“Gretchen Starr-LeBeau’s Seven Myths of the Spanish Inquisition provides an excellent introduction to Habsburg Spain’s most reviled and misunderstood institution. Drawn from archival sources and modern scholarship, this concise study presents the long and tortured history of the Spanish Inquisition in an accessible format for readers interested in the intersection of religion and jurisprudence. Addressing common misconceptions about the procedures, effectiveness, and reach of the Inquisition, this work argues convincingly for an updated assessment encompassing change over time and variations across Spain and its empire. Students of the early modern period will benefit from the volume’s logical organization, glossary of terms, and suggestions for further reading.” —Benjamin Ehlers, University of Georgia

An update of a popular work that takes on the myths of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, featuring a new afterword. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest reveals how the Spanish invasions in the Americas have been conceived and presented, misrepresented and misunderstood, in the five centuries since Columbus first crossed the Atlantic. This book is a unique and provocative synthesis of ideas and themes that were for generations debated or perpetuated without question in academic and popular circles. The 2003 edition became the foundation stone of a scholarly turn since called The New Conquest History. Each of the book's seven chapters describes one "myth," or one aspect of the Conquest that has been distorted or misrepresented, examines its roots, and explodes its fallacies and misconceptions. Using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, written in a scholarly but readable style, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest explains why Columbus did not set out to prove the world was round, the conquistadors were not soldiers, the native Americans did not take them for gods, Cortés did not have a unique vision of conquest procedure, and handfuls of vastly outnumbered Spaniards did not bring down great empires with stunning rapidity. Conquest realities were more complex--and far more fascinating--than conventional histories have related, and they featured a more diverse cast of protagonists-Spanish, Native American, and African. This updated edition of a key event in the history of the Americas critically examines the book's arguments, how they have held up, and why they prompted the rise of a New Conquest History.

In their efforts to convert indigenous peoples, Franciscan friars brought the Spanish Inquisition to early-sixteenth-century Mexico. Patricia Lopes Don now investigates these trials to offer an inside look at this brief but consequential episode of Spanish methods of colonization, providing a fresh interpretation of an early period that has remained too long understudied. Drawing on previously underutilized records of Inquisition proceedings, Don examines four of the most important trials of native leaders to uncover the Franciscans’ motivations for using the Inquisition and the indigenous response to it. She focuses on the consecutive impact of four trials—against nahualli Martín Ocelotl, an influential native priest; Andrés Mixcoatl, an advocate of open resistance to the Franciscans; Miguel Pochtecatl Tlaylotla, a guardian of native religious artifacts; and Don Carlos of Texcoco, a native chief burned at the stake for heresy. Don reveals the heart of Bishop Zumárraga’s methods of conducting the trials—including spectacular bonfires in which any native idols found in the possession of professed converts were destroyed. Don’s knowledge of the contemporary Spain that shaped the friars’ perspectives enables her to offer new understanding of the evolution of Franciscan attitudes toward evangelization. Bonfires of Culture reexamines important primary documents and offers a new perspective on a pivotal historical era.

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation is the story of one of the truly epochal events in world history -- and how it helped create the world we live in today

Genealogical Fictions examines how the state, church, Inquisition, and other institutions in colonial Mexico used the Spanish notion of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) over time and how the concept's enduring religious, genealogical, and gendered meanings came to shape the region's patriotic and racial ideologies.

This magisterial volume unveils Richard and Shirley Flint’s deep research into the Latin American and Spanish archives in an effort to track down the history of the participants who came north with the Coronado expedition in 1540. Through their investigation into thousands of legal cases, financial records, proofs of service, letters, journals, and other primary materials, they provide social and cultural documentation on the backgrounds of hundreds of individuals who made up the Coronado expedition and show that the expedition was the first phase of a three-phase effort to complete the Columbian project: to delineate a westward route to Asia from Spain.

Fourteen essays examine the impact of religion on the cultures and peoples of Latin America, from the beginning of the Spanish conquest to the twenty-first century, covering Catholicism, Protestantism, indigenous religious traditions, African-based religions, and Pentecostalism.

Truth in Many Tongues examines how the Spanish monarchy managed an empire of unprecedented linguistic diversity. Considering policies and strategies exerted within the Iberian Peninsula and the New World during the sixteenth century, this book challenges the assumption that the pervasiveness of the Spanish language resulted from deliberate linguistic colonization. Daniel I. Wasserman-Soler investigates the subtle and surprising ways that Spanish monarchs and churchmen thought about language. Drawing from inquisition reports and letters; royal and ecclesiastical correspondence; records of church assemblies, councils, and synods; and printed books in a variety of genres and languages, he shows that Church and Crown officials had no single, unified policy either for Castilian or for other languages. They restricted Arabic in some contexts but not in others. They advocated using Amerindian languages, though not in all cases. And they thought about language in ways that modern categories cannot explain: they were neither liberal nor conservative, neither tolerant nor intolerant. In fact, Wasserman-Soler argues, they did not think predominantly in terms of accommodation or assimilation, categories that are common in contemporary scholarship on religious missions. Rather, their actions reveal a highly practical mentality, as they considered each context carefully before deciding what would bring more souls into the Catholic Church. Based upon original sources from more than thirty libraries and archives in Spain, Italy, the United States, England, and Mexico, Truth in Many Tongues will fascinate students and scholars who specialize in early modern Spain, colonial Latin America, Christian-Muslim relations, and early modern Catholicism.

The arrival of Europeans in the New World in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, often neglected by historians of philosophy, is a crucial historical event that transformed modern thought. Skepticism and the New World: The Anthropological Argument and the Emergence of Modernity argues that the encounter between Europeans and the inhabitants of the New World challenges Europeans’ concept of a universal human nature and leads to new forms of skepticism. Contrasting a theological and political debate on the rights of indigenous peoples with the rights of conquest and “just war” of the Spanish, Danilo Marcondes examines their anthropology, exploring how the French saw the indigenous cultures of the New World and how they shaped their epistemology.

Providing a survey of colonial American history both regionally broad and "Atlantic" in coverage, Converging Worlds presents the most recent research in an accessible manner for undergraduate students. With chapters written by top-notch scholars, Converging Worlds is unique in providing not only a comprehensive chronological approach to colonial history with attention to thematic details, but a window into the relevant historiography. Each historian also selected several documents to accompany their chapter, found in the companion primary source reader. Converging Worlds: Communities and Cultures in Colonial America includes: timelines tailored for every chapter chapter summaries discussion questions lists of further reading, introducing students to specialist literature fifty illustrations. Key topics discussed include: French, Spanish, and Native American experiences regional areas such as the Midwest and Southwest religion including missions, witchcraft, and Protestants the experience of women and families. With its synthesis of both broad time periods and specific themes, Converging Worlds is ideal for students of the colonial period, and provides a fascinating glimpse into the diverse foundations of America. For additional information and classroom resources please visit the Converging Worlds companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415964999.