By 1800 the government of the viceroyalty in New Spain had already amassed a voluminous debt that had been contracted essentially to pay for war expenses of monarchy and empire. This debt was in good measure the result of loans collected among Mexican elites, merchants, miners, landowners, and rentiers, but the royal administration had also garnered much financial support from the church, which constituted a multifaceted array of institutions with an unparalleled ideological and economic influence on colonial society. Indeed, a close analysis of revenues collected by the viceregal administration from 1780 to 1800 reveals that the Catholic Church was perhaps the most important individual supplier of funds to the colonial treasury and hence to the monarchy for its war efforts. These included transfers to the state of substantial portions of tithes, donations, and direct loans from cathedral chapters, monasteries, convents, bishoprics, and pious foundations throughout the viceroyalty.