| Summary: | Along with the increasing presence of judicial and administrative officials in New Spain came the development of a courtly culture that entailed corrupt practices such as bribery and fraud to the public treasury. Spanish and viceragal authorities attempted to deter these practices through local lawsuits and penal codes. At the same time, many lawyers, moralists and poets censured corruption from the perspective of neo-Stoic philosophy. Topics such as the “deception” produced by vanity and adulation, as opposed to the “truth” revealed by virtue, were frequent in baroque sermons, panegyrics and festive and ceremonial emblems inspired in this philosophical viewpoint. However, this same viewpoint attempted to unite ethics and the struggle for power by taking advantage of the ludic dimension of virtue, just as Seneca had proposed and the authors of courtly New-Spanish literature had repeated.
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