Brian Mac Cuarta SJ Henry Piers's Continental Travels, 1595-1598 (review)

Abstract

with others. The others (and ourselves) are in turn recognised as the unique centres of value that they are, whose good ought to be willed by us in our relation to them. This is evident in the teacher/student relationship discussed by Turner, in the treatment of patients by medical professionals discussed by O’Carroll, and the other interpersonal contexts noted in the papers by MacIntyre and Hederman. Insofar as this collection is inspired by the work of Masterson and offered in honour of him, it is appropriate that it ends with an autobiographical sketch. Masterson gives us an account of his philosophical work through the years, and in doing so he comes back to the notion of love and the relationship of one beloved to the other. This is quite fitting since the account of personal transcendence noted in the previous paragraph has it that the other person with whom we are in relation is a unique centre of value in which case the normative condition for any relation to another person is one of willing their good and not instrumentalising him or her for our own goods. That then entails that all interpersonal relationships must be characterised by love of the other as the unique good that the other is. Masterson touchingly relates this to his relationship with his wife and her passing. He explores how this love that he has (not had, for it is ongoing) is an abiding reality, despite the death of the beloved. This love is not just a memory of his beloved, nor is it illusory; rather it is a desire of the heart just as real in the absence of the beloved as in her presence. Masterson finishes by locating this experience of love in a loving God to Whom one belongs as beloved. This is an excellent volume and I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone interested in the issues treated therein. The papers were all diverse in the topics covered, but united in the common consideration of transcendence. One can read each paper individually, or one can read the whole volume from start to finish; either way there is no loss of intelligibility, and I commend O’Rourke for constructing the volume so that it can be read in either way. Ciphers of Transcendence treats us to a broad spectrum of views, all of which are worthy of contemporary philosophical treatment, and is a fine addition to the field. Dr Gaven Kerr lectures in Philosophy at St Patrick’s College Maynooth. His Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Studies • volume 109 • number 435 352 Autumn 2020: Book Reviews Brian Mac Cuarta SJ (ed.), Henry Piers’s Continental Travels, 1595–1598. Camden Fifth Series, 54 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2018), xiii, 238 pages. An overland journey from Ireland to Rome was a rare enough experience in 1595. Henry Piers’s initial expedition, with one travelling companion, was a three-month adventure enlivened by many cultural highlights, interspersed with occasional life-threatening episodes. It was certainly worth writing about, and the full text of his narrative, now published in a scholarly edition by Brian Mac Cuarta SJ, is well worth reading. Henry Piers embarked on the journey, almost on impulse it would seem, to accompany an English Catholic friend, Philip Draycott, who had decided to study for the priesthood at the English College in Rome. On arrival in the Holy City, after some uncertainty they were entertained as pilgrims at the college. Later, having formally converted to Catholicism, Henry was admitted as a lay member, on the basis of his English parentage. In comparison with the step-by-step account he gives of his journey, Henry Piers’s two-year sojourn as an Irish-born layman in the English College in Rome is dealt with quite briefly. His observations provide insights into the internal politics of the college at a time of upheaval, but the Roman section of his story concentrates mainly on the wider world of ecclesial Rome, allowing us to see the Renaissance city through the eyes of a recent convert to Catholicism. Even though mediated in...