"This is a monumental work, the product of decades of research and reflection by an incredibly gifted and mature historian. The scholarship is superlative for both its breadth and its depth, and the presentation is lively and engaging. Magistrates of the Sacred will become the definitive study of church-state relations in colonial Spanish America, and, because of its comparative implications, it will also be of great interest to students of all regions of colonial America."--Ramon A. Gutierrez, University of California, San Diego "This superb work is magisterial in its breadth of research, its depth of interpretation, its clarity of style, and its presentation of the people who lived in eighteenth-century New Spain. Taylor takes on, hard and deep, several major problems in the interpretation of Mexican history, and his book will serve as a foundation for new research and analysis for many years to come."--David Carrasco, Princeton University.