This book’s main premises, as summarized by its author, are twofold; first, to show that during the early modern period: “the expansion of scientific data, methods, and disciplines did not escape the attention of religiously minded writers” (4); and second, that these writers incorporated new scientific knowledge into religious texts such as: “catechisms, orations, spiritual guides, and other kinds of religious texts” (4). Following these premises, Ran Segev analyzes “the ways in which new bodies of knowledge were imaginatively integrated into Catholic identities, contributing to the propagation of Catholic visions and expressions of faith” (6). This analysis is centered around three bodies of knowledge, listed as “cosmography, descriptive geography (descripción), and zoological thinking” (23).
There are two chapters dedicated to cosmography. In the first chapter, Segev analyzes works such as Pedro de Medina’s Arte de navegar (1545), Rodrigo Zamorano’s Compendio del arte de navegar (1588), and Enrico Martínez’ Repertorio de los tiempos y historia natural desta Nueva España (1606). These and other authors of cosmographical literature mix scientifically sound information about an increasingly transoceanic world with profuse religious motifs. Their works, Segev argues, not only helped propagate Catholic norms and doctrines but also a “naturalized Church law” in Indies (46). The second chapter on cosmographical Catholic knowledge is dedicated to New Mexico’s abbess María de Jesús de Ágreda, and especially to the writing and dissemination of her Redondez de la tierra (c. 1616). Franciscan missionaries in the northern regions of New Spain, particularly in New Mexico, creatively appropriated De Ágreda’s cosmographical knowledge, which was supposedly acquired through the miracle of an “infused science” (23), as exemplary of the goals and rights of global mission.
The chapter dedicated to descriptive geography analyzes works such as the Compendio y descripcion de las Indias Occidentales (1630) by Antono Vázquez de Espinoza, the Milicia y descripción de as Indias (1599) by Bernardo de Vargas Machuca, or the Relación del viaje de Fray Diego de Ocaña por el Nuevo Mundo (c. 1607), written by Ocaña himself. Here, Segev argues that: “In a land without church history, descriptive geography became an effective tool for sacralizing a foreign land by evoking Catholic images of piety and devotion” (24).
Finally, the last chapter analyzes José de Acosta’s famous Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) and Gregorio García’s Origen de los Indios de el Nuevo Mundo, e Indias Occidentales (1607). According to Segev, in these works their authors “formulated innovative zoological understandings, including the very definition of species and the role of ecology in the development of life” (156). Their zoological intuitions were employed to support theological hegemony and the wisdom of God’s providential designs.
As can be grasped for this summary, Sacred Habitat is a very useful addition to the growing literature that studies the abundant scientific corpus of the Iberian early modern worlds. Its main originality lies in its attempt to focus on the doctrinal uses of scientific knowledge and not, as it is customary, on the importance of scientific writings by Catholic authors for the emergence and consolidation of modern science. Also commendable is the fact that Segev foregrounds works and authors that are well known by specialists with others that still require more careful study.
The book, however, is not without a few shortcomings. The author’s characterization of the “bodies of knowledge” to be studied is unnecessarily convoluted, as it mixes historical actors’ scientific genres, such as cosmography and geography, with an anachronic concept such as “zoological thinking.” Particularly in the last chapter, the book reads more as a common defense of the scientific modernity of Acosta and García, than an in-depth analysis of the doctrinal uses of their scientific works, a task which remains undeveloped.
Moreover, to argue that the scientific study of nature “became a cultural force that supported confessional objectives” (24) needs more historical depth, since this was by no means an exclusive characteristic of the early modern period. One only needs to think about Augustine, Albertus Magnus of Roger Bacon to realize that such a process goes back many centuries. Like their early modern epigones, medieval authors also commonly used science for “repacking Catholic doctrines and narratives with a new sense of scientific wonder” and even for “transferring Christian meaning to new environments” (161). For this reason, it is not clear what exactly is new in the texts analyzed, other than the scientific data they employ, and the different times and spaces involved in their composition. This lack of familiarity with premodern epistemic categories probably caused an evident mistake such as defining astrology as “the influence of the celestial bodies on the subaltern region” (instead of the sublunar world) made it into printing (41–42).
Lastly, Sacred Habitat ignores the fact that most of the natural spaces that the books studies were not, as Segev seems to suggest, devoid of previous sacrality. On the contrary, and as it is well known, Indigenous sacrality was re-signified in the pages of the authors analyzed, as well as in the religious symbols and practices they promoted in non-European spaces. Even the image that graces the book’s cover was made with help from Indigenous informants and hands, but, unfortunately, there is no word about these kinds of syncretic science and religion in Segev’s text.
Regardless of these shortcomings, Sacred Habitat opens new and quite necessary research avenues for the understanding of the cross-cultural histories of Catholic missions and early modern science.
