Las visitas de oidores y la conformación de los “pueblos de indios” en la provincia de Tunja del Nuevo Reino de Granada, siglo XVI

Abstract

During the sixteenth century the Spanish Crown carried out an intense campaign to reduce the indigenous population in the New Kingdom of Granada, with the Catholic Church as the center of concentration and the axis of religious activities. I propose to examine the urban and architectural theoretical bases to construct a genealogy of ideas. In the New Kingdom of Granada, I will present the nucleation project initiated by Oidor Luis Henríquez at the end of the 16th century, as well as his predecessors. Then, I'll explore two sets of European sources, urban and architectural, showing the possible genealogies: The “Ordenanzas de población” of Philip II issued in 1573; and the “Instrucciones para la fabrica de la iglesia” of Borromeo, published in 1577. Both treaties were linked with the Franciscan community until the Late Middle Ages with the works of the Catalan Francesc Eiximenic and the French Guillermo Durandus.