Building upon Dr Crossley's 2011 book ('Hernando de los Ríos Coronel and the Spanish Philippines in the Golden Age') this new work further expands our understanding of the Spanish Philippines by looking at Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas and his son Luis, successive governors from 1589. Drawing upon a rich selection of documents from the official Spanish archives (principally the Archivo General de Indias, Seville) and earlier histories, the book also utilizes an unpublished 628 page manuscript in the Lilly Library at Indiana University to provide many details not available elsewhere. In so doing the book reveals the complex situation that existed in the Philippines and how the two governors (and the people around them) threw out, and responded to, challenges from a variety of different cultures. Born into a rich family in north-western Spain about 1539, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas had a distinguished career in Spain before being selected in 1588, to become the new governor of the Philippines. A devout Christian intent on converting the new country in which he found himself, Dasmariñas epitomised the Spanish state's increasing emphasis on its missionary role. He departed Spain with clear instructions from the king, which had been drawn up in response to requests from the Philippines, asking for a better governor and one of higher moral standards than they had previously enjoyed. From the evidence found in his sources, John Newsome Crossley argues that Dasmariñas largely measured up to these requirements. Killed in an attempt to capture the fort at Ternate in the Moluccas in 1593, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was succeeded by his son Luis. After being replaced himself as governor in 1596, Luis remained in the Philippines until his death in the Chinese rebellion of 1603 in Manila. In revealing the story of the two Dasmariñas governors, this book further illuminates the history of the Spanish Philippines and its relationship both with the wider Spanish empire, and the regional powers including China, Japan, Siam and Cambodia.

In An Inculturation Model of the Catholic Marriage Ritual, David William Antonio presents a model of how the Catholic Ritual of Marriage may be adapted to the language, culture and traditions of a particular people, specifically, the ilocanos of Northern Luzon in the Philippines. Vatican II called for the revision and adaptation of the rite of marriage, exhorting local churches to develop their own rites suited to their people's particular customs and traditions. The work of preparing a rite of marriage for a particular region cannot be limited to merely translating the typical edition. There has to be a thorough examination of both the editio typica and the people's religious and cultural traditions, the socio-economic and political realities that confront them, attending to the positive values expressed therein. Only a dialogical process such as this will guarantee a liturgy that is faithful to the Christian tradition and meaningful to a given people. An Inculturation Model of the Catholic Marriage Ritual will serve as a model for people of other cultures who have to do similar liturgical preparation and will be important especially to churches whose membership includes people who experienced colonization but never lost the riches of their own cultures in the blending of cultures and beliefs that followed.

In this book, Michael D. Torre makes Marín-Sola's articles available in English for the first time. The articles are preceded by an introduction on Marín-Sola and followed by a conclusion that traces the reception of his thought within the Catholic theological community. In Torre's afterword, he defends Marín-Sola's position as substantively the same as that of Aquinas.

Over the past few decades, a growing number of studies have highlighted the importance of the ‘School of Salamanca’ for the emergence of colonial normative regimes and the formation of a language of normativity on a global scale. According to this influential account, American and Asian actors usually appear as passive recipients of normative knowledge produced in Europe. This book proposes a different perspective and shows, through a knowledge historical approach and several case studies, that the School of Salamanca has to be considered both an epistemic community and a community of practice that cannot be fixed to any individual place. Instead, the School of Salamanca encompassed a variety of different sites and actors throughout the world and thus represents a case of global knowledge production. Contributors are: Adriana Álvarez, Virginia Aspe, Marya Camacho, Natalie Cobo, Thomas Duve, José Luis Egío, Dolors Folch, Enrique González González, Lidia Lanza, Esteban Llamosas, Osvaldo R. Moutin, and Marco Toste.