Mexican Instauration: Devotion and Transformation in New Spain

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/15685292-01801006

Religion and the Arts 18 (2014) 87–113 RELIGIONand the ARTSbrill.com/rart

Mexican Instauration:Devotion and Transformation in New Spain

Cristina Cruz GonzálezOklahoma State University

Abstract

This article interrogates the devotional histories and archival evidence related to OurLady of Angels in Tecaxic and Tlatelolco. Both Marian paintings survived lengthyperiods of neglect and dilapidated shrines. Throughout the late colonial period, theFranciscan Order and church elites exploited the notions of “incorruptibility” and“ruined spaces” in their desire to regulate piety and rogue religiosity. (In)corruptibilitydelineated the divine and sanctioned official intervention. Yet official support neverproved enough—both histories draw our attention to the politics of patronage andthe complex task of renovation and instauration; they ultimately demonstrate theinstability of sanctuary structures and the precarious nature of icon devotion.

Keywords

conversion – Franciscans – Virgin – assumption – Tecaxic – Tlatelolco

In the early seventeenth century, Pedro Millan Hidalgo, a resident of Toluca,would frequently tend to his farms in the rural area of Almoloya.1 Returning inthe evenings, he would stop at the hermitage in the nearby town of Tecaxic,

1 Research for this paper began as a fellow at the Getty Research Institute. Visits to the Mariansanctuaries in Tecaxic and Tlalelolco were made possible by the College of Arts and Sciencesat Oklahoma State University. I thank the editors of this issue of Religion and the Arts, RachelSmith and Ronald Bernier, for their valuable feedback. This article also benefits from thecountless conversations and visits to Tlatelolco with Marcos P. González. Translations aremy own, unless otherwise indicated.

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Religion and the Arts 18 (2014) 87–113

enticed by the structure’s distant lights and enchantingmusic.Millan expectedto find clandestine funerals, but he always found the structure deserted andin a desolate state save for one resplendent image at the altar: an enchantingpicture of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by cherubs and angels and ascendinginto Heaven. Others would follow Millan, seduced by heavenly music and theicon’s beauty and solitary survival in a dilapidated structure. In time, venera-tion to Our Lady of Angels was answered in miracles—she protected, healed,and guarded her faithful. With the encouragement of the Franciscan Order, aresplendent Baroque sanctuary and adjacent monastery were built in Tecaxic,a suitable home for a numinous object and her appointed guardians.2Mexico was a prodigious landscape in the viceregal period (1521–1821), par-

ticularly from the seventeenth century onward: statues bled, crucifixes healed,paintingsmiraculously appeared. Although the first historicalmonograph ded-icated to a miraculous image in New Spain was a 1621 panegyric devoted to theVirgin of Remedies (Cisneros), it was the thaumaturgic Virgin of Guadalupethat would become the most celebrated icon.3 No other Mexican image hascommanded so much devotion or scholarly attention. Yet, as the recent booksby William Taylor and Edward Osowski remind us, colonial religiosity tendedto be defined by local communities with their own investments and, often,competing interests. Indeed, we must look beyond Tepeyac in order to bet-ter trace the contours of Mexican devotional objects and religious expressionthroughout—and beyond—the viceregal period.4This article contributes to the conversation by focusing on two little-known

Marian icons: Our Lady of Angels from Tecaxic and Our Lady of Angels fromTlatelolco.On the surface, thedevotionshavemuch in common: both arepaint-ings dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption, both trace their numinous startto their miraculous endurance in spite of deteriorated social and built envi-ronments, and both were championed by the Franciscan Order and Mexicanchurch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet, as this article willshow, the veiled differences are profound: compared to Our Lady of Tecaxic,devotion to the Tlatelolco Virgin was frequently interrupted throughout the

2 The story first appears in Mendoza.3 For an expert examination of Guadalupan historiography, see Brading,Mexican Phoenix: Our

Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries.4 Taylor discusses the complexities concerning aMexican cult of images, reminding readers of

the paramount importance of Christological devotions and both the change and intensifica-tion of religious practice in the decades after Independence. Osowski adds to our knowledgeof sacred sites, alms collection, and native agency in the delineation of religious devotion inlate colonial Mexico.

