This study is based on research conducted with the assistance of a Mendel Fellowship from the Lilly Library at Indiana University, a Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grant, and a Spring Travel Grant from Oklahoma State University. The author wishes to thank Andrew Doust, Robin Gavin, Francesco Pellizzi, Lisa Voigt, William Wroth, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. English translations of Biblical passages in this article are from the Douay-Rheims translation.

1. In New Mexico, retablos are icon paintings executed on a wood or tin backing. Bultos are wooden sculptures of Christ, the Virgin, or saints. Both types of objects are regularly referred to as santos, and artists are known as santeros (or icon makers).

2. H. R. Lucero, “Art of the Santera,” in Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, ed. N. E. Cantú and O. Nájera-Ramírez (Urbana-Champaign, 2002), p. 44.

3. St. Librada’s iconography and association with Wilgefortis are discussed by Joseph Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., Mexican Devotional Retablos from the Peters Collection (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 161–163; G. F. Giffords, Mexican Folk Retablos (Albuquerque, 2004), pp. 116–117; W. Wroth, Christian Images in Hispanic New Mexico (Colorado Springs, 1982), p. 209. Wilgefortis scholars have also noted the link between the two saints: I. E. Friesen, The Female Crucifix: Images of St. Wilgefortis Since the Middle Ages (Waterloo, Ont., 2001), pp. 47–48; E. Nightlinger, “The Female Imitatio Christi and Medieval Popular Religion: The Case of St Wilgefortis,” in Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Wheeler (Dallas, 1993), pp. 292, 313, 322–325.

4. The Leccionario Seguntino was contained in the Breviary of Don Rodrigo (ca. 1192–1221). Sigüenza’s first bishop, Bernard of Agen (ca. 1050–1125), is believed to have authored the Latin manuscript containing the saint’s legend and prayers. On the medieval sources and their authorship, see D. E. González Chantos y Ullauri, Santa Librada, virgen y mártir, patrona de la Santa Iglesia, ciudad y obispado de Sigüenza (Madrid, 1806); T. Minguella y Arnedo de las Mercedes, Santa Librada, virgen y mártir, Patrona de Sigüenza y su obispado: Estudio histórico (Madrid, 1910); M. E. Díaz Tena, “La vida de Santa Librada y su fuente medieval,” Culturas Populares 8 (2009), www .culturaspopulares.org/textos8/articulos/diaz.pdf.

On the origins and art of St. Librada

CRISTINA CRuz GONzáLEz

St. Librada, a Spanish saint popular in nineteenth-century New Mexico, is easy to recognize. Held to a wooden cross by ribbons or nails, the female martyr tends to wear a bright red dress, belted at the waist, and a distinguished black cloak with the appearance of rich, gold brocade (fig. 1). A late twentieth-century resurgence in her popularity is evidenced by her many images in both retablo and bulto form (fig. 2).1 Today, she is often propagated as a patron saint of abused women, or any woman “suffering at the hands of difficult males.”2 Although several scholars have rightly observed a historiographical link between St. Librada and St. Wilgefortis, the iconographic and devotional history of the Spanish martyr is yet more complex and interesting, deserving of serious discussion that speaks to the image’s migration across time and space.3 Although what follows does not pretend to fill the many historical gaps, it does seek to provide the framework

for a clearer understanding of the saint’s iconography and its appropriation, transformation, and relevance in nineteenth-century New Mexico. The appeal of Librada’s image and story, I contend, can be studied as a response to the prestige associated with the imitation of the broken body of Christ and with the growing importance of lay religious organizations devoted to this imitatio Christi. More broadly, the present study is also an effort to better comprehend the role of religious icons and paraliturgical practices in areas largely defined by a strong and powerful laity. If religion and society were indeed coterminous in nineteenth-century New Mexico as previous scholars have suggested, how do pictorial representations and visual strategies reflect and contribute to this equation?

An early history: From decapitation to crucifixion

The earliest known source for St. Librada’s life is a medieval breviary that, although now lost, was partially transcribed and published in 1806 and 1910. Known as the Leccionario Seguntino, the twelfth-century text describes nine sisters who were martyred for their Christian faith; specifically, the especially pious Librada was decapitated for rejecting her father’s demand that she worship pagan idols and marry an adequate suitor.4 Sigüenza Cathedral, once home of the breviary, is the keeper of the saint’s relics and site of the oldest retablo built in her honor. A tour de force of the Plateresque style, the north transept showcases a brilliant altar screen by the sixteenth-century painter Juan Soreda

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5. The Portuguese bishop Fadrique funded the exquisite retablo. The Soreda paintings are expertly analyzed in A. Ávila, Imágenes y símbolos en la arquitectura pintada española, 1470–1560 (Barcelona, 1993), pp. 173–220. See also J. Brown, Painting in Spain, 1500–1700 (New Haven, 1998), p. 34. On the relics, see F.-G. Peces Rata, Historia de las aperturas del sepulcro de Santa Librada y envios de sus reliquias (Sigüenza, 2006).

more generally, the early Christian female martyr. Other sixteenth-century sources—such as an abridged version of her life published by Sebastián Martínez (1561) and an anonymous Spanish chapbook (ca. 1563)—effectively follow the strategic lore of the Leccionario Seguntino and the Soreda altarpiece in detailing the miraculous birth of the nonuplets, their rejection of pagan idols and royal comforts, their fidelity to their bridegroom Christ, and Librada’s martyrdom by decapitation.

Although Librada is the central subject of both the breviary and altar screen, her case for sanctity does not appear substantially different from that of her

(fig. 3).5 Finished between 1526 and 1528, the Soreda altarpiece is composed of five canvases narrating the martyr’s life together with a scene of Christ’s crucifixion. Here we witness the trial of the nonuplets before their idol-worshipping father, Librada’s decapitation, and the martyr’s symbolic enthronement. Focusing on the piety and Herculean bravery of the sisters, Soreda promotes Librada as an ideal representative of her siblings and,

Figure 1. Anonymous, St. Librada, late nineteenth century. Oil on tin, 14 x 10 in. Albuquerque, New Mexico State University Art Gallery. Photo: © New Mexico State University Art Gallery.

Figure 2. Gustavo Victor Goler, St. Librada, 1990. Carved wood, gesso, and watercolor. Courtesy of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Inc., Santa Fe, NM (1999.38). Photo: Andrew Doust.

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6. William Christian counted thirty-three vows for St. Quiteria in the towns and villages of New Castile from 1575 to 1580, while Librada earned fewer than ten. He also counted fourteen chapels for Quiteria in the same period while Librada enjoyed fewer than three. See W. A. Christian, Jr., Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain

(Princeton, 1981), pp. 67, 72. A third sister, Marina, had a following in Córdoba, Astorga, and Seville, and was the subject of a portrait by Francisco de Zurbarán.

