Religion in New Spain presents an overview of the history of colonial religious culture and encompasses aspects of religion in the many regions of New Spain. In reading these essays, it is clear the Spanish conquest was not the end-all of indigenous culture, that the Virgin of Guadalupe was a myth-in-the-making by locals as well as foreigners, that nuns and priests had real lives, and that the institutional colonial church, even post-Trent, was seldom if ever above or beyond political or economic influence. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole have divided the presentations into seven parts that represent general categories spanning the colonial era: "Encounters, Accommodation, and Outright Idolatry"; "Native Sexuality and Christian Morality"; "Believing in Miracles: Taking the Veil and New Realities"; "Guardian of the Christian Society: The Holy Office of the Inquisition--Racism, Judaizing, and Gambling"; "Music and Martyrdom on the Northern Frontier"; and "Tangential Christianity on Other Frontiers: Business and Politics as Usual." Sacred space can be anywhere and might not be bound by walls and ceilings. As the authors of these essays show, religion is often an attempt to reconcile the mysterious and unmanageable forces of nature, such as storms, droughts, floods, infestations of pests, epidemic diseases, and sicknesses; it is an attempt to control the uncontrollable.

The Church in Colonial Latin America is a collection of essays that include classic articles and pieces based on more modern research. Containing essays that explore the Catholic Church's active social and political influence, this volume provides the background necessary for students to grasp the importance of the Catholic Church in Latin America. This text also presents a comprehensive, analytic, and descriptive history of the Church and its development during the colonial period. From the evangelization of the New World by Spanish missionaries to the active influence of the Catholic Church on Latin American culture, this book offers a complete picture of the Church in colonial Latin America. The Church in Colonial Latin America is ideal for courses in the colonial period in Latin American history, as well as courses in religion, church history, and missionary history.

Mexico's churches and conventos display a unique blend of European and native styles. Missionary Mendicant friars arrived in New Spain shortly after Cortes's conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521 and immediately related their own European architectural and visual arts styles to the tastes and expectations of native Indians. Right from the beginning the friars conceived of conventos as a special architectural theater in which to carry out their proselytizing. Over four hundred conventos were established in Mexico between 1526 and 1600, and more still in New Mexico in the century following, all built and decorated by native Indian artisans who became masters of European techniques and styles even as they added their own influence. The author argues that these magnificent sixteenth and seventeenth-century structures are as much part of the artistic patrimony of American Indians as their pre-Conquest temples, pyramids, and kivas. Mexican Indians, in fact, adapted European motifs to their own pictorial traditions and thus made a unique contribution to the worldwide spread of the Italian Renaissance. The author brings a wealth of knowledge of medieval and Renaissance European history, philosophy, theology, art, and architecture to bear on colonial Mexico at the same time as he focuses on indigenous contributions to the colonial enterprise. This ground-breaking study enriches our understanding of the colonial process and the reciprocal relationship between European friars and native artisans.

The description for this book, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, will be forthcoming.

Argues that laywomen's interactions with gendered theology, Catholic rituals, and church institutions significantly shaped colonial Mexico's religious culture.

Examines how the Spanish monarchy managed an empire of unprecedented linguistic diversity, making only sporadic efforts to propagate Spanish during the sixteenth century. Challenges the assumption that the pervasiveness of the Spanish language resulted from deliberate linguistic colonization.

Forbidden Passages is the first book to document and evaluate the impact of Moriscos—Christian converts from Islam—in the early modern Americas, and how their presence challenged notions of what it meant to be Spanish as the Atlantic empire expanded.