Church Life between the Metropolitan and the Local

Parishes, Parishioners and Parish Priests in Seventeenth-Century Mexico

Magnus Lundberg.

Church Life between the Metropolitan and the Local is a study of parishes, parishioners and parish priests in central Mexico during the first half of the seventeenth century. Using a number of different genres found in archives and libraries on both sides of the Atlantic, the book gives a multifaceted picture of the parish life. It addresses metropolitan norms for the ministry as well as priestly and indigenous interpretations of the day-to-day life in the local church. Throughout the book particular emphasis is put on the interface between the indigenous parishioners and their parish priests, thus contributing to a closer study of the slow-moving processes of religious indoctrination and religious change in central Mexico a century or more after the Conquest.

Magnus Lundberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology, Uppsala University, Sweden. He is author of Unificación y Conflicto: La Gestión Episcopal de Alonso de Montúfar, Arzobispo de México, 1554-1572, Colegio de Michoacán, 2009.