Building colonial cities of God

About this book

This study tracks New Spain's mendicant orders past their so-called golden age of missions into the ensuing centuries and demonstrates that they had equally crucial roles in what the book terms the 'spiritual consolidation' of cities. Beginning in the late 16th century, cities became home to the majority of friars and to the orders' wealthiest houses, and mendicants became deeply embedded in urban social and cultural life, each order bringing to this work a distinct identity that informed people's beliefs and shaped variations in the practice of Catholicism.