On June 18, 1539, at Tlaxcala, New Spain, Indians recently converted to Christianity performed a pageant written and directed by the Franciscan missionaries. The play titled “The Conquest of Jerusalem” featured the final siege of the Holy City led by combined armies from Spain and New Spain aided by forces from France and Hungary. The drama unfolds with the army from New Spain, protected by angels and St. Hippolytus, showing the most valor. Huddled to one side of the battlefield are the Pope and his court offering prayers for a Christian victory. After several attacks, each of which ends in a miracle saving the Christian armies, the Moslems capitulate and convert to the true faith. In the final scene, the Pope causes all the new converts to be baptized after which the Sultan and his soldiers bow before Charles V and proclaim him to be “God's Captain” for all the earth. The pageant commemorated the Truce of Nice concluded on June 17, 1538, between Charles V and Francis I at the urging and coordination of Pope Paul III who wanted to free Charles V to attack the Turks and capture Jerusalem. Celebrating the Truce of Nice was a natural choice for the friars because it reflected commonly held theories of apocalypticism. The pageant exhibited salient themes of the apocalyptic conversion of non-believers and infidels, the recapture of Jerusalem, and the recognition of a “last world ruler.” Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía), who recorded the pageant, prefaced the drama by praying that this prophesied victory would soon happen and he assigned an unprecedented role to the peoples of the New World in the victory.

Heir to Greek and Roman culture, the revelations of Holy Scripture and the great commentaries upon it written by Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and lesser theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages, the cultured European of the fifteenth century was content that the corpus of his knowledge was complete, and that within it was all that was necessary for a full understanding of the universe. Nevertheless, this satisfaction was greatly upset by the explorations of Christopher Columbus and his followers during the final decade of the century. The European discovery of extensive lands populated with theretofore unknown peoples, with a flora and fauna totally distinct from that of Europe, was, in all senses, a New World. In that this New World had not been incorporated into the extensive and well-defined knowledge of Western civilization, it was, therefore, open to any and all concepts conceivable to the imagination; everything was possible, even the very improbable.

Much has been published about the Church in colonial Peru, but very little has appeared regarding the regular orders' internal financial workings or their members' economic activities. The little written about Peruvian nuns tends to describe them as comfortably housed, colorfully dressed and bejeweled, and surrounded by slaves and servants. There is nothing on Peruvian convents comparable to Asunción Lavrin's detailed research on Mexican nunneries. A bibliography about the finances of friars and their monasteries would be similarly weak, except for material on the Jesuits.

To the dismay of today's social progressives, the Argentine Catholic church addresses the moral situation of its people but also shies away from specific political positions or other hint of secular involvement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the church set out to secure its place in national leadership by strengthening religious institutions and withdrawing clergy from politics. The church struggled to overcome a heritage of organizational weakness in order to promote evangelization, that is, to extend its spiritual influence within Argentina. The bishop of the central city of Córdoba, Franciscan Friar Zenón Bustos y Ferreyra (1905-1925), reinforced pastoral care, catechesis, and education. After 1912, as politics became more heated, Bustos insisted that priests abstain from partisan activities and dedicate themselves to ministry. The church casts itself in the role of national guardian, not of the government, but of the faith and morals of the people.

On the 18th October 1654 the squadron usually referred to as the Armada del Mar del Sur left Callao bound for Panama, carrying Crown and private bullion. It comprised, as capitana, the Jesús María de la Limpia Concepción of about 1150 tons and built at Guayaquil between 1641 and 1644, as almiranta, an ex-merchantman of 400 tons the San Francisco Solano, and a chinchorro whose task was to sail a little ahead seeking news of possible interlopers en route, assessing sailing conditions and watching out for land. As was usual practice, another chinchorro had previously been dispatched to warn the President of Panama of the impending departure of the squadron in order that he could ensure that the galeones would be waiting at Portobelo to take aboard the silver and other goods. The role and actions of these two chinchorros was to become a subject of considerable debate during the next few months.