I continue to be impressed by the wealth of unknown sources that scholars find in archives. This case is no different. Written approximately 430 years ago, the work has barely been touched in the intervening years. Justifiably, Stafford Poole and John Schwaller spend the first 50 pages examining and contextualizing the Directory. On its own, the manuscript merits publication. The wealth of knowledge that Poole and Schwaller add to the material makes it all the more valuable.

In the introduction, Poole focuses on the content of the source, stating that it is, “a summary of the attitudes and details about the practicalities of sixteenth-century life in the provinces that are not easily found elsewhere, with the added value of combining them in one place” (3). He argues that it provides a window into how the Catholic Church in New Spain viewed its own morality and worked to apply those morals to the emerging colonial culture. One of the great historians of religion in New Spain of our time, Poole provides an introduction that also serves as an excellent walk through much of the work he has conducted over the course of his career. As an author and translator, he has covered Pedro Moya de Contreras, Juan de Ovando, Bartolomé de Las Casas, repartimientos, the ordination of natives, the Third Mexican Provincial Council, and many other topics. All of these topics converge in the contents of the Directory. Few historians could have analyzed and contextualized the material as well as Poole does. In his consideration, he moves beyond what was written to demonstrate how it connected into the broader discourse of the period.

As much as the introduction shows readers why the manuscript is important to us today, Schwaller's chapter “Mexico in 1585” takes us to the year it was written. As he points out, 1585 was an auspicious year for the Catholic Church in New Spain. Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras, who became viceroy in 1584, was the most powerful person in the colony. In 1585, there was a lull in the continuous outbreaks of disease that ravaged the indigenous populations, and the Church, under the direction of Moya de Contreras, convened the Third Provincial Council of Mexico. The Directory was one of the many manuscripts produced by this effort. Although the Church clearly possessed a lot of power in this moment, Schwaller shows how nuance and knowledge of the interconnectedness of the various political offices, economic groups, and other interested parties are crucial to understanding how things happen in society even when considering a manuscript focused on a central element of the Church.

The Directory is all that Poole and Schwaller make it out to be, and so much more. This is a source that will be mined for information for decades and centuries to come. My only real complaint about the book is its formatting, rather than its content. In the translation of the manuscript, originally in Spanish with Latin quotes, Poole places the Latin quotes in italics and leaves them in the body of the text, placing the English translation of the Latin in the footnotes. This allows readers to see the use of the Latin; however, I would have preferred the positioning of the Latin to English translations flipped—with the original Latin in the footnotes and the English translation in italics. Overall, this is a tiny inconvenience in a fantastic book. I look forward to seeing how historians will use the material.