Much has been written about St Martín de Porres. Celia Cussen, however, presents us with one of the first biographical studies of this Catholic saint written from an academic perspective. Her work relies heavily on primary sources from numerous archives and sets aside the previous non-academic writings so as to avoid their hagiographical influence. Cussen divides the book in two sections. One studies what is known about Martín's life and the other examines individual and collective memories, as well as the socio-religious interpretations that emerged after his death. Using those texts and several iconographic records depicting Martín's life and miracles and analysing the sociopolitical processes of the times, Cussen reconstructs, explores and exposes what Gillian Ahlgren has termed the politics of sanctity. Martín (1579–1639) was born and died in the Viceroyalty of Peru, a vibrant and important part of the Spanish empire. He lived in a society deeply influenced by the Counter-Reformation efforts of the Council of Trent which codified canon laws that affected its citizens according to the purity of their Christian ancestry. Martín was a man of mixed racial background and of illegitimate parenthood, two factors that severely limited social mobility during his time. People like Martín were placed at the bottom of the social pyramid and contemporary rules and regulations prevented them from accessing certain positions within society and the Church. Martín was therefore admitted into a Dominican priory at the lowest canonical rank: a donado. Yet, as contradictory as it may sound, the same governing elites in charge of enforcing the rules that degraded Martín appreciated him for his Christian virtues in life and venerated him for his miraculous intercessions after death. Cussen points out that Martín's holiness and abilities were not unique. He belonged to a cadre of men and women who lived in Lima during the same period, and who were highly esteemed for their spirituality and sought after for their healing skills. Several of them, such as Rose of Lima, Francisco Solano and Toribio de Mongrovejo, were canonised by the Catholic Church within a few years of their deaths. Martín's canonisation process, on the other hand, took more than three centuries to complete. Numerous authors have questioned the reasons for this, but Cussen instead focuses on the factors that ultimately led Rome to recognise Martín de Porres among its saints. She concludes that Martín's beatification in 1837 and his canonisation in 1962 coincided with specific social processes in which the Catholic Church and the world were involved: antislavery and the civil rights movements respectively. Cussen successfully illustrates that in the same way in which the local elites of seventeenth-century Lima used Martín for healing their physical illnesses, the Catholic hierarchy and the civil leadership of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used the first black saint of the Americas in an attempt to heal the social maladies of their time. This book is a great addition to the study of Martin's legacy and his influence on social movements.