Barely Known Old Legal Texts Come to Light^*

In the recent historiography on the canon law of the early modern Spanish Empire, legal historians have been considering many forms of normativity. Nevertheless, law still remains, and there is no reason to think otherwise, as a primary source of legal orders. In the case of canon law, many of the legislations drafted remained largely unknown due to their lack of recognitio by the Holy See and pase regio granted by the Spanish Monarch. Such texts were not printed and only circulated in manuscript form, likely resulting in a very low and uncertain degree of compliance. During the 20^thcentury, gradually but fragmentally, many of these texts became known in academic publications. The book reviewed here finally gathers together in a single volume all the legislative texts drafted at church assemblies celebrated in the archdiocese of Santafé (today Bogotá) before 1625.

The two editors’ fields of expertise complement each other in providing not just a paleographic transcription of the texts, but also an introduction into their historical context, a survey of the current |state of research and an explanation of the editorial decisions made in preparing the transcriptions, as well as the translation of the Latin originals into Spanish. Juan Fernando Cobo Betancourt received his doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge and is currently Assistant Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is also the author of the monograph Mestizos heraldos de Dios, a study on the ordination of mixed-race priests at the end of the 16^th century.¹ Natalie Cobo is also a historian trained at the University of Cambridge and currently working on her doctorate in history at the University of Oxford. Both are co-founders of the »Fundación Histórica Neogranadina«,² a non-profit organization that digitizes and publishes manuscripts and ancient books and for this purpose also develops tools in the field of digital humanities. The present volume is a direct result of this project.

The book contains four documents resulting from the diocesan synods and provincial councils celebrated in Santafé between the years 1556 and 1625: the diocesan synods of 1556, 1576 and 1606 and the provincial council of 1625. A sixty-page introduction gives the historical context, brief prosopographical information on the respective bishops who presided over the assemblies, a summary of what we know about the events of the meetings and the fate of the documents in their manuscript transmission, as well as an assessment of any previous printed editions. A broad bibliography accompanies the text, which not only contains the main historiography on the topic but also potentially interesting studies on other areas, mainly Mexico and Lima. The transcription of the documents indicates textual variations in the extant manuscripts and in previous printed editions. Furthermore, the present edition provides information on the sources used to draft the new documents. In many cases, this was found in the manuscripts as marginal notes; but for more than a few provisions, this was not the case, and the editors provide the information, indicating the source from which material was taken and the degree of similarity between the original version and its reception.

As it has been said, the law should be pondered along with other types of normativity as the primary source for legal historiography. Although never fully neglected in the scholarship of so-called Derecho Indiano, the importance of the constitutions in canon law should extend to other forms of normativity linked to ecclesiastical assemblies. The editors are therefore right to include the catechism promulgated at the Diocesan Synod presided over by Luis Zapata de Cárdenas in 1576 alongside the other legal documents.

The text of the Provincial Council of 1625 is transcribed with a Spanish translation done by the editors. As in the case of the Diocesan Synod of 1606, the Provincial Council’s texts renewed many constitutions of the Third Provincial Council of Lima (1582/1583). As the introduction points out, the text’s decretal scheme closely – but not completely – following that of the Third Mexican Provincial Council (1585), from which many of the constitutions were also taken.

Considering that the present edition is a source that will be used frequently, the quality of the bookbinding and the paper reassure readers that the book will not disintegrate in their hands, something that researchers doing a close reading of sources always fear. The scholarly quotations follow a somewhat strange system. Some are indicated in the body of the text in the introduction, others added as a footnote, without an explicit criterion for this diversity.

On top of all the merits mentioned above, this edition also provides a great opportunity to complement studies of the circulation of legal texts and ideas within the internal frontiers of the Spanish Empire. Comparison between Mexico and Lima has already begun.³ Thanks to this edition Nueva Granada can now be included in such comparative projects.