The Inquisition in New Spain, like other colonial Spanish institutions, was not as monolithic or effective as some past histories, legends, and myths would have us believe. This is perhaps the most salient thread running through Martin Austin Nesvig's innovative study of inquisitors, censors, and censorship from the establishment of the Spanish colony in the 1520s to 1640, the watershed year when Spain lost Portugal and the Mexican Holy Office had reached a low point in activity, solvency, and integrity.

The book is organized in three parts, titled “Theories of Inquisitional Authority,” “Practice of Censure in Mexico,” and “Censors and Their World,” with the first comprised of three challenging, yet well-crafted chapters that lay the contextual groundwork for the detailed study of inquisition officials and censorship that follows. Chapter 1 briefly outlines the development of canon law and the theological response to heresy since early patristic times, with particular emphasis on papal activity and the role of Dominican inquisitors in Aragon and other Spanish dominions. The second and third chapters offer an excellent comparative analysis of the late medieval and early modern treatises on inquisitional practice, theology, and law that guided inquisitors and censors in New Spain. Although the need for censorship to combat heresy was commonly acknowledged, ideological fault lines quickly emerged as Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit writers often differed on matters of jurisdiction, authority, disputation, training, culpability, the gravity of offenses, and the consideration of individual comprehension, will, and conscience. Nesvig goes on to demonstrate how these issues and differences played out with specific examples drawn from the rich documentation left by the Mexican tribunal.

These fault lines become even more apparent in the second part of the book, as Nesvig traces the development of inquisitional censure and censorship in New Spain. Chapter 4 emphasizes the pervasive influence of Salamanca and the San Esteban convent on the early Dominicans in Mexico, whose rigid, conservative theological perspective often clashed with the more reform-minded, humanist, or pragmatic evangelical concerns of Franciscans, Augustinians, and Jesuits, or with the local interests of criollo (American-born) elites. The fifth chapter examines the rise of censorial activity in the various apostolic, episcopal, and mendicant-led inquisitions that intermittently operated in the decades before the Mexican tribunal was formally established in 1571. Although the use of advisors or consultants was relatively rare, expert testimonies began to appear during the tenure of the Dominican archbishop-inquisitor, Alonso de Montúfar, a former censor himself. Montúfar delegated a group of theologians and lawyers to administer several high profile cases aimed at censuring the speech or writings of Franciscan and Augustinian rivals and other political adversaries in an effort to implement Tridentine decrees, limit mendicant authority, and consolidate secular ecclesiastical control. Nesvig's analysis of the opinions generated in these and other diocesan cases reveals the dynamic range of theological argumentation and debate among the mendicant orders at this time, as well as the ways in which such arguments and reviews often served as vehicles for promoting various interests and agendas.

In chapters 6 and 7, we see that these contentious divisions did not diminish after the arrival of the Mexican tribunal with its new specialized professional staff. Inquisitors, now trained in canon law rather than theology, were advised on doctrinal matters by a formal group of theologian-censors drawn from university and college faculty, the religious orders, and the secular clergy, though their opinions no longer were binding in adjudication and sentencing. Censorial activity greatly increased during the first three decades as inquisitors focused on eliminating Indian language translations of scripture and enforcing the Index of Prohibited Books—actions that weighed heavily against Franciscans. The next forty years, however, witnessed a steady decline in prosecutions, enforcement, and revenue, as the rigid, absolutist Dominican vision of inquisition and censorship gave way to a more adaptive, situational understanding of heresy, moral theology, and human action held by Jesuits like Pedro de Hortigosa, while Franciscan port inspectors, as well as the general public, routinely ignored the Holy Office's unpopular book prohibitions. Partisan rivalries and jurisdictional conflicts continued to flare, only a small fraction of denunciations resulted in convictions, and dwindling proceeds and withheld salaries encouraged corruption.

The third part of the book delves further into the social milieu of censorship in New Spain before presenting the author's conclusions. Chapter 8 offers a comparative prosopographic analysis of censors and other Holy Office personnel in terms of income, class, career paths, education, family ties, and birth, with an inventory of inquisitors and censors provided in respective appendices. Nesvig tells us that the vast majority of censors were peninsular Spanish members of religious orders whose level of education and social standing placed them just below the highest administrative elite, but their stature diminished as the Holy Office increasingly came to serve as a patronage network for criollo social climbers. Chapter 9 examines the intricacies of book censorship and attributes its inefficacy to lax port inspection, idiosyncratic enforcement by urban comisarios, rural areas often lacking copies of the Index, and widespread disdain for the theological conservatism it reflected. Although the Holy Office tried to impose a monolithic sacred society in New Spain, this transplanted society was riddled with religious partisanship and contested notions about orthodoxy, law, custom, and adaptation to the local environment within the changing circumstances of the Mexican tribunal, which clearly compromised the institution's consistency and effectiveness.

Throughout this well-researched study, Nesvig admirably bridges the genres of intellectual and social history with astute and insightful analysis, yet at least one less-satisfying aspect should be noted. Readers would likely benefit from a more nuanced discussion of the School of Salamanca and its relationship with institutional rivals such as the University of Alcalá de Henares (founded by the third inquisitor general of Spain as a theological alternative to Salamanca), which served as an important training ground for non-Dominican regular clergy (especially Franciscans and Jesuits) and figured in the careers of several characters in this story, including Alonso de Castro and Pedro de Hortigosa. Likewise, a few words about Franciscans in the medieval Inquisition could clarify allusions to Joachimism and the Spirituals and add relevant context for understanding the many Friars Minor examined in the text. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend Ideology and Inquisition to anyone interested in the personnel and workings of the Holy Office in New Spain in particular and inquisition, censorship, and early colonial Mexican history in general.