Richard L. Kagan is Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University where he specializes in the history of early modern Europe with particular emphasis on Spain and her empire. His publications include Students and Society in Early Modern Spain (1974), Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile(1981), Spanish Cities of the Golden Age(1988),Lucretia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain(1990), and, most recently, Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honor of John H. Elliott(1995), a book that he edited together with Geoffrey Parker. For the past several years he has been work on Urban Images of the Hispanic World, a book scheduled to published by Yale University Press in 1998. His lecture derives from research conducted for this study.