The Virgin of Guadalupe
Chapters on Sickness
Memory in Athens
A History of Epidemics
Colonization
Scientific Modeling
“When Nicolás Enríquez painted this copy of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1773, it was the most widely venerated sacred image in New Spain. Here, the miraculous image is encircled by four scenes that attest to its divine origin. They record the Virgin’s three appearances to the Indian Juan Diego at Tepeyac, near Mexico City, and culminate in the revelation of her image imprinted on his cloak. An inscription reveals that this copy was sanctified by contact with the original in 1789, sixteen years after it was painted and four years after its owner returned to Spain.” Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The vision that appeared to Juan Diego was of a Virgin Mary with brown skin, wearing a modest blue dress covered in red flowers. The cloak over her head was adorned with stars, and at her feet, an angel and a crescent moon. She was illuminated and encircled by rays of sunlight.
This is the description of the Virgin of Guadalupe, or, alternatively, Our Lady of Guadalupe. She first appeared as a vision to Juan Diego, a recently converted Nahua shepherd in December 1531, in Tepeyac, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City. (the Nahua are an Indigenous people of Mexico and El Salvador, historically including Aztec and Toltec cultures).
La estrella del norte de México, aparecida al rayar el día de la luz evangélica en este Nuevo Mundo…. (The star of northern Mexico, appeared as it scratches the day of the evangelical light in this New World…). Printed 1785, en la imprenta de Lorenzo de San Martín, Madrid, Spain. “The Jesuit Francisco de Florencia (1619-1695) represented the ecclesiastical cabildo of Mexico’s mid-seventeenth-century petition to the Vatican for papal recognition of the devotion to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Although the petition was denied, Pope Clement IX (b. 1600, pont. max. 1667-1669) did decree a full jubilee for the Virgin of Guadalupe.” cImage: Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University
Published accounts of the appearance of this apparition, however, did not appear until 1648, when the story was recorded in Spanish by Miguel Sánchez, a criolla Franciscan priest, written (the criolla are Latin American people of Spanish or mostly Spanish descent). In the following year, another written account was penned by Luis Laso de la Vega, the vicar of Guadalupe. He wrote that account in Nahuatl, the language of the Indigenous Nahua, with the Nahua as the intended audience (Poole: 3).
“Creoles in Spanish America had, by the seventeenth century, begun to evolve a distinctly American sense of identity. In 1648, Miguel Sanchez published the Imagen de la Virgen María, which, for the first time in print, related the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Saint Juan Diego, a recently converted Indian. Note the papal triple crown and crossed keys, the Hapsburg double eagle, on the one hand, and the nopal cactus and indigenous worshipers on the other. This image evokes and joins the Catholic Church, the Holy Roman Empire, and the lands and peoples of the Americas.” Image: The John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
In her appearance, the Virgin of Guadalupe resembled Tonantzin, translated from Nahuatl as Our Sacred mother, one of many earth goddesses the Aztec worshiped. While scholars debate the exact nature of the relationship, there is no question that there is a connection between the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Aztec goddess. Some say that it was the Spanish who introduced the Virgin of Guadalupe to draw the Aztecs to Christian worship. Others argue the opposite: that the Aztecs used the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a way to continue to worship Tonantzin under the oppressive and watchful eye of the Spanish.
A stone carving of Tonantzin at the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones, a former monastery, Mexico City, Mexico. Image: Thelmadatter CC
Today, many Mexicans of Indigenous heritage refer to the Virgin of Guadalupe as “Tonantzin” (Cosentino in Larkin). The relationship of connection between the two continues.
Left: “Tlazocamati tonantzin talli.” Mural by Mexican artist Gonzalo Areuz in Cancún City, Mexico. Collaboration with Colombian and Argentinian artists Raúl Lopez, Juan Céspedes and Gurí for World Art Destinations. Image: The Lbar Project on Tumblr. Right: iPhone cover depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe, for sale online.
Tonantzin was not a major god for the Aztec prior to the arrival of the Spanish.
The Aztec were a male dominated culture, and no female deities were worshiped at the main temple. Nonetheless, a number of goddesses were worshiped: “In the Valley of Mexico a cluster of goddesses existed, all related to maternity, whose principal names were Teteoinnan (‘Mother of the Gods’), Toci (‘Our Grandmother’), Tonantzin (‘Our Holy Mother’), Cihuacoatl (‘Snake Woman’), Coatlicue (‘Serpent Skirt’), and Xochiquetzal (‘Precious flower’)” (Harrington: 31).
