Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ordering cities : urban convents and friars, 1570-1810 -- Distinguishing habits : corporate and collective mendicant identities -- Serving cities : orders and their urban ministries -- Defining religions : mendicant connections and disconnections in urban society -- Loving complaints : orders and the formation of local religious culture.

This book tracks New Spain's mendicant orders past their so-called golden age of missions into the ensuing centuries and demonstrates that they had equally crucial roles in what Melvin terms the ""spiritual consolidation"" of cities. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, cities became home to the majority of friars and to the orders' wealthiest houses, and mendicants became deeply embedded in urban social and cultural life. Friars ministered to urban residents of all races and social standings and engaged in traditional mendicant activities, serving as preachers, confessors, spiritual.

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