Any historian who sets out to write a book faces two dangers. The one might be called the “one more document syndrome,” the obsession with research that is so exhaustive that nothing further can be found. The other is the prospect of publishing a work, only to have further documentation come to light that was lacking in his original research or alters his conclusions. Perhaps the latter is the lesser danger because it at least permits part of the historical record to reach the public. It may be that I am prejudiced in that regard, having suffered this very experience. In a recent biography of Pedro Moya de Contreras, the first inquisitor of New Spain, third archbishop of Mexico, and interim viceroy, I wrote of his last years in Spain “one can only hope that future research and perhaps fortuitous discoveries will complete that part of his life's story.” The fortuitous discoveries were made within a few months after publication, happily by the author himself. They consist for the most part of a collection of documents in the library of the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan in Madrid, especially the papers of Mateo Vázquez de Leca (1543-1591), Philip II's private secretary and an indefatigable hoarder of valuable documents.

This article attempts to compare the qualifications ascribed to law graduates who received appointments as oidores (royal judges) with their character and conduct as royal agents charged with the administration of the king's wishes, laws, edicts, and provisions. Because my conclusions are based on the conduct of royal judges serving in the appellate courts of Granada, Española, New Granada, Guatemala, and Mexico in the sixteenth century, this is not a definitive study. More than a thousand judges served in the New World audiencias (high courts) up to 1700. Moreover, judicial reviews (residencias), letters to the Crown, and related materials tend to stress sins of commission or omission rather than the good deeds of the royal magistrates. Sources also reflect differences between royal agents, conflict between royal agents and provincial officials, and the clash between the interests of the Crown, the church, and the colonists. Granted these limitations, enough documentation exists to observe the dichotomy between the administration of justice by magistrates, who were men of flesh and bone, and the idea of the wise and clement judge discharging the royal conscience by making it conform to natural and divine law.

Established in 1919 to be the Catholic voice of America, to look after church interests, and to offset the political influence of the Protestant Federal Council of Churches, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) was a voluntary association of the American hierarchy meeting annually in convention. It implemented decisions through an administrative committee of seven bishops which operated a secretariat, also known as the NCWC, located in Washington, D.C. This headquarters had five departments (Education, Lay Activities, Legislation, Press, and Social Action) each with a director and all under the supervision of Reverend John J. Burke, C.S.P., the general secretary of the administrative committee and its representative at the capital.