Religion: Saint of Gottarendura?

The Spanish town of Avila (pop. 24,400) was in an uproar last week. "Sacrilegious!" muttered the patrons of the coffee houses on the Plaza de Santa Teresa. "Blundering lie!" thundered the head of the tourist committee. Mayor Jose Maria Martis wrote furious letters to the Bishop of Salamanca, the Cardinal Primate of Spain, the Superior General of the Discalced Carmelites in Rome and the Spanish government. He, and almost everyone else in Avila, wanted a book suppressed and its author reprimanded— if not shot at dawn.

The book in question was Volume One of a scholarly biography of the great 16th Century...