ABSTRACT
At the end of the sixteenth century, the mission became one of the typical frontier institutions of the Spanish Empire, with the northwest of Mexico being an exclusive field of activity for the Society of Jesus. From the 1680s, a growing number of missionaries arrived from central Europe, including many from the Austrian Habsburg lands in the Mexican Jesuit province, and formed an early connection between these two regions. As it is difficult to pinpoint specific mission histories from these Habsburg territories, the focus here rests more upon the assignment of these missionaries from the Assistentia Germanica of the Society of Jesus, and particularly the Austrian, Bohemian, Upper German, and two Rhenish provinces of the order.
