4 - Cultivating the Christian Republic: The New Kingdom of Granada and the Archbishop Zapata de Cárdenas

Summary

Chapter four turns its attention to the Americas, to observe how the foundational statutes of Christian citizenship made their way into the legislation of colonial synods and councils. To guide the exploration of this corpus, the chapter follows the Archbishop Luis Zapata de Cárdenas of Santafé (1573-1590). A Franciscan with experience in Spain’s ethnically diverse interior frontier, once arrived in Santafé, Zapata developed an innovative program for the Christian evangelization of the native communities. Conducting a deep dive into the conceptual underpinnings of policies in Santafé and across the Indies, chapter four includes a horizontal analysis of synodal and conciliar reform in the subsequent decades. This chapter highlights how core values of the Spanish church – such as Christian education, the inculcation of policía, and the preservation of “good customs” – were under a continual legislative revision that involved actors on both sides of the Atlantic, an ongoing imperial legal revolution whose local changes were the product an era of global transformation.