In the course of the long struggle between Mexican conservatives and liberals, the issue of the fate of the church was the first preoccupation of both parties. The Liberal president, Don Benito Juárez, had cut the Gordian knot by seizing the church's landed wealth. Thereafter, from 1859 to 1867, Mexico's conservatives bent their efforts to the repeal of Juárez's Reform Laws. Liberals staked their future upon their maintenance.

In April 1864, before quitting Europe for Mexico, Maximilian and his consort, Empress Charlotte, had visited Rome. That visit excited a great deal of speculation in the diplomatic world because it was thought that Maximilian might attempt to lay the foundation for a concordat through personal negotiation. Instead, the new sovereign merely asked the Pope to send a nuncio to Mexico to open negotiations as soon as possible. He had also taken the occasion to establish a Mexican Legation at the Vatican and to name Ignacio Aguilar as his envoy at that court.

The Consolidation (secularization of the pious funds of church organizations) of 1804 cannot be viewed as an isolated historical phenomenon but rather must be examined in the light of a long hallowed tradition of enmity on the part of the Spanish crown to the church's economic power, and, more immediate to the 1804 decree, as part of the Bourbon policy of regalism. Legislation aimed at controlling the sale of the holdings of the church has many precedents in Spanish legal history. In 1523 the Cortes of Valladolid asked the king, Don Carlos and his mother, the queen, Doña Juana,

Within recent years, Spanish American historical studies have gained in depth and understanding. One area which has witnessed relatively little progress, however, is the clergy. While European scholars have been busy in the investigation of many aspects of the life and work of the clergy, Latin Americanists have done little or nothing. It is a pleasure to be able to present a study on the pastors of the Lima archdiocese in an effort to help fill an evident need.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the economic position of the church in New Spain appeared to be secure and prosperous. Although the crown had restricted many of the financial and legal prerogatives of the church in the second half of this century, it had not restricted the basic right of the church to hold property or invest its money in mortgages or loans to lay citizens or to the government. On the contrary, in order to solve its own financial problems, the crown had increasingly relied upon loans from corporations such as the Tribunales de Minería, Consulado, and the church itself. The Minería and Consulado had provided the bulk of such loans after 1780, but these corporations had, in turn, sought loans from ecclesiastical institutions in order to fulfill their promises to the crown. Nunneries in New Spain had made considerable contributions to these loans which appeared as safe investments for these communities. Otherwise, the increasing political and financial entanglements of the mother country in Europe at the end of the century did not mean much for the nunneries. Professions continued to take place, a few new convents were founded prior to 1810, and up to 1805 loans and pious funds continued to be raised and invested in the traditional manner.

During the century between 1765 and 1865, the double impact of the industrial and agricultural revolutions brought profound change to rural society in Europe and North America. In England, the enclosure movement and the innovations associated with “ high farming ” culminated in the destruction of the English peasantry and the growth of a productive rural capitalism that underlay Victorian industrial development. On the continent new crop rotations and improved animals increased output while political revolution resulted in drastic changes in European agrarian structure and in the lives of lord and peasant. In North America (and in such regions as Australia and New Zealand) wholly new rural societies were created as population grew and rail and steam began to put these peripheral zones within reach of the industrial world.

After receiving official permission on September 13, 1969 “ to do research in the nunciature's archives,” I was allowed to spend about forty days during the months of May and June, 1970, in the rich collection of materials in this nunciature, situated in the Lagoinha district of Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro. It was a tantalizing situation for me as a historian, since the time limit and the prohibition against microfilming enabled me only to glance at much of the documentation, without being able to copy it or even to take copious notes. Perhaps as a result of my interest in these papers, it has been determined by the papal Secretary of State to send all these nunciature documents up to the reign of Pius XII to the Vatican Archive before the end of 1970. There, I was assured, all facilities would be given to scholars to work in this material. The collection when I saw it was intact, containing original materials from 1808 to the present, with apparently hardly a document missing, except for a few letters on the Religious Question of 1873-76, sent to Rome some time after these dates. Apparently very little else of the original papers had been forwarded to Rome during all those years, although copious reports in Italian were sent, of course, to Rome.