Religious Devotion: Piety, Print, and Practice in Mexico City, 1750-1821

Mexico City experienced a dramatic increase in the publication of religious devotionals that promoted individual prayer in the late eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. These publications reveal a focus on the individual's internal spirituality, a characteristic of enlightened thinking, and the emphasis on a new form of piety being disseminated by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Simultaneously, they were directed at a new readership among ordinary men and women, more of whom were literate, a product of recent reforms in primary education. This increase in the distribution and availability of these libritos and the growth of a new readership were indicative of a boom in print production and culture (coinciding with an ease in book censorship) and the influx of Enlightenment thinking (and subsequent reforms) on both an official and unofficial level. This dissertation examines the trends in religious devotion, print culture, education and literacy that were established during the second half of the eighteenth century through the struggle for Independence (1750-1821). It has been claimed that studying such practices, especially as they were experienced in the nineteenth century, is practically impossible due to their hidden nature, a claim rooted in the idea that characteristics of religiosity are inherently individual and familial, and so evaded documentation. I argue against this notion and demonstrate that sources on religious devotions and practices for this period, have not yet been closely examined. At the same time, I explore the shift in the prominence of religious practice from a baroque Tridentine form of Catholicism to a new form of piety (new piety) and how this new piety was extended to women and children as Bourbons confronted their place in society