Andres Laguna. Europa heautentimorumene: es decir, que miseramente a si misma se atormenta y lamenta su propia desgracia.

Ed. Miguel Angel Gonzalez Manjarrez. Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y Leon, 2001. 208 pp. index, bibl. 18.03 [euro]. ISBN: 84-7846-990-7.

With this study Gonzalez Manjarrez revisits a controversial Erasmist, Andres Laguna (1511-69), humanist and doctor. Marcel Bataillon in his important Erasmus en Espagne (1937) harshly labeled Laguna as lacking in originality and publishing only to gain notoriety that eventually would lead to better employment. Laguna, a Segovian converso, studied in Salamanca, then traveled to Paris, Flanders, Nuremberg, and Cologne while Charles V's contradictory imperial policies reigned. After the publication of Europa (Cologne: Johannes von Aachen, 1543), Laguna served Pope Julius III as doctor, traveled extensively in Italy, and eventually returned to die in Spain. Laguna's intellectual endeavors have suffered lack of critical attention and are available only in the original sixteenth-century imprints. With this edition of his most important didactic poem, Gonzalez Manjarrez hopes to vindicate Laguna and his treatise on the lament at the failure of imperial European unification under Charles V.

Joseph Perez, the renowned French Hispanist, recognizes the value of this study and bilingual edition. The Spanish translation is placed in facing pages to the Latin original. Perez's introduction (13-23) helps the reader to review the importance of Laguna in the perspective of a Spaniard traveler in the Hapsburg Empire of mid-sixteenth century. Perez vigorously defends Laguna's imperial discourse as a voice of tolerance among Christians and sees him as a precursor to intellectual attitudes that will not be widespread in Europe until the seventeenth century.

Gonzalez Manjarrez gives a concise biographical sketch of Laguna's religious and political ideas before the publication of the Europa. He details the indebtedness of Laguna to Erasmus. He points to the pitfalls of Laguna's Neo-Latin style. He ends his introduction with a bibliography meticulously researched. He thoroughly annotates the text with explanatory footnotes.

Laguna's depiction of Europe as a geographic entity with the spiritual link of Christianity is the main focus of the dialogue between Europa and the authorial voice. The treatise is important to Renaissance scholars interested in the imperial ideology that was eventually discarded by the Hapsburg dynasty. The study is of further interest to understand how Spanish traveler's published treatises may have voiced dissent outside of the Iberian Peninsula.

ROSA HELENA CHINCHILLA 

University of Connecticut, Storrs