7. Since Molanus also knew Wilgefortis by her Dutch name, Sint-Ontkommer, the correlation with Librada was an easy assumption, as ontkomen means to flee or escape.

century Librada surpassed her sisters, becoming the most revered member of the brood in Spain and Spanish America. Two important events led to her increased popularity: her reconfiguration as a crucified saint and her newly minted association with St. Wilgefortis.

In 1568, the Flemish theologian Johannes Molanus proposed that Librada was simply the Latinized name of St. Wilgefortis.7 Wilgefortis, a bearded, crucified saint

sisters. They each embrace a Christian life, are wedded to Christ, and reject Roman suitors; all are left for dead by their mother, rescued by a Christian servant, and ultimately sacrificed for their faith. To be sure, several hagiographical sources would come to lavish considerable praise on her sister Quiteria, and there is no doubt that she, too, was venerated throughout the early modern Spanish world.6 Yet by the mid-eighteenth

Figure 3. Juan Soreda, St. Librada altarpiece, ca. 1526–1528. Sigüenza Cathedral. Photo: Cristina González.

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8. First materializing around the middle of the fourteenth century, the musician was said to serenade the saint in her final hours, for which he was rewarded with one of her precious slippers. Friesen (see note 3), pp. 35–36.

9. Compiled and edited by Caesar Baronius, the Roman Martyrology received papal approval and official status with the 1584 edition. The text incorporated material on ecclesiastical history and information from local churches; it was subsequently reprinted in 1586, 1589, and 1598.

10. Interest in the lives of female martyrs—and the importance of establishing the legitimacy of local devotions in view of post-Tridentine reforms—is revealed by the 1591 publication of Antonio Gallonio’s Historia delle Sante Vergini Romane. Crucifixion, of course, was the most prestigious form of martyrdom, as conveyed in Bartolomeo Ricci’s Triumphus Jesu Christi Crucifixi (Antwerp: Plantin Press, 1608). The richly illustrated Flemish publication contains a section specifically devoted to female martyrs, including St. Wilgefortis.

11. B. Porreño, Discurso de la vida, y martirio de la gloriosa virgen, y martyr Santa Librada, Española, y patrona de la iglesia y obispado de Siguença (Cuenca: Casa Salvador de Viar, 1629).

12. The Jesuit Jerónimo Román de la Higuera (d. 1611) authored the false chronicles around 1594, claiming their spectacular discovery in a monastery in Fulda, Germany. Porreño, a former student of Higuera, may have had direct access to one of several copies of the purportedly ancient documents circulating at the time, and he was definitely familiar with many of Dextro’s apologists including Francisco Bivar and Tomás Tamayo de Vargas. On the Spanish production of false histories and their impact on seventeenth-century historiography, see J. Godoy Alcántara, Historia crítica de los falsos cronicones [1868 (1999)] (Granada, 1999); R. L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, 2009); idem., “Clio and the Crown: Writing History in Habsburg Spain,” in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, ed. R. L. Kagan and G. Parker (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 73–100; K. B. Olds, “The ‘False Chronicles’ in Early Modern Spain: Forgery, Tradition, and the Invention of Texts and Relics, 1595–c. 1670” (Ph.D. diss, Princeton University, 2009).

13. S. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, 1995). For the impact of Rome’s liturgical reforms in Iberia, specifically Catalonia, see H. Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter Reformation (New Haven, 1993).

14. Kagan, Clio and the Crown (see note 12), p. 258.

by stressing the importance of religious traditions—“tradition is truth”—before discussing the history and continuity of Librada’s veneration in Sigüenza. Notably, he relies heavily on the recently discovered chronicles of Flavio Lucio Dextro, forged documents that endowed Spain with ancient origins, Christian founders, and medieval privileges.12 Porreño’s history, like its debunked source, was no doubt a direct response to earlier papal anxieties concerning the local variation of liturgical practice and the widespread veneration of legendary saints. In 1568, Pope Pius V’s Roman Breviary offered the one and only liturgical record that was to be followed throughout the Catholic world, in effect purging a great many saints that were deemed legendary or could not be historically substantiated. The breviary’s prefatory bull, Quod a nobis, made exceptions for only those saints who could be shown to have at least a two-hundred-year history of veneration. The post-Tridentine regularization of devotional practice, so compellingly described in the work of historian Simon Ditchfield, led to a proliferation of hagiography and historia sacra as each diocese sought to have their local cults approved by Rome.13 For Spain, this forging of local history was coupled with a wave of pious nationalism—to borrow Richard Kagan’s apt phrase—as communities sought to present an illustrious, Ibero-centric vision of early Christianity while simultaneously vindicating their regional saints.14 Porreño’s biography of St. Librada is just one example of how Spanish historians were quick to produce their own skillful weapons of polemic when

prominent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, stems from the misinterpretation of the Volto Santo (a robed, crucified Christ from Lucca, Italy) as a female figure, along with the growth of a fourteenth-century legend concerning a crucified princess. According to this tale, a pagan Portuguese king was intent on marrying his Christian daughter off to a wealthy suitor from Sicily. In an effort to ward off the political marriage and maintain her purity, the pious virgin prayed for divine assistance until her pleas were answered: A beard appeared on the young girl’s face, deterring the suitor and infuriating her father. With the fiancé disgusted and daunted, the humiliated father sentenced his daughter to death. In general, Wilgefortis’s iconography includes a royal crown, beard, and cross. In parts of Tirol and Bavaria, where the cult enjoyed the greatest longevity, the iconography also typically includes a fiddler at the foot of the cross.8 Within Iberia and Spanish America, it should be noted, Librada is almost never depicted with a beard or a fiddler by her side. In the Hispanic tradition, the virgin’s martyrdom does not hinge on a suitor’s presence or the rejection of a forced marriage.

Molanus’s Wilgefortis-Librada association turned up in the official Roman Martyrology of 1583.9 The equation proved attractive, perhaps irresistible, to later Spanish hagiographers and historians: The counterfactuals linked Librada to a more solid textual tradition and allowed the early Christian Spanish saint to garner the prestige awarded to crucified martyrs.10 In 1629, Baltasar Porreño published a lengthy history of the saint, the first Spanish publication to describe Librada’s crucifixion and announce her Spanish identity to a largely Iberian audience.11 The author begins his exhaustive study

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15. E. M. Cioran, Tears and Saints, trans. I. Zarifopol-Johnston (Chicago, 1995), p. 3.

