Church and State in Bourbon Mexico

Description

This book describes virtually all aspects of religious life in a Mexican diocese in the eighteenth century. It covers the Franciscan missionary colleges, the new Oratory at San Miguel, new convents and sisterhoods, confraternities and popular religion, the composition and earnings of the secular clergy, conflicts in the cathedral chapter, and the involvement of the clergy in the 1810 Insurgency. A central issue is the conflicts between Church and state and between the culture of baroque Catholicism and enlightened despotism.

"The style of inquiry and the level of research established in Miners and Merchants are equally evident in Church and State, and as in his earlier works on Bourbon policies and practices, Brading approaches the rift between church and state in a multi-layered rather than linear fashion." Colonial Latin American Historical Review "Church and State, in short, is an instructive work that illuminates a variety of aspects of the Church, religious life, and the Church-State relations in late Bourbon Michoacan. ...all students of Spanish America in the late colonial period should read this informative final volume in Brading's trilogy on Bourbon New Spain." The Americas "In his intricate, superbly researched and highly persuasive study, Brading provides argument and data to help us understand why the efficiency-minded Bourbon state, no longer viewing the church as its mainstay of authority over society but rather as a lucrative source of funds for the treasury, ultimately eroded the bases of its colonial stability." Journal of Interdisciplinary History "Brading poses the tensions well, as he describes the differences between the devotional life encouraged by the religious orders and the secular clergy so closely tied with wealth and power." Christian Sociologist Newsletter "...a coherent and complimentary history of the Mexican church in a empire at first determinedly rational and finally driven to desperation." Hugh M. Hamill, Canadian Jrnl of Latin Anerica & Caribbean Studies