Background
Poole, Stafford was born on March 6, 1930 in Oxnard, California, United States. Son of Joseph Outhwaite Poole and Beatrice Hessie Smith.
( Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Span...)
Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Spanish history, but it was his letrados--professional bureaucrats and ministers trained in law--who made his vast castilian empire possible. In Juan de Ovando, Stafford Poole traces the life and career of a key minister in the king’s government to explore the role that letrados played in Spanish society as they sought to displace the higher nobility in the administration through a system based upon merit. Juan de Ovando was an industrious, discerning, and loyal servant, yet, like all letrados, he owed his position to royal favor. Ovando began his career as an ecclesiastical judge and inquisitor in Seville. From there, at the king’s order, he undertook the reform of the University of Alcalá de Henares, one of his most enduring achievements. Appointed then to the supreme council of the Spanish Inquisition, Ovando was commissioned to investigate the Council of the Indies, over which he eventually presided. In this role, Ovando began codifying laws and collecting information about Spain’s overseas possessions through the famed Relaciones geográficas--wide-ranging surveys of daily life in the New World. He devised long-term and forward-looking colonial policies for New Spain while, also serving as president of the Council of Finance, he sought to bring order to Spain’s chaotic financial situation. Poole’s biography of Juan de Ovando provides an intimate view of the day-to-day influence letrados wielded over the Spanish colonial machine.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806135921/?tag=2022091-20
( For a brief few years in the sixteenth century, Pedro M...)
For a brief few years in the sixteenth century, Pedro Moya de Contreras was the most powerful man in the New World. A church official and loyal royalist, he came to Mexico in 1571 to establish the Inquisition and later became archbishop and viceroy for the region. This new edition of Stafford Poole's definitive portrait of Moya de Contreras, first published in 1971, now offers an expanded understanding of this enigmatic figure's influence on the development of New Spain. In tracing the career of a sixteenth-century church official and administrator who was more notable for what he did than for who he was, Poole offers a rich source of information about Spanish rule in colonial Mexico and the evolving relationship between the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic Church. For this second edition, Poole draws on newly available sources to fill in gaps regarding Moya de Contreras's shadowy early career and final years in Spain. He also explores in greater depth the churchman's influence as Grand Inquisitor in light of the plethora of new research and recent publications on the Spanish Inquisition. Poole shows that Moya de Contreras was as diligent at carrying out the tortures of the Inquisition as he was at exposing government and church corruption. His reforming zeal reached its culmination in his leadership of the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585, which enacted a legal code for the Mexican Church that lasted more than three hundred years.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806141719/?tag=2022091-20
( The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, based on the sto...)
The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, based on the story of apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Juan Diego, an Indian neophyte, at the hill of Tepeyac in December 1531, is one of the most important formative religious and national symbols in the history of Mexico. In this first work ever to examine in depth every historical source of the Guadalupe apparitions, Stafford Poole traces the origins and history of the account, and in the process challenges many commonly accepted assumptions and interpretations. Poole finds that, despite common belief, the apparition account was unknown prior to 1648, when it was first published by a Mexican priest. And then, the virgin became the predominant devotion not of the Indians, but of the criollos, who found in the story a legitimization of their own national aspirations and an almost messianic sense of mission and identity. Poole finds no evidence of a contemporary association of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the Mexican goddess Tonantzin, as is frequently assumed, and he rejects the common assertion that the early missionaries consciously substituted Guadalupe for a preconquest deity.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816516235/?tag=2022091-20
( Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Span...)
Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Spanish history, but it was his letrados--professional bureaucrats and ministers trained in law--who made his vast castilian empire possible. In Juan de Ovando, Stafford Poole traces the life and career of a key minister in the king’s government to explore the role that letrados played in Spanish society as they sought to displace the higher nobility in the administration through a system based upon merit. Juan de Ovando was an industrious, discerning, and loyal servant, yet, like all letrados, he owed his position to royal favor. Ovando began his career as an ecclesiastical judge and inquisitor in Seville. From there, at the king’s order, he undertook the reform of the University of Alcalá de Henares, one of his most enduring achievements. Appointed then to the supreme council of the Spanish Inquisition, Ovando was commissioned to investigate the Council of the Indies, over which he eventually presided. In this role, Ovando began codifying laws and collecting information about Spain’s overseas possessions through the famed Relaciones geográficas--wide-ranging surveys of daily life in the New World. He devised long-term and forward-looking colonial policies for New Spain while, also serving as president of the Council of Finance, he sought to bring order to Spain’s chaotic financial situation. Poole’s biography of Juan de Ovando provides an intimate view of the day-to-day influence letrados wielded over the Spanish colonial machine.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806142383/?tag=2022091-20
Poole, Stafford was born on March 6, 1930 in Oxnard, California, United States. Son of Joseph Outhwaite Poole and Beatrice Hessie Smith.
Bachelor, St. Mary's Seminary, Perryville, Missouri, 1952. Master of Arts, St. Louis University, 1958. Doctor of Philosophy, St. Louis University, 1961.
Vice rector, professor history Cardinal Glennon College, St. Louis, 1956—1964. Vice rector, dean of studies St. Mary's Seminary, Perryville, 1964—1971. Professor history St. John's Seminary College, Camarillo, California, 1971—1990, president, rector, 1980—1984.
Historian Los Angeles, since 1990. Visiting lecturer Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, 1970, 72.
( The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, based on the sto...)
( Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Span...)
( Philip II is a fascinating and enigmatic figure in Span...)
( For a brief few years in the sixteenth century, Pedro M...)
Member executive committee Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Studies, since 1998. Member of American Society Ethnohistory, Conference on Latin. American History (executive committee since 1989), American History Association.