16. Anonymous, Breve resumen de las glorias de la virgen y mártir Sta. Librada, patrona de la santa Iglesia Catedral de la ciudad de Sigüenza y su Obispado (Murcia: Joseph Diaz Cayuelas, 1732).

17. Ibid., p. 17. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. The use of the Arabic-derived alcázares instead of the standard

Castilian word castillos to denote castles is peculiar, but might point to Castelo Branco’s appellation from a Roman settlement until 1215, Castra Leuca (“white camp” or “white fort”). “Alcázar” likely derives from castrum (the singular form of the Latin castra).

18. Ibid.

faced with Rome’s sweeping liturgical reforms. Although the forged chronicles and the resulting seventeenth-century histories have long been criticized, their effects proved long-lasting, as any modern visitor to Santiago de Compostela can attest.

A life revised: Librada in Spain and Spanish America

Sainthood in itself is not interesting, only the lives of the saints are.

—E. M. Cioran15

A 1732 vita, published in Murcia, offered eighteenth-century readers what would soon be the standard biography of St. Librada.16 According to this text, in 119 c.e. a royal woman named Calsia gave birth to female nonuplets in Galicia. Since the strange event cast a serious doubt on Calsia’s marital fidelity, she hid the girls from her husband and directed her midwife to drown them in a nearby river. Instead, the midwife baptized the infants and installed each in a Christian home. Librada, the last girl to be born, became fervent in her piety, took a vow of chastity, and offered religious lessons to pagan and Christian communities alike. Soon the sisters became victims of anti-Christian persecution and were rounded up and brought before their father, the pagan king Lucius Catilius Severus. Quick to discover their identity, he welcomed them as princesses—so long as they separated from their respective Christian communities, vowed to worship pagan gods, and maintained their chastity within a newly built temple dedicated to the goddess Diana. Contemplating the proposal, we hear only the voice of Librada, who pledges her life and loyalty to Christ, the official bridegroom of saintly women. The king responds to this filial defiance by incarcerating the sisters, hoping the confinement might change their disposition. Librada escapes, flees into a forest, and joins other persecuted followers of Christ. According to the 1732 vita, Librada was captured for a second time and taken to Castra Leuca (modern-day Castelo Branco), Portugal, where she witnessed a Christian massacre. Impressed by the ghastly scenes, she welcomed her own martyrdom and begged her

executioners not to delay the happy event. As her anonymous eighteenth-century biographer writes:

Dejando su cándido cuerpo resplandeciente . . . subió su alma con las Coronas de Virgen y Martyr a los Alcazares del Cielo.”17

[Leaving her innocent and luminous body . . . her soul ascended to the castles of Heaven with the crown of both virgin and martyr.]

Defying the protocols of evidence, the eighteenth-century vita articulates biographical details and character traits that sustain Librada’s long-term project of instauration. Although the text begins by recounting the circumstances of all nine sisters as a whole, at a particular moment the story ceases to be about quaint Christian siblings and instead becomes a panegyric devoted to a single crucified saint and her Christlike martyrdom. Emphasis on the cross is clear: Not only does Librada take pride in the knowledge that she will perish by the same instrument as her bridegroom, the author deliberately describes the episode as a reflection of Christ’s own crucifixion and stresses the importance of this event in the saint’s life.

Gran felicidad fue de nuestra Santa morir en Cruz, siendo semejante a nuestro Redempto. Y ésta es la particularidad que más sobresale en su Gloria, y singular vida.18

[Dying on the cross like our great Redeemer filled our saint with great happiness. And this is the detail that stands out most in her glorious, singular life.]

The vita is joined by poetry that further contributes to the Christological association and its importance. One poem especially focuses on the symbolic and literal role of the cross in the martyr’s life and death: The saint carried the cross throughout her life in imitation of Christ, it was the means to her death, and the sweet tree of her (after)life. The author concludes that all faithful should embrace and carry this potent instrument. Although Librada follows in the footsteps of several Christian male martyrs who perished or were tortured on a cross, the author underscores that she was the first female martyr to die in this manner. Not only is Librada superior to her eight biological sisters, she also holds an exceptional position in the hierarchy of all female saints.

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19. Carmona’s preparatory drawing for the Madrid sculpture is in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (BNE, Dibujo: 14.2.115). The Church of San Justo y Pastor was begun in 1739 and completed in 1745. It is reasonable to assume that Carmona’s sculpture dates to this period. The artist is responsible for a second, nearly identical work now housed in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid, although the museum lists the sculpture as St. Eulalia (a crucified saint identified with both Barcelona and Mérida, Spain).

20. For the confraternity, see J. Fausto Medina, Constituciones y ordenanzas de la primitiva Congregación de la invicta virgen y martyr Santa Librada, patrona del Obispado de Sigüenza, erigida y fundada por sus naturales en la iglesia paroquial de San Justo y Pastor de esta corte (Madrid: Imprenta de los Herederos de Francisco del Hierro, 1749).

21. Breve resumen (see note 16), p. 47.

22. He spent the last years of his life in Mexico City and is buried in its cathedral. For a brief biographical sketch of this donor and a study of his religious patronage while bishop in Quito, see A. Justo Estebaranz, “Las donaciones a España del obispo de Quito don Diego Ladrón de Guevara,” Artigrama 24 (2009): 225–237. See also J. de Almeida, “¿200 años de olvido?: Santa Librada en la memoria de la independencia,” in Independencia, independencias y espacios

in extending her cult throughout Spanish America. He had been a theologian at the University of Sigüenza before being sent to the Americas, where he served as bishop in Panama, Ayacucho (Huamanga), and Quito, and eventually became Viceroy of Peru.22 As late as

The 1732 Murcia publication led to at least five more editions of the saint’s life by century’s end. The texts include novenas and announce indulgences associated with her veneration in Sigüenza and elsewhere in Spain. An especially popular devotional site was the parish church of San Justo y San Pastor in Madrid. Here, Spain’s faithful received indulgences for praying before a sculpture of Librada by Luis Salvador Carmona, which was believed to be a miraculous object capable of answering prayers.19 By 1750, the popular thaumaturgic sculpture was linked to an influential confraternity and became the focus of several publications and engravings.20 Lorenzo Sánchez de Mansilla’s broadside reproducing an image of the Carmona sculpture offers one hundred days of indulgence to those who pray in front of the print, turning the reproduction itself into a cult object. A short time later, a similar engraving by Manuel Carmona (1756), nephew of the sculptor, claimed to capture a “true image of Saint Librada” and referred specifically to her cult at San Justo y Pastor (fig. 4). Thus, although Sigüenza remained home to her relics and altar, other loci of veneration were fast emerging in Spain’s cultic landscape.

