Cheryl Claassen and Laura Ammon have produced a wonderful encyclopedia with an introductory study about religion in New Spain during the first century of colonization. The work is accessible, divided into 118 alphabetically organized entries that are each broken into sections for fifteenth-century Mexico, fifteenth-century Spain, and sixteenth-century Mexico. The topics chosen include the more obvious (such as human sacrifice and omens), but some of the most exciting entries discuss less predictable themes (such as the color blue or bees).
Though many readers may want to immediately turn to the reference section, they would miss the skillful narrative summary of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as a thoughtful analysis of the historiography on religion in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Mexico and Spain. For instance, Claassen and Ammon are influenced by David Chidester's definition of religion as a sphere of “the transcendent, the sacred, the ultimate,” through which humans attempt...
