Southern Methodist University Department of History

David Rex Galindo

Educational Background

M.A. 2004 Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
Ph.D. candidate, SMU

Curriculum Vita

Dissertation Title: "Training Franciscan Missionaries in New Spain: Diversity Amidst Community."

Galindo’s research will focus on the training of Franciscan missionaries in New Spain from the late seventeenth century until the expulsion of the Spaniards from Mexico in 1828. The Sons of St. Francis founded the Colegios Apostólicos de Propaganda Fide (Colleges for the Propagation of the Faith) in the late seventeenth century to reinvigorate their apostolic mandate in the Indies as well as in Europe. The colleges prepared friars and ordained novices, both from America and Spain. They were, so Franciscans thought, to become exemplary institutions of holiness, spiritual devotion, and the strict observance of the Rule of St. Francis. In the eyes of the Order, this was necessary to prepare the ideal missionary.

At the core of the colleges was the propagation of the Catholic Faith to the heathens in the frontiers of the Spanish empire as well as the proper instruction and reformation of customs of the Christian faithful, including converted Indians. Despite stereotypical images of missionaries, Franciscans entered the order from a variety of backgrounds and emerged from their education with a variety of beliefs. Such diversity clearly emerges by looking at the origins of the Franciscans, their quotidian life in the colleges, and their apostolate to the Christian populations.