This book introduces a novel, cultural interpretation to the overall impact of the Catholic Reformation in Europe on the changing facets of the religious life in the indigenous communities of southern Mexico, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This is a study of the modes by which Spanish mendicant priests translated norms, standards and mores enforced by the Tridentine dogma into the far-removed contexts of the New World. Using a rich variety of both Spanish and Maya colonial sources it closely examines Dominican preaching, local cosmology, and the state of faith in the area, as well as the changing ritual practices that emerged within the Indian parish during this era.

Moreover, it vividly illustrates how the Indians adopted, transformed, or rebuffed the Catholic notions impressed upon them in the process of religious conversion.