The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World is John Leddy Phelan’s classic study of the Franciscan order’s apocalyptic imagination in colonial Latin America. First published in 1956 and revised in 1970, the book traces how friars like Gerónimo de Mendieta interpreted conquest and evangelization through the lens of biblical prophecy and medieval Franciscan mysticism. Phelan shows how figures such as Columbus and Hernán Cortés were recast in eschatological roles—Columbus as an instrument of divine providence and Cortés as a Mosaic liberator—while New Spain itself was imagined as both a restored Primitive Church and a foretaste of the millennium.

Written with both historical rigor and interpretive sensitivity, Phelan’s work reveals the intellectual, theological, and mystical currents that animated missionary enterprises in the sixteenth century. By linking Franciscan millenarianism with broader currents of European thought—from Joachim of Fiore’s prophecies to Counter-Reformation Catholicism—the book situates the Indian Church of New Spain within the longue durée of Christian eschatology. A landmark in the cultural history of religion, it remains essential reading for scholars of colonial Latin America, apocalyptic traditions, and the global intersections of conquest, theology, and empire.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.