusia, Osuna had begun circulating his work via the printing press four years earlier. His first book, the mystical treatise Tercera parte del Abecedario espiritual [The Third Spiritual Alphabet], appeared in print in Toledo in 1527. With it Osuna made the Franciscan meditative practice of recollection, or recogimiento, available to a broad reading public and established his reputation as a spiritual guide. In this meditative practice the reader could gain wisdom through study and introspection, Osuna taught, and perhaps reach the ultimate goal of directly experiencing the emanation of divine love. His Tercera parte del Abecedario espiritual would become his best-known work and have a deep and lasting impact on Catholic mysticism.

During his lifetime Osuna was to gain widespread fame, penning a total of eight books in Spanish that appeared in twenty-eight editions across Spain in Toledo, Seville, Burgos, Valladolid, Medina del Campo, and Zaragoza. Some of these vernacular works were then translated and published abroad in Italian, German, and Latin. Moreover, he would go on to author five books of sermon material in Latin before his death around 1540. These he published in Toulouse, Paris, and Antwerp from 1532 to 1536, during which time he travelled through France and then resided in the Netherlands. They were printed in at least sixteen editions in the early modern period and reached clergy throughout Europe and in the Americas.

As one of the earliest dialogues in Spanish, Osuna’s Norte de los estados is an invaluable resource for understanding conjugal life in the sixteenth-century popular imagination. It depicts conversations between two characters, Father Osuna and the layman he advises, Villaseñor, from Villaseñor’s youth through his adult life.