Despite the aporias inherent in Librada’s reinvention as a crucified saint, her veneration rose to new heights, even beyond Europe. In eighteenth-century Spanish America, her cult was established in Bogotá, Cali, Las Tablas (Panama), Quito, Guamanga (now Ayacucho, Peru), and Lima.21 Evidence of that colonial religiosity remains: In Quito, an impressive eighteenth-century sculpture of Librada is housed in the Monasterio de la Concepción; a church in Ayacucho displays a colonial altar honoring the saint; and in Lima, the historic Rímac area boasts an early eighteenth-century church dedicated to the female martyr. Diego Ladrón de Guevara was a great devotee of Librada and played a fundamental role

Figure 4. Manuel Salvador Carmona, St. Librada, engraving, 1756. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Estampa 36160. Photo: © Biblioteca Nacional de España.

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culturales: diálogos de historia y literatura (Bogotá, 2009), p. 160; J. de Almeida, “A Place of Memory and Oblivion: Santa Librada, the Patron Saint of Independence in Colombia,” Revista Brasileira de História 31, no. 61 (2011): 41–60.

23. J. J. Peredo, Breve resumen de las glorias de la Virgen y mártir Santa Librada (Mexico City: Luis Albadeano y Valdes, 1835), p. 32.

24. I thank Aaron Olivas for bringing to my attention her altar in the Church of San Nicolás de Bari in Seville. Regarding her veneration in Panama, see C. Vásquez, Historia de la Iglesia de Santa Librada: Las Tablas, 1679–1975 (Panamá, 1975). For present devotion in Colombia, see Almeida, “¿200 años de olvido?” (see note 22), pp. 139–162.

25. The retablo, signed and dated 1830, is in the Luther Bean Museum at Adams State University (Alamosa, CO).

26. Most of the surviving examples are in the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art (Santa Fe), the New Mexico State University Art Collection (Las Cruces), the Historical Society of New Mexico/Palace of the Governors (Santa Fe), and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

depicting a simply dressed crucified female, typically outlined in black). While the bulto sculptures and wood retablos are done in a recognizable New Mexican folk style, and many can be attributed to particular artists from the region, the tin retablos are all anonymous and appear to be crafted by outside artists or workshops (fig. 1). A lamina now in the collection of New Mexico State University typifies the genre. Librada’s facial features are delicate and rendered with chiaroscuro. The drapery folds of her red gown hint at a feminine torso underneath, and her dark cloak is richly ornamented with gold detailing. Her body is adorned further with a string of pearls, a red floral wreath, and a thin, white halo. Her gaze invites our contemplation as two wing-like palm branches emerge from her body to announce her status as a martyr. The laminas featuring St. Librada tend to be similar in iconography, and thus seem to follow a single model. They may have been crafted south of New Mexico, perhaps in Durango, which was the seat

1835, a Mexican edition of Librada’s vita remembered this powerful patron as someone who obtained relics from Sigüenza for New World distribution and championed the saint’s cult throughout South America.23 Today, Librada’s popularity in the Americas—New Mexico, Colombia, and Panama, in particular—stands in sharp contrast to her fate in Spain, where she is mostly forgotten. No longer the patron of Sigüenza or its cathedral, Librada can only claim minor devotion in Seville.24

A New Mexican corpus

Although religious communities in central New Spain had knowledge and access to St. Librada via text and image, devotion was strongest following Mexican independence (1821) and, ultimately, most formidable in the northern reaches of the region. The artist José Aragón may have been the first to craft her image in New Mexico, perhaps as early as 1820 (fig. 5). The santero’s recognizable style—simple settings, thick black outlines, and demarcated borders—is revealed in many examples, one of which displays the artist’s signature and a date.25 From the 1830s onward, Librada’s iconography is seen with greater frequency and her name begins to appear in baptismal records for the region. Over thirty nineteenth-century New Mexican retablos and bultos of St. Librada are known to be in museums and private collections; of these, most are from 1850 to 1900, when devotion to the Spanish saint appears to have peaked.26 In general, the corpus can be divided into three formal categories: bultos (minimally adorned sculptures depicting a crucified female), laminas (paintings on tin showing an elaborately dressed woman tied to a cross), and wood retablos (altarpieces with paintings in tempera

Figure 5. José Aragón, Santa Librada, mid-nineteenth century. Gesso and water-soluble paint on wood. New Mexico History Museum (DCA 2007.32.207). Photo: Michael O’Shaughnessy.

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27. Tin was not easily available in New Mexico until the mid-nineteenth century, although it was occasionally imported into the region earlier. See E. Boyd, Popular Arts of Spanish New Mexico (Santa Fe, 1974), pp. 295–301; L. Coulter and M. Dixon, Jr., New Mexican Tinwork, 1840–1940 (Albuquerque, 1990), p. 1; D. Pierce and M. Weigle, Spanish New Mexico (Santa Fe, 1996), vol. 1, p. 108. The bishop of Durango claimed jurisdiction over the Church in New Mexico until Bishop Lamy established a new archdiocese in Santa Fe in 1850. Pockets of Durango (particularly the area of Mapimí) and Chihuahua venerated St. Librada during the nineteenth century. Significantly, Giffords cites a 1966 survey that documents five retablos

of St. Librada originating from “the Bajío section of Mexico.” According to the author, they were brought to Nogales (Sonora) by a peddler from Guadalajara and then sold to various shops in the border town. All five retablos are described as tin laminas: Giffords (see note 3), pp. 170–171.

28. Pacheco’s treatise, Arte de pintura (published posthumously in 1649), argues that Christ was crucified with four nails rather than three—a view he enforced as both an inquisitor and an artist.

