This fascinating volume forms part of the Latin American Originals collection of Pennsylvania State University Press, a series dedicated to making translated primary source material accessible to scholars, students, and nonspecialists alike. In this regard, Martínez Baracs succeeds in providing essential context to the complex life of an Irish soldier, conspirator, poet, and theologian. Above all, William Lamport distinguished himself as a fierce critic of the Mexican Inquisition and its corrupt inquisitors. The materials analyzed in this volume center on a 17-year period (1642 to 1659), during which Lamport was held prisoner by the Holy Office.
Martínez Baracs provides an insightful 40-page introductory study that allows the reader to understand the contours of Lamport's political life, academic influences, and religious perspectives. Six documents in English, translated from Spanish and Latin, follow, with footnotes that reveal the marginal notations of the originals. The documents include a proposal for the liberation of Ireland, a call to insurrection for New Spain, and a religious proclamation, among others.
Scholars of religion and slavery will be especially interested in Document 5, Regium psalterium. This selection of 20 poems written as psalms denounces the oppression of Native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, among many other topics. Overall, the volume should appeal broadly to students and scholars of the early modern period, colonial Latin America, Atlantic history, the Irish diaspora, and Catholicism, and to anyone interested in early manifestations of anticolonial discourse.
