Truth in Many Tongues: Religious Conversion in the Early Spanish Empire

Dr. Wasserman-Soler examines how the Spanish Crown and its churchmen managed an empire of unprecedented linguistic diversity. During the sixteenth century, the monarchy made only sporadic efforts to propagate Spanish throughout its vast territories. At the same time, Spanish churchmen used a wide array of languages in their evangelization efforts: Arabic, Castilian, Latin, Nahuatl, Otomi, and many others. Wasserman argues that churchmen employed surprisingly flexible methods of
communication. Through a series of case studies, he demonstrates how Catholic churchmen
repeatedly made space for languages other than Spanish. Altogether, the process by which Spanish became a global language was far from linear.