Magistrates of the Sacred

Book excerpt: This book is an extraordinarily rich account of the social, political, cultural, and religious relationships between parish priests and their parishioners in colonial Mexico. It thus explores a wide range of issues, from competing interpretations of religious dogma and beliefs, to questions of practical ethics and daily behavior, to the texture of social and authority relations in rural communities, to how all these things changed over time and over place, and in relation to reforms instigated by the state.