Melchor Cano and the Spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola: The Censura y parecer contra el Insituto de los Padres Jesuitas

The leading critic in Spain of the early Society of Jesus and its founder was the Dominican theologian Melchor Cano, who believed that the spirituality of Ignatius and his companions was a form of illuminism. During the 1550s he set out his reasons for thinking this in his Censura y parecer contra el Insituto de los Padres Jesuitas, a document he intended to show to the pope. It survives in a number of manuscripts, one of them in the British Library in London. The present article traces the history of the text, which was long considered lost, and examines its portrayal of Ignatius, the Spiritual Exercises, and the Society. It concludes with a critical edition of the British Library manuscript.