It is a pleasure to acknowledge their contributions here. Richard Kagan, of The Johns Hopkins University, directed the original doctoral thesis and continued to support the project long after his formal obligations to it had expired. From the first, William A. Christian, Jr. was a perceptive and enthusiastic reader of the manuscript, and his anthropological caveats have provided a welcome alternate point of view. Two other readers, William Monter and Philip Benedict, gave me especially valuable criticism and convinced me of the necessity of returning to the archives to study conquenses ' pious bequests. Jodi Bilinkoff, William Callahan, Carlos Eire, Paul Freedman, and J. B. Owens.
Few books are better than their sources.
Towards the end of the doctoral phase of my investigation, I had research assistance from A. Manuel Pinedo, who also introduced me to several of the province's religious festivals and took several of the photographs that appear in this book. Much of the research was funded by the Fulbright Hays Program and a graduate fellowship from the Johns Hopkins University. Yet, without the year's release from teaching that this grant provided and the generous financial cooperation of William Paterson College, I doubt that I would have been able to pull together the different strands of investigation that make up this study. Two individuals who were involved with my formation as a historian and a Hispanist have not lived to see the completion of this book. Long after the change in his political fortune released him from teaching American undergraduates for a living, he continued to take a keen interest in my progress towards fulfilling his prophecy.