Primeros memoriales. By Bernardino de Sahagún. Translated by Thelma D. Sullivan. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Pp. 334. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $75.00.)
were able to accumulate significant institutional resources which became the basis (along with that of other institutions such as Indigenous communities and monasteries) for a vital local credit economy. The possibility of utilizing that credit appears to have been one important reason for placing a daughter or son in a convent or monastery. Another economic reason for encouraging progeny to join a religious order might be to consolidate patrimony in the hands of a single heir or two, since novices of both sexes typically renounced their inheritance rights.