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MESOAMERICA AND FRANCISCAN MISSION 259 In keeping with the specific scope of the Coll. Franc., this study limits itself to underscoring those elements of import from the Franciscan point of view. However, there is no gainsaying the fact that the present volume is an illumina– tive guide for all researchers into the Nahuatl world inasmuch as its author has painstakingly chalked out a map of the main repositories in the US holding their source material. What the editor of the second volume of the Franciscan Publications in Nahuatl Series writes in the Acknowledgments may be cited here, even though in the present context it deals with the authorship and not with the editorial assistance: "This is not the first publication that Dr John F. Schwaller has assisted to completion and I am sure that it will not be the last". 2. The second volume 2 is basically a textual and contextual analysis of the Cefradia (confraternity) ordinances of 1552 drawn up by the Franciscan Obser– vant friar Alonso de Molina (t 1585), and in the process it shows up the central role confraternities played in the work of establishing Church-life among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Fr Molina was not only a reputed Nahuatl scholar but was also a resourceful missionary. As a child born to a Spanish woman, Alonso picked up Nahuatl while playing with Nahua children. He soon became the missionary friars' principal interpreter and teacher of Nahuatl. He shared the life of the friars, and sure enough as soon as he was of age, he took the religious habit. Dedicatedly he put his linguistic expertise at the service of the Gospel. The Cefradfa ordinances reflect the missionary's perception of the societal and intellectual Nahua ambience as well as his inventiveness in substi– tuting the Aztec tongue for the traditional European expressions regarding ec– clesiastical practices. That the confraternities took root locally among the Nahuas and acquired a native flavour also goes to reveal the capacity of the populace to adopt alien ways and to absorb them into their own worldview. Contemporaneously con– fraternities had regained their vitality in Europe, as the fact that a city like Zamora in Spain, with a population of 8600, had as much as 150 confraterni– ties. "In the wake of the challenge by Martin Luther and later Protestant leaders to the very foundations of Catholic belief, astute Catholic churchmen realized that confraternities could be part of an effective response. Increasingly in the 2 Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of Prqy Alonso de Molina, OFM. Translator - editor Barry D. Sell. With contributions by Larissa Taylor - Asun– cion Lavrin. (Publications of the Academy of American Franciscan History. Franciscan Publica– tions in Nahuatl Series, 2). USA - CA 94709-1208 Berkeley [1712 Euclid Street], Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002. 26 cm., XIII+187 p. ISBN 0-88382-302-0.