Francisco Solano (1549-1610), a Spanish-born Franciscan friar, spent roughly half of his religious life in the Viceroyalty of Peru, where he became known as a zealous preacher, tireless missionary, a friar devoted to prayer and penance, and a reputed wonderworker. Among the many exemplary missionaries of the early modern Catholic world, he acquired an extraordinary reputation for sanctity in the decades following his death. Yet despite being one of the earliest officially promoted canonization causes from the Americas, and despite an initially auspicious process, his canonization advanced only slowly through a long and complex path.
Canonizing Francisco Solano offers the first full-length study in English of Solano's canonization process and uses his case to illuminate the making of sainthood in the Spanish Empire. Moving beyond official papal documents and conventional hagiographic narratives, the book draws on archival research in Rome, Madrid, Seville, and Lima to examine how sanctity was not only recognized but also debated, promoted, delayed, and reshaped by competing interests and institutional priorities.
The book demonstrates how the slow progress of Solano's cause was shaped by changing Roman procedures after the Council of Trent, tensions within the Franciscan world, competition with other causes such as that of Rosa de Lima, and the political priorities of the papacy, the Spanish monarchy, and colonial elites. In this account, canonization appears not merely as a devotional or theological process, but also as a field of negotiation in which papal authority, imperial ambition, religious orders, and local aspirations all played a role.
Solano's case opens a new perspective on colonial Peru, early modern Rome, and the wider Catholic world, while offering a broader contribution to the history of sanctity, canonization, and the relationship between religion and power in the early Americas.
