Colonial Latin American Review ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccla20 Empire of eloquence: the classical rhetorical tradition in colonial Latin America and the Iberian world by Stuart M. McManus, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2021, 300 pp. (ISBN 9781108821735) Sean F. McEnroe To cite this article: Sean F. McEnroe (2022) Empire of eloquence: the classical rhetorical tradition in colonial Latin America and the Iberian world, Colonial Latin American Review, 31:4, 620-622, DOI: 10.1080/10609164.2022.2147730 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10609164.2022.2147730 Published online: 17 Jan 2023. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 5 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ccla20 620 BOOK REVIEWS into a center of Christian salvation history. Chapter Four focuses on the organizational methods that Hernando employed in ordering his collection that the authors reconstruct from his bibliographic records, most notably the Registrum A or Memorial de los libros naufragados, a catalogue of the more than 1,500 books that he had sent back to Spain via ship during his shopping spree through Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy but were lost at sea. Chapter Five tells the fate of the library after Hernando’s death, when it was moved out of the villa, first to the Dominican convent of San Pablo and then, in 1557 to the Biblioteca Capitular in the Cathedral of Seville, where it remains to this day. For the most part, it’s a rather melancholy story about the gradual loss of approximately half of the collection due to theft, neglect, and abuse before it was placed under the guardianship of the Fundación Capitular Colombina, newly created by the archdiocese of Seville and the Cathedral Chapter in 1991. The book concludes with five appendices of extremely useful primary documents, translated into English, including the Memoria by Juan Pérez, one of Hernando’s librarians and steward of the library after his death; Hernando’s will as well as a proposal to King Ferdinand for an expedition of circumnavigation; his appointment at the Casa de Contratación; and his Memorial al Emperador. Overall, this meticulously researched and very readable book makes an important contribution to early modern studies, as well as to the history of knowledge and information technology more broadly by reclaiming Hernando Colón as a pioneer in the early modern revolution of knowledge. Indeed, as the authors point out, Hernando’s collection ‘predates most of the works that are usually acknowledged as agents of these changes’ (194). As such, it will be indispensable reading for book historians, historians of science, and early modernists alike. Ralph Bauer University of Maryland bauerr@umd.edu © 2022 Ralph Bauer https://doi.org/10.1080/10609164.2022.2147729 Empire of eloquence: the classical rhetorical tradition in colonial Latin America and the Iberian world, by Stuart M. McManus, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University, 2021, 300 pp. (ISBN 9781108821735) Early modern historians who work at the largest geographical scales often gravitate toward studies of imperial administration with its visible structures of power, and toward world systems with their hidden economic substructures. But intellectual historians also ply these waters, reconstructing global communities of readers and writers—countless individuals unknown to each other in person, but bound together by a shared experience of the written word. Empire of eloquence is an intellectual history of this kind, a study of widely scattered Spanish and Portuguese colonial environments connected by a culture of formal rhetoric. Addressing four continents and more than three centuries, the book is of necessity somewhat selective and idiosyncratic, but it is at the same time deeply impressive. McManus focuses on several modes of formal speech that were shared throughout the Iberian world: sermons, panegyrics, stylized debates, and a range of performances that he COLONIAL LATIN AMERICAN REVIEW 621 considers epideictic—that is crafted more than anything to display oratorical virtuosity. Spread by missionaries, scholars, and civil administrators, these European genres evolved through their interaction with non-European ones, creating hybrid forms of imperial speech. Mastery of the required rhetorical techniques marked one’s membership and status in a global community. The geographical scope of the project and the range of cultural interactions make for interesting reading. McManus shows us that in India, Portuguese Jesuits from the age of Juan de Almeida studied not just the Konkani and Marathi languages themselves, but also a large body of epic literature and sacred oratory. They strove to present Christian theology through a lexicon that mirrored local sacred writings, and in styles borrowed from works like the Mahabharata and Ramayana. As with Matteo Ricci in China, these experiments produced both European missionaries steeped in Asian traditions and Asian converts fully conversant in European language and rhetoric. The book profiles transnational celebrities like Christian convert Hara Martinho, who was regarded as a ‘Japanese Cicero’ for his elegant command of the Latin language, and who traveled from Japan to Rome in 1585 to receive a ceremonial grant of Roman citizenship. McManus reminds us that Jesuits were equally interested in reaching indios and Indians—that is, the peoples of the Americas and those of Asia. Through the career of António Vieira, famed scholar evangelist to Brazil, we see that the Jesuit project encompassed both Africa and the African diaspora. In Mexico, McManus explores ‘Indo-humanism’— the hybrid world of arts and letters that emerged among native elites educated in colonial institutions. Here the focus is on early