Introduction

None of the three editors of this volume is a practising Catholic. Nevertheless, a book about the Counter-Reformation ought to have a patron saint: ours is the Virgin of the Rosary of Guápulo (Fig. 0.1). Painted in around 1680, possibly by a Peruvian artist of the Cuzco School, she goads us to reconceptualize the Counter-Reformation beyond its conventional time frame and outside its standard geographical limits. ¹ Replete with local and imported meanings, she encourages us to embrace the interplay between the universal and the particular in our understanding of early modern Catholicism. She is a liberal patron, who acknowledges and facilitates diversity. And she inspires creative connections.