The historiography on the mendicant orders in New Spain is one of the more developed subfields in the history of Spanish colonialism. As Karen Melvin points out in this valuable new book, however, our knowledge of their work is surprisingly uneven. Previous scholarship has concentrated on the early colonial period and the mendicants’ missionary activities, especially in the mostly rural doctrinas de indios or proto-parishes that Spanish officials established for the religious conversion of native peoples. Melvin takes us beyond these traditional emphases in space and time, moving from the rural to the urban and from the so-called ‘golden age’ of missionary activity in the sixteenth century into the rest of the colonial period. She also widens our focus beyond the familiar triad of Augustinians, Dominicans and Observant Franciscans, which were the orders most involved in native evangelisation, to include the other mendicant orders in New Spain: Discalced (Barefoot) Franciscans, Discalced (Barefoot) Carmelites, and Mercedarians. The result is a fresh perspective on both the mendicants’ activities and the diversity of colonial Catholicism.

The book achieves its broad coverage in part by forgoing a traditional structure. Rather than ordering her chapters chronologically, Melvin defines them topically and moves liberally from the sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century within each chapter. The first chapter covers the arrival of the various orders in sixteenth-century New Spain and the development of their urban activities, which included both active ministry (teaching, preaching, confessing, alms collecting and so on) and contemplative labour (prayer, reclusion). The next two chapters examine characteristics of the various mendicant orders, including their unique devotions and active ministries, Marian advocations, and symbols. The fourth chapter surveys some of the most important intellectual, theological and legal disputes that pitted the orders against one another, such as the question of Mary's Immaculate Conception, which Franciscans upheld but Dominicans questioned, or Franciscan attempts to defend the symbol most associated with their order, the gift of the stigmata to Francis of Assisi. The final body chapter offers a closer-to-the-ground examination of some of these broader issues by concentrating on relations between Discalced Carmelites and Observant Franciscans in eighteenth-century Toluca, paying special attention to how the two orders sought to define and defend forms of religious expression among the city's laity. The conclusion nicely summarises the book's key contributions but also situates the study in the broader historiography of early modern Catholicism and the global expansion of Christianity.

Melvin's broad thematic and temporal perspective will force specialists to rethink a number of traditional periodisations and interpretations of colonial history. In its crudest form, historians sometimes contrast an era of sixteenth-century upheaval and transformation with seventeenth-century slumber, followed by a renewed dynamism in the eighteenth century, especially the era of the Bourbon reforms in the second half of the century. Melvin demonstrates that such chronological framings distort the mendicant history in New Spain. In the aftermath of the furious conversion efforts of the sixteenth century, Melvin notes, the mendicants continued to expand, albeit in the cities and urban areas of New Spain. ‘If the sixteenth century was the mendicants’ golden age in Indian towns’, Melvin writes, ‘then the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were their golden age in cities’ (p. 24). Her analysis of the eighteenth-century orders also reconfigures some standard narratives of religion and politics. Many scholars have emphasised Bourbon attempts to subordinate the mendicants to royal authority, often pointing to the widespread secularisation of mendicant doctrinas. But at the same time, Melvin notes, civil officials enthusiastically supported the mendicants’ work in public schools and their urban preaching. Melvin resolves this paradox by pointing out that both activities furthered Bourbon efforts to reform the comportment of colonial subjects.

While Melvin's broadly comparative approach is generally an asset, it also carries some liabilities. At times it tends to flatten the historical actors she studies, given the need to move quickly through so much material. Indeed, some of the most compelling sections in the book are those that allow the reader to pause for a moment and tie together multiple themes by examining how they played out in individual cases. A good example is Melvin's artful reconstruction of a dispute between Franciscans and Carmelites in late eighteenth-century Toluca over the life and death of a pious woman.

This small criticism aside, Melvin's book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Spanish colonialism and early modern Catholicism. Built upon copious research across numerous archives, Building Colonial Cities of God opens a new vista onto the mendicant presence in New Spain.