The Church became the single largest landowner within the colony, developing commercial agriculture to support many of its activities. Religious orders within the Church created vertically integrated commercial activities such as sheep production and weaving, grape production and brandy. The missionaries of the Church had the principal responsibility of converting the millions of natives of the New World to the faith, which was a daunting task because of significant linguistic and cultural differences. Through the local bishop and the powers of the Inquisition, the Church also monitored the homogeneity of the philosophical underpinnings of the society, assuring conformity of thought. In short, the colonial Church touched nearly every aspect of life. At the same time, the Church was not a monolithic institution. On the most basic level the clergy fall into two large camps: the secular or diocesan clergy and the regular clergy. The former include the common parish priests who served under the supervision of the local bishop or archbishop, as well as high-rankinThe Franciscans and Dominicans, while similar in many ways, had very different approaches to evangelization. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuit order, was a relative newcomer, being founded in the 1540s, and havin