29. In his study of Byzantine icons, Hans Belting described curtains as marks of distinction that could qualify a person as a saint, with the power to change “mere appearance into an epiphany, the ritualized act of appearance.” H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, 1994), pp. 80–82.

by José Benito Ortega, Librada wears black boots, an Anglo-American fashion regularly appearing in Ortega’s works (fig. 6). As opposed to the laminas, which show Librada tied to the cross by delicate red ribbons, most bultos use actual nails. In one sculpture (fig. 7), four prominent nails pin the body to the cross, reminding us of Francisco Pacheco’s prescription for accurately representing Christ’s crucifixion.28 Many retablos employ a painted border to frame the image of St. Librada. In some cases, the presence of the martyr’s cross is emphasized through its transgression of this pictorial frame. The painted border encourages the viewer to approach Librada not only as a figure within a historical narrative but also as an icon set within a devotional space. Similarly, several retablos include representations of curtains, drawn back to reveal the holy figure (see fig. 8). This visual trope is commonplace in New Mexican retablos; more than just a framing device, the pictorial presence of curtains (re-)creates sacred space by imitating the ritualized setting for holy objects. New Mexican altars—whether in a public church or private space—regularly employed cloth to alternately hide and unveil an object in accordance with the feast days of the liturgical calendar. The artist’s decision to situate Librada between drawn curtains thus reveals the desire to present the saint as experienced revelation.29

The iconographic source for Librada’s New Mexican manifestation was most certainly a print. A Mexican engraving of the saint from around 1800 gives us an impression of the kind of model that probably circulated in New Mexico (fig. 9). Here, the holy woman is shown in a desolate landscape, arms extended and nailed to a cross. Her feet are coarsely drawn and her figure is outlined in black, as it usually is on wood retablos. Although her vita was published multiple times in Mexico City from 1820 to 1835, neither relic fragments, nor altars, nor painted portraits of the

of episcopal power in the region and a booming mining area during the nineteenth century.27

Analyzing the known images of St. Librada from nineteenth-century New Mexico, one can identify several elements that attest to the appropriation and transformation of the saint in this region. In a sculpture

Figure 6. José Benito Ortega, St. Librada, ca. 1879–1890. Carved wood, gesso, and watercolor. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (TM1581). Photo: courtesy of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

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30. The four known editions of Breve resumen de las glorias de la Virgen y Mártir Santa Librada published in Mexico City (1820, 1823, 1829, 1835) are extremely rare; only one copy of each has been located to date. Three are in the Medina Collection in the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile in Santiago, and one is in the Sutro Library in San Francisco (see note 23).

31. In colonial Mexico, as in Europe, “perfection” through mortification was stressed in both image and text. See Bartholome de Letona, Perfecta Religiosa (Puebla, 1662) and Pedro Ansalone, La religiosa ilustrada con instrucciones practicas para renovar su espíritu en ocho dias de Exercicios, útiles tambien para la perfeccion de todos estados (Mexico City, 1750). The Mexican painting reproduced here

capital city and surrounding areas. Franciscan nuns in central Mexico adopted an image of a crucified nun as a symbol of the “perfect religious” who mortifies her senses (fig. 10).31 The nun holds a candle in each hand

saint are known to have been collected, dedicated, or propagated in the viceregal capital.30 Yet images of a woman on a cross, not specifically identified as Librada, did resonate with a colonial religious audience in the

Figure 7. José Manuel Benavidez (“Santo Niño Santero”), St. Librada, late nineteenth century. Carved wood, gesso, and watercolor. Private collection. Photo: Andrew Doust.

Figure 8. José Aragón(?), St. Librada, ca. 1830. Pine, gesso, and tempera. Courtesy of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Spanish Colonial Arts Society, Inc., Santa Fe, NM (1964.7). Photo: Andrew Doust.

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as figure 10 is discussed by Santiago Sebastián in Juegos de Ingenio y Agudeza: La Pintura Emblemática de la Nueva España (Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arte, 1994), pp. 332–333. For a brief examination of the Iberian examples of this iconography, see G. Llompart, “El fresco de la religiosa crucificada de las Descalzas Reales de Madrid,” Traza y Baza 3 (1973): 53–60. The concept of a crucified nun surely derives from the late medieval image of a monk on a cross. For the medieval origins, longevity, and importance of this iconography as an extension of imitatio Christi and devotio moderna, see A. Seebohm, “The Crucified Monk,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 59 (1996): 61–102.

32. Isaiah 33:15: “stoppeth his ears lest he hear blood, and shutteth his eyes that he may see no evil”; Psalms 38:2: “I have set guard to my mouth”; Sirach 22:33: “Who will set a guard before my mouth, and a sure seal upon my lips.”

33. Isaiah 66:24: “their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched”; Mark 9:43: “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.” An engraving of the worm of conscience (gusano de la conciencia) is prominently featured in P. Séñeri, El infierno abierto al Christiano para que no caiga en él (Puebla, 1780). Shakespeare alludes to the image in Richard III: “The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul” (Richard III, 1.3.225).

malum), ears covered (obturat aures tuas ne audiant), and mouth guarded (posui ori meo custodiam).32 A worm of conscience (vermes conscientie)—a biblical image commonly associated with remorse—gnaws at the side of the body, close to the heart.33 The rope tightened

while her feet are nailed together to the cross, her eyes blindfolded. Banderoles cite both interior and exterior mortifications—that is, the negation of the senses and the crucifixion of the body. The banderoles declare that eyes should be shut (claudit oculos tuos ne videant

Figure 9. Anonymous, Santa Librada, engraving, ca. 1800. Los Angeles, The Getty Research Institute, Special Collections. Photo: © The Getty Research Institute.

Figure 10. Anonymous, The Crucified Nun, ca. 1700. Oil on canvas, 69 x 48 in. Mexico City, Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones. CONACULTA-INAH-MEX; reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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34. Luke 12:35: “Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands.” The inscription’s reference to this passage explains the presence of the two candles held by the crucified figure.

35. Galatians 2:19: “with Christ I am nailed to the cross”; Galatians 6:14: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”

36. The header announces “With Christ I am nailed to the Cross, Galatians 2:19.” The poem reads “Dulces clavos pues teneis / Crucificado a mi Amor / Fíxadme en la cruz con él / Porque con él muera yo.” [One can have sweet nails / Crucified to my love / Fasten me to the cross with Him / Because with Him I die.] The image accompanies the nun’s funerary sermon, a text that was challenged and eventually confiscated by the Holy Inquisition.

37. Rose of Lima died in 1617 and was canonized in 1671, becoming the first American-born saint. Juan Correa painted the earliest known Mexican altar screen celebrating the saint’s life in Mixcoac,

ca. 1671; see E. Vargas Lugo and J. Guadalupe Victoria, Juan Correa: Su vida y su obra (Mexico City, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 351–352. Cristóbal de Villalpando followed up with examples for Mexico City’s cathedral (ca. 1697) and the Dominican church in Azcapotzalco (ca. 1702); see Cristóbal de Villalpando, ed. J. Gutiérrez Haces et al. (Mexico City, 1997), pp. 278–282; 304–309; 394–396; 408–411.

