| Summary: | The Tribunal of the Holy Office was in charge of watching over books to maintain religious orthodoxy in the territories of the Spanish Crown, an activity that was justified by the effect that books have everywhere on the social, cultural, economic, political and religious spheres. In line with the social concerns of this time, different mechanisms of inquisitorial control were instrumentalized, paying special attention to prohibited books and those that needed to be expurgated. This article analyzes one of these mechanisms of control, known as the “library visit,” through the files found in the General Archive of the Nation from between the years 1716 and 1720. This testimony allows us to reconstruct and explain many aspects of these visits, which were conducted in New Spain each time a new index was published, and whose effects can be seen to this day in the many antiquarian books conserved in different national and international archives.
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