collaborations between Franciscan and native Nahua intellectuals. This is just to name a few of the fascinating cases addressed by the book. Many aspects of Empire of eloquence are familiar and traditional. The selection of sources favors the kinds of political and religious writing that are the bread and butter of colonial historians. Like McManus, specialists on Church history have long explored the Iberian world through the records of missionary orders whose activities by definition transcended nationality; they too have focused on rhetoric and cultural hybridity. In this respect, Empire of eloquence falls within an established tradition. Jesuit sources loom large in this project, as well they should; and the book’s focus on state occasions, such as funerals and royal accessions, is also familiar. Unexpectedly, it is the rigor of McManus’s classicism that breaks new ground. The book’s title is quite accurate. This really is a close study of rhetoric in the technical sense of the word, and one which analyzes its sources in relation to the conventions of classical Latin and Renaissance-humanist oratory. It also explores the encounters among multiple classicisms that took place on cultural frontiers. McManus rejects the notion that the formal rhetoric of the age was simply exported from center to periphery. Instead, he argues for a centerless conception of Iberian rhetorical culture —one in which no single metropolis forged the conventions of the era. And yet, this exchange was not a symmetrical one. Both Crown and Church created the structures for these intellectual encounters. Much of the book treats writing by Jesuit scholar-missionaries who adapted classical rhetorical techniques. The influence of the 1599 Ratio studiorum (the official description of Jesuit pedagogy) is reflected throughout the book, suggesting that many influences did indeed radiate from an Iberian center. Following the example of Benedict Anderson, historians of colonial societies have asked how ‘imagined communities’ of readers have evolved into concrete political communities. Latin Americanists in this tradition, most notably David Brading, see in eighteenth-century arts and letters a point of origin for creole identity, revolutionary sentiments, and national citizenship. Some parts of Empire of eloquence relate to this line of argument (particularly the treatment of Mexican patriot-scholar Juan Gregorio de Campos), but the book’s main agenda is to understand colonial Hispanophone communities on their own terms—not as 622 BOOK REVIEWS precursors to national citizenries, but as the culmination of Iberian cosmopolitanism. And though the book resembles many studies of print culture, its special emphasis on genres rooted in performance strives toward a history of the spoken word. McManus’s attempt to distinguish oratorical texts from other writings is not without complications, and some Hispanists may be puzzled over where to draw the line. After all, much (if not most) of the era’s writing either anticipated or memorialized the spoken word. Both the depth and the breadth of this project are impressive. And though Spanish South America and Portuguese Africa receive less attention than readers might wish, one can scarcely fault the author, whose project is already so vast and complex. The book is built upon extensive research in Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin sources found in print and manuscript collections in ten different countries. In the fullness of time, the questions raised by McManus can (and undoubtedly will) be applied to far more kinds of sources and far more historical cases. In the meantime, this is a book well worth reading. Sean F. McEnroe Southern Oregon University mcenroes@sou.edu © 2022 Sean F. McEnroe https://doi.org/10.1080/10609164.2022.2147730 Indigenous life after the conquest: the De la Cruz family papers of colonial Mexico, by Caterina Pizzigoni and Camilla Townsend, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021, 184 pp. (ISBN 9780271089201) For decades, scholars studying the colonial past have engaged Indigenous records and reaped the benefits of their insights. From last wills and testaments to religious tracts to mundane documents, Indigenous-authored texts provide one of the best opportunities to hear Indigenous voices and allow them a say when constructing the historical narrative. Here, Pizzigoni and Townsend reveal in new ways what the De la Cruz family of the Toluca Valley has to say regarding life in colonial Mexico through their own records. Largely composed in Nahuatl by Nahuas and mostly intended for Nahua eyes, the De la Cruz papers provide an uncommon glimpse into what items of everyday life the family considered important enough to record and preserve. Thus, the work of Pizzigoni and Townsend in analyzing and translating portions of the papers is an important contribution and one that would be welcome to scholars and their classrooms. The book’s organization appeals to both the philologist and general reader. An informative introduction provides all the context, insight, and analysis necessary to transform the De la Cruz documents from what may seem as ordinary, mundane records into lively, even outspoken, fountains of insights into the life of an Indigenous family and their community of Tepemaxalco overall. Following the introduction, the authors provide English translations of five documents representing a portion of the De la Cruz records. The first is a book that don Pedro de la Cruz began in 1647 and his descendants continued, with the final entry appearing in 1842. Portrayed here in both the original Nahuatl and Spanish with English translations, the book itself is uncommon, being somewhat of an eclectic mix of communal financial records and entries more typically seen in annals. Pizzigoni and Townsend illustrate the