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| An imagined rendering of Juan Diego unrolling his tilma for the Archbishop of Mexico. |
Today
is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen
of Mexico and Empress of the Americas, Patroness of the Americas, and most
recently Patroness of the Unborn. An image of her preserved on cloth in a Mexico City Basilica is the object of
almost universal adoration in Mexico and among the large Mexican diaspora in the United States. She has been
called the “rubber band which binds this disparate nation into a whole.” Mexican literary icons have attested to her
importance. Carlos Fuentes said that “you cannot truly be considered a Mexican
unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe” and Nobel Literature laureate Octavio Paz that “the Mexican people,
after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of
Guadalupe and the National Lottery.”
Yet
among an educated elite there is widespread skepticism about the origin story
of the image and its veneration is controversial among some Catholics and actively discouraged by a
growing evangelical Protestant movement.
The
origin story goes like this.
On
December 9, 1531, just ten years after the conquest
of Mexico by Hernando Cortez, Juan Diego, an Indian peasant
and particularly pious convert to Catholicism, was walking by the Hill of Tepeyac then outside of the capital
city. A temple to Tonantzin, the
Aztec goddess of love and fertility, had surmounted the hill but been razed in the Church’s
campaign to obliterate traditional worship.
When he glanced up the hill he beheld a maiden who bade him in his native Nahuatl language to
build a church on the site in her name.
He surmised that she must be that she must be the Virgin Mary although she did not identify herself.
Juan
Diego hurried to Fray Juan de Zumárraga,
the Archbishop of Mexico with his
tale. The Franciscan was impressed with his piety but skeptical of the
story. He instructed Juan Diego to
return to the hill and ask the apparition
for proof of her identity. The peon returned
three more times to the hill over the next two days and the Virgin spoke to him
each time.
He
first asked for a miraculous sign. When he returned home he found that his
uncle, who had been dying, was healed.
On
his final trip to the Hill the virgin commanded him to gather flowers at the summit. These were not native flower, but red Castilian roses blooming out of
season. Juan Diego gathered them in his tilma
or cloak and took the bundle to
the Archbishop Zumárraga. When he opened
his cloak December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the
image of the Virgin.
This
was enough to convince Archbishop who ordered a chapel be built at the base of
the hill where the cloak would be displayed.
Juan Diego, his wife, and his uncle were given leave to build a hovel
next to the hermitage of Franciscan fathers
sent to attend the shrine and to act
as their servant. He reportedly died there in 1548.
The
trouble with the story is that there was no mention of any of this in any of
the extensively preserved Church records of the period. It was never noted by Archbishop
Zumárraga who wrote extensively of his work to consolidate Catholicism among
the heathen natives.
The
earliest known account of the story comes from an illustrated document dated
from 1548 in Nahuatl transcribed in the Latin
alphabet. The document refers to an
Indian by his Aztec name. It features an
elaborate engraved illustration of a kneeling peon venerating an image of the
Virgin in the sky. The document was
discovered in 1995 but some scholars doubt its authenticity.
There
is greater faith in a mid-16th Century
16 page document in Nahuatl called the Nican mopohua believed to be
composed by a native speaker educated by the Franciscans. The
text of this document was later incorporated into a printed pamphlet both the native tongue and Spanish editions which
were widely circulated in the mid-17th century.
We
do know from Church records that the image was on display at the chapel at the
foot of the hill about twenty years later.
Church records indicate that there was a rising controversy over its
veneration. Indio peons were flocking to
the church, inspiring hope in some that the conversion to Catholicism had been
deep and successful. But the Franciscans
there were alarmed because the Indians seemed to be praying to the icon as if
it were a pagan idol and seemed to expect miracles from it. Many seemed to identify the Virgin with their
old goddess Tonantzin.
Meanwhile,
Dominicans had arrived in Mexico in
great numbers and were eclipsing the rival Franciscans in power and
influence. They approved of the strategy
of encouraging devotion by folding in aspects of traditional religion and
re-defining it as Catholic. One of the Dominicans,
Alonso de Montúfar, succeeded Zumárraga
as Archbishop of Mexico. In a 1556 sermon he praised the popular devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe—perhaps the
earliest use of that name for the image on the tilma at the chapel of the
Virgin Mary at Tepeyac. He acknowledged “certain
miracles had occurred.” He thus put his
official stamp of approval on the rising cult.
Fray Francisco de Bustamante, Abbot of the
Franciscans at the church responded with a sharply worded homily just days
later.
The devotion at the
chapel... to which they have given the name Guadalupe was prejudicial to the
Indians because they believed that the image itself worked miracles, contrary
to what the missionary friars had been teaching them, and because many were
disappointed when it did not.
The
open dispute caused something of a scandal.
Archbishop Montúfar responded by opening an official inquiry, a timeless
dodge of Church bureaucracy. During the inquiry the Franciscans testified
that the image did not have a miraculous origin but was the work of the “the
Indian painter Marcos,” probably referring to the Aztec Marcos Cipac de Aquino who was still alive and active. Despite this the inquiry unsurprisingly
endorsed the view of the man who had commissioned it.
