Don Vasco de Quiroga (1470-1565) was the first bishop of Michoacan in Western Mexico. Driven by the desire to convert the native Purhepecha-Chichimec peoples to a purified form of Christianity, free of the corruptions of European Catholicism, he sought to establish New World Edens in Michoacan by congregating the people into pueblo-hospital communities, where mendicant friars could more easily teach them the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and the values of Spanish culture.

In this broadly synthetic study, Bernardino Verastique explores Vasco de Quiroga's evangelizing project in...