38. Cynthia Robinson makes the point that while the imitation of Christ’s humiliations, torments, and death reached obsessive levels throughout much of late medieval Europe, the Christian kingdom of Castile avoided personalized Passion imagery and programs that conveyed individual, somatic, or intimate relationships with Christ. A

would produce religious enlightenment. Such austere practices were promoted in the early modern Spanish world, encouraged not only by the work of Thomas but also that of the sixteenth-century theologian Luis de Granada.38 In one Spanish convent, Capuchin nuns

around her waist is labeled a chastity belt (cingulum castitatis), while the inscription immediately under it emphasizes restraint and perseverance (sint lumbi vestri praecincti ).34 The largest scroll, at her knees, announces, “I am crucified to Christ, therefore the world is crucified unto me and I to the world” (Christo confixus sum cruci ideo quem mihi mundus crucifixus est et ego mundo).35

An equally spectacular testament to female Christological piety is found in a drawing from around 1804 featuring a celebrated nun from Querétaro (fig. 11). Sor María Ignacia is shown dressed in a tattered habit, wearing the crown of thorns, and crucified to (and with) Christ. The implicitly sexual double-crucifixion, set within a convent cell, fuses both bodies to the cross, and in so doing implies that the crucified nun literally embodies the broken body of Christ. Christ’s head, emphasized with resplendent rays of light, pokes out and over the nun’s shoulder as if in approval. The text atop the engraving—Christo confixus sum cruci—describes the scene while the poem below underscores the benefits of Christological piety and the nun’s death in Christ.36 Lest we imagine that a greater lay population was oblivious to this brand of extreme imitative piety, we need only recall the stunning paintings of St. Rose suspended on a cross, prominently displayed and treasured in Mexico City’s cathedral and in the parish churches of Azcapotzalco and Mixcoac.37

Women on crosses: Imitatio christi in the Spanish world

Scholars such as Caroline Walker Bynum have demonstrated the appeal of Thomas à Kempis and the imitation of Christ for medieval and early modern women. Women mortified their flesh, suspended their bodies from crosses, and deprived their senses with the expectation that a maximum identification with Christ

Figure 11. Anonymous, Nun and Christ, ca. 1804. Ink drawing, 4 x 7 in. Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico, Historia vol. 77, exp. 1–2. Photo: © Archivo General de la Nación.

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Castilian visual and textual culture engaged with the imitation of Christ does not truly emerge until the sixteenth century. Robinson links Spain’s late medieval pictorial treatments of the life of Christ to the devotional strategies aimed at Castile’s converso cultures. C. Robinson, “Preaching to the Converted: Valladolid’s Cristianos nuevos and the Retablo de don Sancho de Rojas (1415),” Speculum 83 (2008): 112–163. Luis de Granada’s Libro de la Oración y Meditación (1554) was required reading for St. Teresa of Ávila (see M. Nancarrow Taggard, “Picturing Intimacy in a Spanish Golden Age Convent,” Oxford Art Journal 23 [2000]: 105), and directly influenced the religious experiences of St. Rose of Lima (see F. Graziano, Wounds of Love: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Rose of Lima [New York, 2004], p. 54).

39. The cross was fitted with metal and wire contraptions for holding the neck, arms, and legs in place. Nuns who lasted more than three hours “were especially happy and satisfied for they knew the extent to which it pleased their majesty to see his wives in this new Calvary.” A. T. Fernández Moreno, Compendio histórico chronológico de la fundación maravillosa del monasterio de Jesús María de Capuchinas Minimas del Desierto de Penitencia de la Ciudad de Granada, vol. 1 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de Manuel Fernández, 1768), p. ix.

40. E. Gunnarsdóttir, Mexican Karismata: The Baroque Vocation of Francisca de los ángeles, 1674–1744 (Lincoln, 2004), pp. 53–55, 72, 79. For a comparable case of female stigmata in Spain, and the importance of such marks in the construction of sanctity, see M. Nancarrow Taggard, “Art and Alienation in Early Modern Spanish Convents,” South Atlantic Review 65 (2000): 36–37.

41. The bibliography is long and necessarily abridged here: C. F. Lummis, The Land of Poco Tiempo (Albuquerque, 1928); A. Chavez, My Penitente Land: Reflections on Spanish New Mexico (Albuquerque, 1974); M. Weigle, The Penitentes of the Southwest (Santa Fe, 1970); idem, Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood: The Penitentes of the Southwest (Albuquerque, 1976); Boyd (see note 27), pp. 440–451; T. J. Steele and R. A. Rivera, Penitente Self-Government: Brotherhoods and Councils, 1797–1947 (Santa Fe, 1985); W. Wroth, Images of Penance, Images of Mercy: Southwestern Santos in the Late Nineteenth Century (Norman, OK, 1991).

42. For an outline of the varying points of view, see Weigle (see note 41), pp. 5–13; and Wroth (see note 41), pp. 42–47.

religious practices were not merely a medieval revival, but true devotio moderna.

Powerful and prestigious female convents, the likes of which were found in the viceregal capital and in the colonial cities of Puebla and Querétaro, were entirely absent from New Mexico’s religious landscape. The image of a perfect nun on a cross, therefore, was unlikely to have much resonance for a community of faithful in this northern area. Yet Librada—a courageous lay Christian crucified in a bleak pagan landscape—did strike a chord. Her representation and veneration were adopted by penitential confraternities who viewed her not solely as a model of self-sacrifice and religious austerity, but also of crucifixion piety in particular. Historians of colonial and nineteenth-century New Mexico have long stressed the importance of imitatio Christi and mortification exercises to penitential confraternities.41 Known as Penitentes, members of these brotherhoods performed Passion rituals throughout the year, flagellating their flesh and mortifying their bodies in imitation of Christ. They used wood, stone, metal, and thorns to scourge their own skin and often each other’s. In New Mexico, a man who conquered his body through spectacular feats of mortification was not isolated like a holy man of late antiquity, or an ascetic far removed from his community; on the contrary, his thirst for pain and his capacity to endure it was part and parcel of a collective imagination that considered such practices to be the most visible expression of communitas.

Although the genesis of the Penitentes in New Mexico is a subject of much debate, most scholars now agree that the group was at least influenced by a pre-existing tradition of penitential confraternities in Spain and New Spain, and encouraged by the Franciscan foundation of the Third Order in the late seventeenth century.42 The Crown’s secularization of mendicant properties and the removal of friars from New Mexico, starting in the second half of the eighteenth century, caused a rupture between the Penitentes and the Franciscans that

would take turns on a communal cross, each striving to last at least three Christlike hours.39 Francisca de los Ángeles, an eighteenth-century Mexican nun, regularly toted a cross and repeatedly received the stigmata; although inquisitorial examiners doubted her claims, her confessor was ultimately able to provide her bloodied habits and detail her sores as evidence of divine favor.40 Female hagiography invoked Christocentric piety in the pursuit of sanctity, while religious theses such as una virgen crucificada al mundo y que crucifica al mundo (Mexico City, 1795) and La religiosa mortificada (Madrid, 1799) equally confirmed the female desire to become one with the Son of God. Visual cues directed nuns to value imitative piety as both devotion to the torments of Christ and appreciation for the visceral and iterable responses to His crucified body. A painting from the Augustinian convent in Puebla makes the point: In the composition, St. Clare of Montefalco imitates Christ’s sorrowful march to Golgotha by taking up a cross behind them, serving as a model for nuns and novices to follow the pious procession with their own crosses (fig. 12). This was not an invitation to elegiac quietism but rather the display of religious imitation demanding future repetition—and it is easy to imagine the Mexican nuns doing just that as they ritually retraced the via crucis in their convent’s courtyard and mimed with intensity the scene at Golgotha. Such

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43. Boyd (see note 27), p. 446.44. Ibid., p. 449; Wroth (see note 41), p. 51.

