The tradition of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico is one of history's greatest examples of the fusion of religious devotion and national identity. For more than three centuries it has united a people who have often been divided. Given the universality of the devotion, not just in Mexico but throughout the Catholic world, it is surprising to know that from the beginning the story of the Virgin Mary's appearances to the neophyte Indian Juan Diego has been the object of bitter controversy. In the late nineteenth century this centered on the authenticity of the tradition, sparked in part by the...
The tradition of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico is one of history's greatest examples of the fusion of religious devotion and national identity. For ...
The foundation legend of the Mexican devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most appealing and beloved of all religious stories. In this volume, editors Barry D. Sell, Louise M. Burkhart, and Stafford Poole present the only known colonial Nahuatl-language dramas based on the Virgin of Guadalupe story: the "Dialogue of the Apparition of the Virgin Saint Mary of Guadalupe," an anonymous work from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, and "The Mexican Portent," authored by creole priest Joseph Perez de la Fuente in the early eighteenth century. The plays, never before...
The foundation legend of the Mexican devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most appealing and beloved of all religious stories. In this v...
Bartolome de Las Casas championed the rights of the Indians of Mexico and Central America, disputing a widely held belief that they were beasts to be enslaved. In a dramatic debate in 1550 with Juan Gines de Sepulveda, Las Casas argued vehemently before a royal commission in Valladolid that the native inhabitants should be viewed as fellow human beings, artistically and mechanically adroit, and capable of learning when properly taught. In Defense of the Indians, Las Casas's classic treatise on the humanity of native peoples, had far-reaching implications for the policies adopted by both the...
Bartolome de Las Casas championed the rights of the Indians of Mexico and Central America, disputing a widely held belief that they were beasts to be ...
A definitive portrait of a Spanish cleric and royalist who fundamentally shaped New Spain, updated in light of newly available sources For a brief few years in the sixteenth century, Pedro Moya de Contreras was the most powerful man in the New World. A church official and loyal royalist, he came to Mexico in 1571 to establish the Inquisition and later became archbishop and viceroy for the region. This new edition of Stafford Poole's definitive portrait of Moya de Contreras, first published in 1971, now offers an expanded understanding of this enigmatic figure's influence on the development of...
A definitive portrait of a Spanish cleric and royalist who fundamentally shaped New Spain, updated in light of newly available sources For a brief few...
Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Spanish history, but it was his letrados--professional bureaucrats and ministers trained in law--who made his vast castilian empire possible. In "Juan de Ovando," Stafford Poole traces the life and career of a key minister in the king's government to explore the role that letrados played in Spanish society as they sought to displace the higher nobility in the administration through a system based upon merit.
Juan de Ovando was an industrious, discerning, and loyal servant, yet, like all letrados, he owed his position to royal favor. Ovando...
Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Spanish history, but it was his letrados--professional bureaucrats and ministers trained in law--wh...
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. The contributors reveal that Spanish conquest was not the end-all of indigenous culture and that the Virgin of Guadalupe was a myth-in-the-making by locals as well as foreigners. Furthermore, nuns and priests had real lives and the institutional colonial church was seldom if ever immune to political or economic influence. The essays, while varying in subject and content, validate the sheer pervasiveness and importance of religion in...
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...
A Spaniard originally from Italy, the polymath Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci (1702 1753), known as Boturini, traveled to New Spain in 1736. Becoming fascinated by the Mesoamerican cultures of the New World, he collected and copied native writings and learned Nahuatl, the language in which most of these documents were written. Boturini s incomparable collection confiscated, neglected, and dispersed after the Spanish crown condemned his intellectual pursuits became the basis of his "Idea of a New General History of North America." The volume, completed in 1746 and written almost entirely from...
A Spaniard originally from Italy, the polymath Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci (1702 1753), known as Boturini, traveled to New Spain in 1736. Becoming ...