Montufar
had the Franciscans removed from custodianship of the shrine and replaced them
with diocesan priests under his
direct authority. Moreover he ordered
the construction of a new and much larger church where the image was mounted
elaborately for veneration.
Franciscans
kept up their criticism but were clearly on the losing end with the now firmly
entrenched Dominican authorities and with the Indian masses.
The
origin of the name Guadalupe has also become a matter of controversial. Some scholars believe that it was a
corruption of some Nahuatl description. Tecuatlanopeuh,
“she whose origins were in the rocky summit” and Tecuantlaxopeuh “she who
banishes those who devoured us” have both been suggested as possibilities.
Most,
however, agree that the name refers to Our Lady
of Guadalupe, Extremadura, whose cult was important in Spain in the 16th
century and had been brought to the New
World.
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| The tilma on display for veneration at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadelupe in Mexico City. |
The
revered image has been altered over the years, although not the central image
of the Virgin on the tilma. The figure
of a dark skinned virgin is four foot eight inches high. Her gown
is a tawny rose tinted color said to recall the Mexican landscape. She is
girded by a thin black sash which is taken as a sign of pregnancy. She wears a blue mantle
traditionally associated with Mary.
Sharp beams radiate from her suggesting
that she is “brighter than the Sun.” One foot rests on the Moon and the other on a snake’s head. This has been interpreted as her victory over
darkness and triumph over the pagan
Aztec feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl
and/or the serpent of temptation
from the Garden of Eden.
She
may have originally had a crown on
her head or that might have been added later.
Still later the crown was decorated with gold which deteriorated over the years. In 1899 the crown was erased either because
of the deterioration or to bring the image more into line with the republican sentiments of the
people. The tilma was reframed with the
top being brought down just above the Virgin’s head to disguise damage in the
process of the erasure. Other additions
over time included stars painted on the inside of her mantle representing the constellations of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, a supporting angel below her, and silver decoration which
has also deteriorated. Despite being
centuries old on an unstable medium, however that central image remains
remarkably bright.
The
tilma and its image have never been subjected to the modern scientific analysis
of given to the Shroud of Turin, but
superficial examinations by experts shows that the material might be a coarse weave of palm threads, the rough
fiber called cotense , or a hemp and
linen mixture rather than the traditional India agave fiber credited in legend.
A seam runs down the center
of the tilma.
The
image probably was painted using water-soluble
pigments mixed with a binding medium
of animal glue or gum Arabic.
This was a traditional native technique for painting on fabric
called tüchlein. Few, if any such paintings dating from so
early, however, have retained their vibrant color and escaped cracking and
deterioration.
The
second church was declared a Basilica and
remained the home of the Virgin for hundreds of years. The interior was damaged by a bomb planted by an anti-clerical revolutionary in 1921 but the image remained
undamaged. The church, however, was
sinking into the old lake bed of
Mexico City. Between 1974 and 1976 a
modern circular shaped Basilica was
built. It is now the most visited
Catholic site and the third-most visited sacred
site in the world.
In
recent years, as Rome has sought to
shore up the loyalty of Latin American
Catholics, Juan Diego has been elevated despite continuing doubt of his historic
existence. Pope John Paul II began
the process which led to his beatification
on May 6, 1990 at the Basilica in Mexico City with the Pope himself
presiding. John Paul returned just three
years later on July 31, 1992 for the canonization of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin whose feast day is now observed on
the anniversary of the first apparition, December 9.
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| The banner of Father Miguel Hildago's peon army of 1810. |
Aside
from its singular religious significance the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has
become a rallying point for the national aspirations of the Mexican people, particularly
for the indios and mestizos. The peon army that Father Miguel Hidalgo after El
Grito de Delores marched behind a banner painted with a representation of
Our Lady and many soldiers of the Mexican
War of Independence in 1810 fought with printed cards of her image stuck in
their sombreros.
Although
anti-clericism ran deep among many in the 20th
Century Mexican Revolution, Emilio Zapata’s army of southern presents and Indians
entered Mexico City in triumph
behind a Guadeloupian banner. More
recently, the contemporary Zapatista
National Liberation Army (EZLN) also
in the south named their mobile city
Guadalupe Tepeyac in honor of the
Virgin.
In
the United States banners of Our Lady appeared in the marches and during the
strikes of the United Farm Workers,
whose leader Cesar Chavez was deeply
religious. More recently it has been
carried in demonstrations in support of immigration
reform.
As
I type these final sentences in the wee small hours of the morning an all-night
vigil continues in Des Plaines at
the National Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
More than are in attendance for the
largest such veneration in the United States.
This year newly installed Chicago
Archbishop Blasé Cupich was expected to be in attendance, a sign of the
importance of Hispanic Catholics to
the American Church.
