It has long been accepted, at least implicitly, by most historians that the patranato real as found in colonial Latin America was an extension and heightening of the right of patronage found in the Kingdom of Granada. Although the royal control of the church in the Indies has been studied in depth, there has been no systematic study of the relationship between the patronato of Granada and that of the Americas.
Antonio Garrido Aranda has attempted to remedy this lack in this monograph, a published version of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Córdoba in 1975. Furthermore, because the church in both areas had to evangelize non-Christian peoples, he has attempted to discover any link in mission methods toward the moriscos on the one hand and the Indians on the other. He concludes that there was a definite organizational connection between the two churches, especially with regard to the provision of benefices to criollos, the use of competitive examinations for certain canonries, and the use of bienes habices (pre-or non-Christian pious funds) to support the church. With regard to evangelization, he can find parallels in the mission methods, but no direct connection.
Garrido Aranda has performed a service in both his positive and negative demonstrations. Unfortunately, his book suffers all the traditional defects of doctoral dissertations. It is written in a pedestrian style; the arrangement of topics is confused and confusing; facts and citations are amassed uncritically and without analysis. As a result, the work is far longer than necessary and is filled with numerous lengthy digressions. His use of the term morisco, which he defines somewhat inaccurately in the glossary, is ambiguous. To refer to Pedro de Alcalá (p. 115) as a morisco converso complicates matters still more. Why he finds it surprising that there were parallels between mission methods in Granada and those in the Indies (p. 255) is hard to say.
The book has an attractive format and interesting illustrations. The appendix of documents is good, as are the glossary, bibliography, and index. All in all, this is a potentially valuable work marred by poor organization and undigested data.