Tonantzin was especially revered in Tepeyac. And it was there, on a hill associated with the goddess, that the Virgin of Guadalupe first appeared to Juan Diego. Historian Patricia Harrington has suggested that when the Aztec male gods had been ““…defeated by the Spanish, they clung on to the female goddesses as represented by Tonantzin” (ibid 176), and so Tonantzin, and the Virgin of Guadalupe, took on heightened importance for the Indigenous population with the destruction created through the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Triple Alliance, including the spread of newly introduced pandemic diseases.
Mapa de la Villa, Insigne y Real Colegiata del Santuario de Santa Maria de Guadalupe (Map of the Villa, Insignia and Royal Collegiate Church of the Sanctuary of Santa Maria de Guadalupe), Tepeyac, Mexico. This view shows the Sanctuary of Saint Mary of Guadalupe (Real Colegiata del Santuario de Santa Maria de Guadalupe), the layout of the surrounding village, and the locations of the appearances of Our Lady. By Francisco Silverio, 1757. Image: The National Library of Spain.
While today, as the Mexican poet Octavio Paz put it, “Our Lady of Guadalupe has been a sign in which each epoch and each Mexican has read his destiny” (Lafaye: xix), in the 16th century, worship of the Virgin of Guadalupe remained something of a localized phenomenon. Her fame spread slowly throughout Central and South America, particularly as she became famous for interceding on calamity and disaster.
Diseases, including smallpox, measles, pertussis, typhus, malaria and diseases the Spanish referred to as diseases of the blood or hemorrhagic fevers (pujamiento de sangre) – hemorrhagic fever also includes diseases such as Ebola and Marburg, Lassa fever, and yellow fever viruses - spread on a large scale in what is now Mexico, beginning with the arrival of the Spanish colonizers in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1519. When the Spanish arrived, the empire ruled a population estimated of 15 to 30 million people. By 1600 only two million inhabitants were left, the majority having died from the spread of disease (Acuna-Soto and Stahle): “…the most feared and destructive menace of Mexico after the Spaniards arrived (Harrington: 40).
This image depicts the Mexica forces battling the Spanish forces in Tenotchtitlan; it is a detail of page 213 from “Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la tierra firme” (History of the Indies of New Spain and Islands of the Mainland), by Diego Durán, 1579. Image: The National Library of Spain.
The first large epidemic or cocoliztli (Nahuatl for plague) , appeared in 1545 in the highlands of Mexico, killing 80% of the Indigenous population (Acuna-Soto and Stahle). Spanish accounts describe a highly contagious disease that killed its victims in 4 to 5 days. Recent genetic research on dental pulp extracted from the teeth of victims suggests it was typhoid, caused by the newly introduced Salmonella enterica subsp. bacterium (Puente and Calva: 2), The first recorded story of miraculous cures by the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared just a few years after the epidemic, in 1556, telling of the miraculous cure of a herdsman (Lafaye: 244; Poole: 229). In 1629 the Virgin of Guadalupe was reported to have stemmed the great flood. However, it was her role in halting an epidemic that led the archbishop to declare the Virgin of Guadalupe the patron of Mexico City in 1737 (Taylor: 12).
The Virgin of Guadalupe, depicted in the Frontispiece by Baltasar Troncoso y Sotomayor, in Cayetano de Cabrera y Quintero, Escudo de armas de México (Mexico City, 1746). “A plague struck Mexico in 1737. For relief, the ecclesiastical leadership took the image of Our Lady of the Remedies from her altar and took her through the streets of Mexico City. Our Lady of the Remedies had been patron saint of the city and was closely identified with Spain, Cortes, and the conquistadores. Our Lady, however, provided no remedy. After attempts with other saints’ images, including Guadalupe, the civil and ecclesiastical cabildos vowed to make Our Lady of Guadalupe patron of the City if she ended the plague, which soon abated. This text is a celebration of Guadalupe being declared patron of all of Mexico. When the Hidalgo Revolt occurred in 1810, his followers marched behind the banner of Guadalupe. During the wars of independence, Mexico’s Royalists marched behind Our Lady of the Remedies.” Image: The John Carter Brown Library, Brown University .
