Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition, 1536-1543

Richard E. Greenleaf was a historian of colonial Mexico, and this Academy of American Franciscan History book is his scholarly study of the apostolic inquisition held by Bishop Juan de Zumarraga from 1536 to 1543, based on the surviving trial records, including the prosecutions of Nahua religious specialists. Its strength is that Greenleaf worked directly from the original trial documentation, and the book's own account is honest about the nature of that evidence, noting the records are themselves hostile documents made to secure convictions rather than neutral testimony. Its limit is that inquisitorial records reflect the prosecuting institution's framing of events, so a claim about the accused's own beliefs and practice, as against the charges against them, needs that caution applied directly.