Cross-cultural communication between dominant and subaltern peoples has been a rich field of research in recent scholarship on early modern empires, particularly for the Hispanic world. Drawing on anthropology and linguistics, scholars like Louise Burkhart, Inga Clendinnen, Laura Matthew, and Mercedes García Arenal have explored the complex ways that non-Hispanic peoples within the growing Spanish empire embraced, resisted, or creatively adapted to Hispanic Christian identities, both in the Americas and in the Iberian peninsula. Daniel Wasserman-Soler's Truth in Many Tongues situates itself within this broad terrain, seeking to compare the use of languages in post-conquest Granada and Valencia with those in New Spain. Unlike most of these other works, however, Wasserman-Soler's restricts its focus to the perspective of the conquerors—in particular, that of the religious authorities who undertook the project of converting the newly subject peoples to the Catholic faith. By his own admission, this makes the work “Eurocentric” compared with those named above. His central question is carefully circumscribed: what was the official policy of the crown and church in the sixteenth century concerning indigenous languages, and how and why did it differ from place to place?

His answer is logical and persuasive: royal and ecclesiastical policy regarding indigenous languages in both Iberia and America was pragmatic and governed mainly by the paramount goal of evangelizing. As pre-colonial Spain was already a multilingual society, the simultaneous use of multiple languages in many places was naturally assumed. Monarchs, bishops, and friars all wanted new converts to learn both Castilian and some Latin as part of becoming good Christians. But they also considered the limited use of indigenous languages to be necessary for conversion, especially in the early stages of conquest. One therefore finds crown and church authorities condoning or encouraging the use of Arabic, Nahuatl, or another Amerindian language by preachers in areas where people could not yet be expected to understand Castilian. This went hand in hand with the introduction of Castilian. It was never a question of choosing one language over the other: “The so-called debate over whether to implement Castilian or to use indigenous languages is a red herring” (99).

The dialectical route by which Wasserman-Soler arrives at these sensible conclusions, while it may puzzle some cultural historians, makes the work even more significant for church historians. He devotes many pages to refuting the “dualistic framework” (166) that has allegedly characterized much scholarship on this subject, not only regarding languages but regarding the policies of the Spanish Catholic Church. The thesis is thus presented, in the spirit of Lu Ann Homza's Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance (The John's Hopkins University Press, 2000), as a corrective to a false historiographical paradigm that emphasizes ecclesiastical dogmatism and intolerance, especially after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). In order to anchor his findings about language policy within this ecclesiological argument, Wasserman-Soler devotes an initial chapter to the Spanish Inquisition's treatment of vernacular catechisms. This focuses closely on the inquisitorial prosecution of Bartolomé de Carranza and Luis de Granada for their popular devotional works and argues that the views of Carranza and Granada on the one hand—as proponents of the vernacular—and Cano and Valdés on the other—as critics of the vernacular—did not represent a liberal/conservative dichotomy but that all these theologians, and others sometimes classified as either “reform-minded” or “regressive” (35), were, in fact, orthodox Catholics who agreed that the vernacular had some role to play in catechizing the laity, if carefully monitored by the clergy. The point is valid and important, even if the lengthy discussions of inquisitorial edicts and personal rivalries feel somewhat remote from the ostensible subject of religious conversion among colonial subjects.

Wasserman-Soler's parallel inquiries into official language policies among the moriscos (nominal Christian converts from Islam) and the Amerindians are valuable and interesting. He shows that these policies on both continents were diverse and contextual. From the start, Arabic was used far more sparingly than American languages, largely because of its inevitable association with Islam and nearby Islamic regimes. While some Castilian churchmen preached and catechized in Arabic in the early years after 1492, these were far fewer than the hundreds of friars who became proficient in Amerindian languages. More than ten times as many Spanish works of Christian doctrine were published in the sixteenth century in Amerindian languages than in Arabic. Suspicion of Arabic increased later in the century as the moriscos of Granada and Valencia became more restive and resistant to efforts at forced conversion, and even the initially optimistic evangelists came to see the moriscos as a “lost cause” (161). In 1567, the crown banned the speaking of Arabic in Granada as politically subversive and, in 1609, finally acknowledged the futility of forcibly converting the moriscos when it ordered their mass expulsion.

Meanwhile, in New Spain, Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuits missionaries preached, catechized, and published in Nahuatl, Otomi, Mixtec, and many other indigenous languages with undeniable success. The First (1555), Second (1565), and Third (1585) Provincial Councils of Mexico all urged priests to learn indigenous languages, and the Third required facility in an indigenous language for admission to the priesthood. Despite his 1567 ban on Arabic, Philip II saw no comparable danger in the survival of American languages and consistently defended their use more energetically than some of his royal bureaucrats. Not until 1770, under the Bourbon monarch Charles III, did the crown boldly (and unsuccessfully) order royal officials to “extinguish” all non-Castilian languages in the Spanish Americas (131). Wasserman-Soler draws on a range of official sources, correspondence, and catechistic works to bring this American missionary enterprise to life in two particularly impressive chapters.

This is a valuable book that achieves its modest objectives gracefully. While it breaks no new ground in cultural history, its sharply articulated argument—and lucid writing that is free of jargon and generous with historical context—will make it particularly valuable to students and non-specialists. The extended critique of “dichotomies” and “dualistic” or “black-and-white” thinking that runs throughout the book, and the contention that the story as a whole ultimately reveals “diversity . . . among officials of the Catholic Church” (166), may strike some readers as overstated. But the methodological clarity will be helpful for the student audience at which much of the book is admirably well aimed. The appendix listing Franciscan friars proficient in native languages, the rich bibliography, and the meticulous index will also be valuable to researchers and students alike.