In a relatively brief span of time, beginning about 1568, the Catholic Reformation arrived in the Spanish dependencies. The convergence of governmental policy and church reform, inaugurated by the important but relatively unstudied Juan de Ovando, brought to the Spanish New World the Inquisition, the Jesuits, and a series of reforming bishops, typified by Pedro Moya de Contreras in Mexico and Toribio de Mogrovejo in Lima. One of the most important instruments of reform and the expansion of patronal rights was the provincial council, which was intended to do for the local church what Trent had done for the universal church. In recent years, more attention has been paid to this overall move toward reform, but it is still a fertile field for the researcher.
In this volume Father Juan Guillermo Durán has published the catechism of the Third Provincial Council of Lima (1582-83) together with its supporting documentation, such as the confesionario for pastors of Indian parishes. He has also provided an introduction in the form of a detailed and fascinating history of the council. In so doing, he has performed a valuable service and made available in one volume a mine of intriguing information about the difficulties of the council, the conflicting and occasionally extravagant behavior of its bishops, the missionary methods used by the council, and its overall attitude toward the native population.
This study was originally written as a doctoral dissertation for the Catholic University of Argentina. Though this is apparent in many ways, e.g., a tendency toward repetition and an overwhelming wealth of detail and citations, it has in general made a happy transition to book form. It makes heavy reading but will reward the researcher who is interested in the Counter-Reformation in the New World.