45. On the dating of moradas, see W. Wroth, The Chapel of Our Lady of Talpa (Colorado Springs, 1979), p. 44. Little has been written of

laity announced a simultaneously more prosaic and more disturbing historical reality. In post-independence Mexico, mendicant orders were nearly powerless, and a weak Mexican clergy was no longer capable of caring for the spiritual needs of the various and variegated religious communities of the northern territories. Lay organizations and their paraliturgical practices in New Mexico, far from being supplemental, now provided much of the religious sustenance, spiritual guidance, and social support demanded by local communities.

Faced with penetrating disapproval and official suppression, penitential groups continued to operate beyond the boundaries of an official church structure and within their own architectural edifices. Moradas—freestanding meetinghouses accommodating long periods of prayer, singing, initiation rites, and ascetic exercises—flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century.45 American occupation of New

an understaffed secular clergy—increasingly skeptical of popular religiosity, public demonstrations, and baroque histrionics—was in no rush to re-create. As a result, confraternities became increasingly detached, figuratively and literally, from the Church. When pastoral inspections of New Mexico were conducted from 1817 to 1820, the delegate Don Juan Bautista Ladrón del Niño found much to criticize in the way of local burial practices, the use of human remains “in imitation of the Schools of Christ,” and the misuse of Third Order space in parish churches.43 The bishop of Durango, during his own visit in 1833, called the Penitentes a carnicería (butcher shop) and moved to suppress the group and their sanguinary customs.44 By the time the bishop returned in 1845, it was clear that his attempts at religious reform had utterly failed, as the Brotherhood of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) had grown stronger and larger in the region. Conflict between Church and

Figure 12. Anonymous, Vision of Santa Clara of Montefalco, eighteenth century. Oil on canvas, 21 x 29 in. Puebla, Museo de Arte Religioso Santa Mónica. CONACULTA-INAH-MEX; reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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the morada as an architectural structure. For a brief analysis, see Boyd (see note 27), pp. 459–466. For the morada as a social structure, see Weigle (see note 41), pp. 19–28. For images and other items found in moradas, see Wroth (see note 41).

46. Wroth also stresses the parareligious importance of late nineteenth-century New Mexican religiosity, writing “After the American Occupation of 1846 it was the Brotherhood which most strongly resisted the modernizing effects of Americanization by conscientiously preserving the core values of their Hispanic Catholic faith.” Wroth (see note 41), p. xv.

47. Boyd (see note 27), p. 438.48. See Wroth (see note 41), p. xv; and R. Frank, “The Life of Christ

and the New Mexican Santo Tradition,” Catholic Southwest 7 (1996): 33–34.

49. See Boyd (see note 27), p. 464. An excellent study of these death figures is found in Wroth (see note 41), pp. 149–159.

50. In his study of the altar at Our Lady of Talpa (Taos), Wroth considers the sculpture of Librada to be an image of mercy—an object “expressing the merciful aspect of Christian worship”—as opposed to a “transcendent image” or “image of penance” (his categories). Wroth (see note 41), pp. 65, 68.

and aesthetic environment. Artists supplied works for moradas while crafting items for parish churches, private chapels, and individuals; members of the brotherhoods engaged with religious objects within and outside of a group’s meetinghouse. Although the penitential rituals associated with the brotherhoods have attracted great attention, a strong crucifixion piety affected and inspired the community as a whole, and was both transmitted through and inseparable from the local visual culture.

Historians relating the construction of moradas and the expansion of penitential confraternities to an increase in the pictorial production of Christological themes have tended to exclude saints’ images as components of this greater crucifixion piety.50 Images of St. Librada were initially crafted in New Mexico in the first decade after Mexican Independence (post-1821) and their production increased from mid-century onward; this is precisely the period that, historians have argued, saw the largest jump in Passion iconography and brotherhood membership. Notably, Librada was neither associated with a mendicant order, strictly speaking, nor was she propagated by the secular clergy; rather, it was an expanding religious community—beyond the control of either priest or friar—that produced and consumed the Christlike images of the martyr.

While Penitentes were focused on the life and body of Christ, they also sponsored a corporeal religiosity that celebrated and rewarded the imitation of Christ. Understanding this milieu sheds light on the area’s investment in the crucified figure of St. Librada. The following alabado, a traditional religious hymn from the region, confirms the point.

1. Ya llegó la santa luzen la cruz enarboladaclavada de pies y manosla virgen santa Librada.

Now shone the holy lighton the tree of the crossnailed hand and foot—the virgin Saint Librada.

2. Ya la ponen en la cruzcon sus ayates vendidaatada de pies y manosla virgen santa Librada.

Mexico in 1846 did little to restrain the construction of these buildings or the religious rituals occurring within them. On the contrary, morada construction continued during the region’s status as a United States territory (1850–1912), perhaps with a new urgency stemming from the knowledge that the brotherhood—with its religious traditions, austere architecture, and affective images—was of vital importance to the daily lives of New Mexicans as a bastion of Hispanic piety in a culturally and politically fragmented landscape.46

Scholars have linked the proliferation of nineteenth-century Christological imagery to the prominence of moradas and their associated rites. In 1974, E. Boyd noted that morada artists “must have been many or prolific in view of the existing number of more or less repetitious bultos of the Nazarene Christ, the Ecce Homo, the crucifix, Christ in the Sepulchre and of the sorrowing Virgin.”47 More recently, William Wroth and Ross Frank have connected the preponderance of Passion iconography around 1860 to 1910 to the growing importance of penitential confraternities and to the area’s sociopolitical conditions.48 It should come as no surprise that confraternities became the most promising patrons for New Mexican artists. Crucifixion and Passion images were in demand, as were new forms specific to the morada setting. For example, life-size sculptures of “Doña Sebastiana” (death personified) pulling a rock-filled cart were regularly featured in the brotherhoods’ Holy Week activities. The female skeletal image not only reminded viewers of their own mortality but also called for a penitent volunteer to drag the assemblage, including the heavy cargo, with one hand while scourging his flesh with the other.49 Yet it would be a mistake to approach the visual contents of a morada as a corpus isolated from a greater social, religious,

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51. This alabado of ca. 1900 is recorded in a manuscript notebook (private collection), and transcribed and translated in T. J. Steele, The Alabados of New Mexico (Albuquerque, 2005), pp. 351–353. I have revised Steele’s translation somewhat.

