Ignatius Loyola has been the subject of innumerable studies and biographies, many of them written by members of his own society and therefore seldom free of hagiography. The phenomenal success and convoluted history of the Jesuits since his time has contributed to the somewhat over-sized image we all have of the man. Warrior of God, universal saint: few heroes of the Church can compete with such credentials. It is therefore satisfying to have yet another biography, one moreover that turns out to be different. The author is a prolific young Spanish scholar who has already written a useful life of Francis Borja. In this work he makes good use of the Jesuit archives, which he employs to back up the extensive bibliography that he has consulted. Though set out in the form of a biography, however, the book has none of the virtues of the classic lives written by Karl Rahner and Philip Caraman; it is a stolid, plodding, researched essay stuffed full of lists of names and events and with little concern for the general reader. Even so, it has virtues that deserve the attention of scholars. Aware of the towering historical image of Ignatius, the author chooses to adopt a moderate approach that completely avoids hagiography, and he manages to put together one of the more informative studies of Ignatius that I can recall having consulted. His chief emphasis is not on the universal nature of his subject but on a man who possessed the ‘quality of being Spanish, more specifically Castilian’. The entire book therefore concentrates very densely on the Castilian persons and environment that created Ignatius, and presents him as a product of Castile alone. We learn that Ignatius knew no other language than Castilian, and was deficient in Latin and general learning; all his close colleagues were Castilian-speakers with whom he could speak a common language. The spirituality that informed him was Castilian illuminism, a tendency that shaped his entire career. Indeed, throughout his life he was accused of being an illuminist heretic: it happened to him in Spain, in Paris (when he was studying) and in Rome, where he finally went in order to obtain papal approval for his society. Because we know very little about the historical figure, the author is obliged throughout to make assumptions about who Ignatius may have known and what he probably did, a technique that does not always work. The end of the book in particular is disappointing, simply a summary of information about Spaniards whom Ignatius knew. In short, this is a well-researched study but lacks broader horizons, and above all one misses any discussion or analysis of the spirituality for which the saint became famous.