The 1736 epidemic, the third largest epidemic in Mexico up to that point, during which an end-of-the-world atmosphere prevailed, was a hemorrhagic fever referred to as matlazahuatl (Harrington: 41). 40,000 of the 130,000 inhabitants of Mexico City died from that outbreak: 30.76% of the population. From Mexico City, the disease spread around the country (Acuno-Soto, Romero and McGuire: 733).
“Spiritual aid was considered just as important as medical aid in colonial New Spain [Mexico]” (Harrington: 44) at this time. Various appeals for heavenly protection were undertaken. These included official religious processions, most often featuring the Virgin of Guadalupe, or pilgrimages to the shrine of Guadalupe – where it was said that contagion vanished (Phelan: 135). So it was that, in 1737, when the epidemic came to a halt in Mexico City, that the Virgin of Guadalupe was named Mexico City’s patron.
As her popularity continued to grow, in 1746, Our Lady of Guadalupe became the co-patron of all of New Spain (Mexico) along with St. Joseph. On December 12, 1754 by Pope Benedict XIV declared that day her feast day.
Our Lady of Guadalupe votive candles, which were placed on a stand to the side of the main altar at San Felipe de Jesús Mission in Forest Park on the Feast Day, December 12, 2017. Photograph: Michael Alexander for the Georgia Bulletin .
Today, the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destination in the world, and her image is found enshrined on retablos (small devotional paintings), bultos (an image of a saint carved in wood, often polychromed, and paintings in private homes, churches and world-class museums (see a list at the end of this essay for links to representations of the Virgin of Guadalupe as well as for Tonantzin). Her image is, for many, a balm in times like these.
Author: Devorah Romanek
Three depictions of the Virgin of Guadalupe from the collection of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology (left to right):
• “Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe” carved and painted bulto by Rosina Lopez de Short, of Pojoaque, NM, 1989; 90.17.2
• Carved and painted altar screen by Horacio Valdez, 1981; 98.142.3
• Carved and painted bulto by Horacio Valdez, October 1981; 98.142.2
References
Acuna-Soto, Rodofo, et al. “c Semantic Scholar, The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2000, pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2f2f/a949f67de40cdb51610dde168b8b257a1cfe.pdf
Acuna-Soto, Rodofo, et al. “When Half of the Population Died: The Epidemic of Hemorrhagic Fevers of 1576 in Mexico.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 1 Nov. 2004, academic.oup.com/femsle/article/240/1/1/536409.
Harrington, Patricia. “Mother of Death, Mother of Rebirth.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LVI, no. 1, 1988, pp. 25–50., doi:10.1093/jaarel/lvi.1.25.
Lafaye, Jacques. Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: the Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531-1813. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Larkin, Ximena N. “How La Virgen De Guadalupe Became an Icon.” Vice, 12 Dec. 2017, www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywnwny/how-la-virgen-de-guadalupe-become-an-icon.
Phelan, John Leddy. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World: a Study of the Writings of Gerónimo De Mendieta (1525-1604). Kraus Reprint, 1980.
Poole, Stafford. Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797. The University of Arizona Press, 2017.
Puente, José Luis, and Edmundo Calva. “The One Health Concept—the Aztec Empire and Beyond.” Pathogens and Disease, vol. 75, no. 6, 2017, doi:10.1093/femspd/ftx062.
Taylor, William B. “The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: an Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion.” American Ethnologist, vol. 14, no. 1, 1987, pp. 9–33., doi:10.1525/ae.1987.14.1.02a00020.
Links for a sample of Museum Collections containing the Virgin of Guadalupe or Tonantzin, and related material:
DANZA COATLICUE, TONANTZIN MUSEO ANTROPOLOGÍA
Cihuacoatl statue (Museo Nacional Antropologia)
Painting the Divine: Images of Mary in the New World
LACMA Collection
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Denver Art Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
National Museum of American History
Brooklyn Museum
Santuario de Guadalupe: Crown Jewel of Santa Fe
Museo Guadalupano
Colonization Sub-Chapters
A Global Story
The Virgin of Guadalupe
The Rio Grande Drainage
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