From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)
"Now there is at last a big, reliable study of the Spanish attitudes toward death and dying in the time of the Counter-Reformation....a thorough and gripping piece of scholarship....Ranging freely over various classes and cultural facts of the Sixteenth Century, it has a broad scope and a lot of interesting detail."   Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance"...an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking, comprising no less than three books in one....an important, provocative, readable, and thoroughly enjoyable book."   Richard L. Kagan, Johns Hopkins University, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"...Eire has produced an impressive and important book....its examination of a vast array of primary sources, it integration of insights from literature, cultural anthropology, theology, and other disciplines, and its well-written, witty prose succeeds wonderfully in demonstrating how the discource of the `good death' articulated and affirmed Catholic doctrine and practice in a highly polemical age."   American Historical Review"...this is a perceptive and evocative study....[it] presents a vivid, dramatic picture of the centrality of death in the religion and culture of early modern Spain....the book makes an original and imaginative contribution to the religious and social history of early modern Spain."   Canadian Journal of History"Eire's extensive research, his feel for the telling anecdote, and his congenial prose persona make this book informative and entertaining."   Carlos Slade, The Journal of Religion