At the centre of this study, based on a PhD thesis, is an author with whose name most scholars of Golden Age Spain will be familiar but who very few will have ever indulged in reading thoroughly. Juan Eusebio Nieremberg is indeed one of those authors whose international fame and reputation did not stand the test of time. Although he was one of the most prolific writers in Latin and Spanish of his age, the style and content of his wide-ranging opus, covering many genres from catechism, devotional literature, natural history and moral-didactic commentary nowadays hardly enthuse the modern reader. The Jesuit belongs to the tribe of early modern ‘unoriginal authors’ who, whilst not necessarily thrilling in themselves, merit attention as they encapsulate often elusive worldviews and (religious) sensibilities of the past. The achievement of this monograph is to situate Nieremberg's work within the wider context of the literary activities of the Jesuit order, the intellectual horizons of his time and place and the circulation of knowledge within the Spanish-speaking world. That Nieremberg was a prolific devotional author is hardly surprising, and Hendrickson shows how he re-invigorated and ‘popularised’ the Ignatian tradition of the Spiritual exercises in his innovative catechism, deeply anchored in a Tridentine spirit. More curious, however, was the way in which Nieremberg ‘wrote up’ the world without ever leaving the walls of the Colegio Imperial where he had been educated and in which he went on to teach. Nieremberg's substantial excursions into encyclopaedic descriptions of natural phenomena were not based on experiments, first-hand experience or observation but on the attempt to contemplate the wonders of the divine creation and through this to advance in the path of knowledge not so much of the material world, but of God. In his quest, the neo-Platonist Nieremberg thus produced superbly illustrated works that sponged up a mind-boggling quantity of ‘knowledge’ of all kinds, like the first description of magnetism in a Spanish work, but also the obligatory panorama of more dubious ‘monstrosities’ of nature. All this obviously reflects the role of the Colegio Imperial as a hub for the exchange and trading of information and knowledge from all corners of the Hispanic Empire and beyond. These lines of inquiry, however, are not directly analysed in this study, which remains mostly within the remit of literary history. None the less it delivers some interesting pointers for scholars interested in Spanish cultural history and the history of post-Tridentine piety more generally.