The Medieval Heritage of Mexico

The Medieval Heritage of Mexico is the result of more than thirty years' intensive research. This work examines, more thoroughly than any other, the medieval legacy that influences life in Spanish-speaking North America to the present day. Focusing on the period from 1517—the expedition of Hernandez de Cordoba—to the middle of the seventeenth century, Weckmann describes how explorers, administrators, judges, and clergy introduced to the New World a culture that was essentially medieval. This culture was, in some respects, a flowering—a rebirth, even—of the ideals and institutions of medieval Europe, at a time when Europe itself was in the throes of the religious, political, and cultural upheavals of the early modern period. That the transplanted culture differentiated itself from that of Spain is due to the resistance of the indigenous cultures of Mexico.