8. Que desde allí ha de venirantes que Dios la juzgaraa cumplir con su ejerciciola virgen santa Librada.

She has come forth, before God judges her, to pass his test—the virgin Saint Librada.

9. En ese camino de arrozle ponen crucificaday lo anduvo de rodillasla virgen santa Librada.

On this gravel roadthey place her crucified,and she traveled it on her knees—the virgin Saint Librada.

10. Que desde allí ha de venirantes que el gallo cantaradisciplinando su cuerpola virgen santa Librada.

From here she will comebefore the cock crows,scourging her body—the virgin Saint Librada.

11. Amén, Jesús, le gritabanel sábado en la mañanaque su nombre sea con Diosla virgen santa Librada.

“Amen, Jesus,” they cried to heron [Holy] Saturday morningmay her name be with God—the virgin Saint Librada.51

As in her 1732 vita, Librada’s martyrdom appears as a reflection of Christ’s crucifixion. Marching to her Calvary with cross upon her shoulder, tormented along the way, the saint ascends the instrument of her martyrdom as the crowds chant the name of Jesus. Although the stanzas emphasize her likeness to Christ, no penitent would fail to recognize, and feel, the similarities between the narrative of Librada’s final hours and their own imitatio Christi. Indeed, the verses read less like a saint’s martyrdom and more like a Passion play, with Librada playing the central role of Christ. The holy light

Now they put her on the crossblindfolded with agave cloth,hands and feet attached—the virgin Saint Librada.

3. Catorce moradas tienedonde fue crucificadacon su corona de espinasla virgen santa Librada.

She has fourteen placeswhere she was crucifiedwith her crown of thorns—the virgin Saint Librada.

4. Mírale los pies clavadosdenegrida y afeadaal sermón de las tres caídasla virgen santa Librada.

Look at her nail-pierced feet,blackened and made uglyfor the sermon of the three falls—the virgin Saint Librada.

5. Los judíos la atormentanherida y ensangrentadaen la Calle de Amargurala virgen santa Librada.

The Jews torment herwounded and covered with bloodAlong the Street of Bitterness—the virgin Saint Librada.

6. Con mansedumbre infinitaque es de Cristo tan amadaque su nombre sea con Diosla virgen Santa Librada.

With endless meeknessso beloved of Christmay her name be with God—the virgin Saint Librada.

7. La llegan a su calvariocon sus ligas fatigadadescansa la cruz al hombrola virgen santa Librada.

They bring her to her Calvaryher muscles exhausted;she rests the cross on her shoulder—the virgin Saint Librada.

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Although New Spain had its share of images of women on crosses, which promoted the imitation of Christ as a viable model for female sanctity, the viceroyalty demonstrated little popular devotion to St. Librada. Nevertheless, nineteenth-century New Mexico witnessed widespread veneration for the saint, as icon makers produced bultos and retablos for churches, private altars, and moradas. The surge of images was contemporaneous with the intensification and expansion of penitential brotherhoods—lay organizations steeped in the tradition of mortification practices—and the changing sociopolitical landscape in New Mexico (first under the governance of the Mexican Republic and then as a United States Territory). With a weakened Church and an absence of friars, a powerful laity was largely in control of propagating devotions and particularizing worship, providing the images, draperies, ornaments, architecture, and music for the majority of religious altars. Within this context, Librada was reflective of local religion and a Christological religiosity that was coterminous with a given community’s identity.

While scholars have fruitfully examined Passion imagery as both product and component of nineteenth-century New Mexico’s political and religious circumstances, the iconography of St. Librada points to an imitative piety that went beyond the literal representation of Christ. Celebrated in the region’s traditional art and music, the image of the crucified martyr reminds us that New Mexicans not only identified with the broken body of Christ, but also performed this identity—penitent, Catholic, and Hispanic—through the (re)presentation of the Christ-like. At the crossroads of a vastly expanded set of peoples and cultures, the nineteenth-century figure of St. Librada became a fecund discursive space, embodying Christological devotion and imitative piety while projecting regional inflections.

referred to in the first line is an inescapable allusion to the Holy Week ceremonies that directly addressed the brotherhoods’ idea of penance as enlightenment. Every year, members of the brotherhoods journeyed in pain from their morada to their makeshift Golgotha—a rocky hillside often a considerable distance away—where a volunteer mounted a cross in full view of his brethren. There, the flagellants would recreate the last moments of Christ on Earth. A great many details in the alabado have little to do with the historical claims found in Librada’s vita. The crown of thorns in stanza 3, the tormenting Jews in stanza 5, the painful procession on bloodied knees in stanza 9, and the self-mortification in stanza 10 rather relate to the confraternity’s own identity and public performances. The saint’s union with Christ upon her death—which occurs on Good Friday (stanza 11)—becomes a model for the brotherhood’s own imitation of Christ and their investment in the iterable aspects of religious identity.

Conclusions

An obscure, early Christian female saint was resuscitated in the early modern Spanish world as a Christlike martyr and model of Iberian piety. In her rescripted role, St. Librada earned many devotees and her crucified image was rendered in a variety of media disseminated on both sides of the Atlantic. In some cases, the image itself gained a thaumaturgic status, as occurred with the sculpture in the Church of San Justo y Pastor in Madrid and another in Las Tablas, Panama. The recent scholarship by Jaime de Almeida stresses the importance of devotion to Librada in Colombia, and reminds readers that the powerful bishop Ladrón de Guevara was responsible for initially promoting her cult in the area. A comprehensive critical study of the saint’s colonial proliferation in Central and South America is still needed, however. Such scholarship would not only uncover the manner in which her veneration was transplanted from Spain to the New World—perhaps confirming additional key patrons—but it might also allow us to gauge the circumstances of the saint’s success and longevity in particular areas of the Americas. Why did devotion to Librada take hold in the Viceroyalty of Peru, but not New Spain? Why is the medieval Spanish saint hardly remembered in Iberia, but so fiercely revered in modern-day Panama and Colombia? These questions remain of interest not only for those concerned with a cult of saints in the Spanish world, but also for those addressing the more general topic of cultural exchange, transformation, and reorientation.