The Spanish Church of the Golden Age has been much discussed but little studied. Certainly, its professional structure and internal administration are much less well understood than those of secular government. This paper seeks to correct some of the imbalance by applying to the 540 members of the Castilian episcopacy who served under Habsburg leadership the prosopographical techniques which in recent years have advanced our understanding of the State. But before doing so it might be useful to describe the structure of the episcopacy and the principles and procedures which governed appointments to it.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.