A failure to understand (or much care) what their European neighbours think about them is arguably a besetting characteristic of the English. In historiographical terms, the question of how the English Reformation was regarded and portrayed in the rest of Europe still represents an underdeveloped corner of the field of study. There is good reason, then, to welcome this critical edition and translation of the Historia ecclesiastics del scisma del reyno de Inglaterra (1588–93) by the Spanish Jesuit, Pedro de Ribadeneyra. The work was something of a best-seller in Spain, appearing in new editions through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. It influenced other histories and was the inspiration for Calderón's 1627 play La cisma de Inglaterra. Ribadeneyra's account (based on, but expanding and rewriting Nicholas Sander's De origine ac progressu schismatis anglicani) spanned events from the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur at the start of the sixteenth century to the persecution of missionary priests in its final decade. It is no insipid chronicle, but an impassioned polemic, celebrating the heroism of martyrs (in the only European country where Catholics were being violently persecuted in the late sixteenth century) and presenting a gallery of villains, from the hyper-sexualised Anne Boleyn to the Machiavellian Elizabeth i. Spencer Weinreich's introduction stresses the deeply providential character of the work, both in a first volume appearing in the summer of the Spanish Armada and in a second having to make theological and psychological sense of the Armada's defeat. He also emphasises the importance of its being from the outset a vernacular text, aimed at strengthening the resolve of a broad cross-section of Spanish Catholics, and persuading them (as well as members of Ribadeneyra's own Society of Jesus) of the need for a militant strategy to deal with heretical England. Weinreich's translation of Ribadeneyra's hefty work reads easily, and is footnoted throughout in helpful detail. There are several useful documents in the appendices and a biblical as well as a general index. At 110 pages Weinreich's introductory essay is a short monograph in itself, full of insightful discussion. All in all, the volume represents a remarkable achievement on the part of a very early career scholar, and one hopes that it will be widely consulted and cited.