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late colonial period—at one point the image was even officially suppressed.In the early nineteenth century, a large cemetery was added to the sanctuary,allowing the dead to breathe new life into the devotion. But when the mortu-ary space fell into ruin andwas eventually relocated, devotion declined and thesanctuary suffered. Located in a largely native andmestizo neighborhood, andsurrounded by low-cost housing complexes, one nineteenth-century historiandubbed the icon the “Madonna of the Poor” (Altamirano 108). The fact that thesanctuary still stands with a small but committed following is nothing short ofastonishing.This article provides anoverviewof bothMariandevotions before discussing

their iconography, the theological and historical relevance of their incorruptstatus, and the politics of piety that dictated their rise, decline, transformation,and propagation in late colonial Mexico. The notion of the fallen hermitageand the non-perishable heaven-boundVirgin, I argue, ismore than an engagingliterary trope inspired by early Christian doctrine; it also brings into focus theofficial and informal anxieties concerning native piety and rogue religiositythat consumed the colonial Mexican Church.

I Nuestra Señora De Los Angeles, Tecaxic

The Franciscan historian Juan Mendoza, guardian of the Atenco monastery in1684 and our earliest source for the Tecaxic devotion, affirms that Tecaxic, alargely rural town located extramuros from Toluca, was well populated in theyears immediately after the conquest and that its inhabitantswere all baptized,practicing Christians. The first hermitage was an unassuming niche, small andsimple, with two front doors that essentially spanned the width of the build-ing. Likemanynative communities, Tecaxicwas struckby successive epidemicsthroughout the late sixteenth century and the onslaught of death and diseasesoon reverberated in the religious structure: a caved-in roof, broken doors, andcrumbling walls left the altar painting of Our Lady of Angels exposed anddefenseless. All three of our seventeenth-century sources for Tecaxic—JuanMendoza, Agustin Vetancurt, and Francisco Florencia—stress the image’s con-tinuous exposure to air, rain, dust, and sunshine, and emphasize the Virgin’ssupernatural survival.The late-sixteenth-century Tecaxic painting shows Mary rising up from her

tomb and ascending into heaven. Apostles and holy women stand behind andon either side of the sepulcher, astonished by the absence of a body andbearingwitness to the miraculous assumption. Angels play music or sustain her cloak,while cherubs form a halo around her head. A discernable blend of Immaculist

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iconography abounds: the Virgin rests her feet on a crescent moon, keeps herhands close to her body as if in prayer, and wears a deep red tunic and astar-studded blue cloak. As noted in both Mendoza and Florencia, Tecaxic’sstatic quality and iconography are reminiscent of the Mexican Guadalupe.5And like Guadalupe, the icon is made of local fibers suited for a native tilma orcloak. In the Guadalupe narrative, the detail serves to authenticate the Virgin’sappearance to the humble JuanDiego (leaving her divine image on the Indian’scloak), but in the case of Tecaxic, referencing the material highlights the icon’sincreased susceptibility to the ravages of its environment and underscores itssurvival as a true triumph (Mendoza 3–4). Florencia is explicit on this point:“If, with great wisdom and foresight, God had not conserved it, the inclementweather would have destroyed it especially since the material on which it waspainted is so fragile and corruptible.”6 In sum, the image with its perfectlypreserved pigmentation survived unforgiving weather conditions, a ruinededifice, and its own local material support.7All three authors cite a different story as the moment of the icon’s discovery

and recognition of its incorruptible status. Mendoza gives the Pedro Millanstory a primary position, while Vetancurt states that the Marian painting layin its dilapidated and abandoned structure until two nearby residents, hearingangelic music, were drawn to it and discovered the icon’s presence. Florenciaprovides a lengthy description of this episode:

Two men apparently from the city of Toluca, furious with each otherfor who knows what reason, decided to stage a duel behind the Virgin’shermitage in Tecaxic. As they were about to commence their fight, theybegan to hear music composed of such celestial voices that, captivatedby the revelation and astonished by the sweetness of the sudden andunexpected harmony, they suspended their brawl … Entering the Virgin’schapel they saw the image of the Virgin, alone and destitute … and theywere convinced that they were hearing heavenly angels heralding the

5 On her affinity with Guadalupe, Florencia (174) is actually citing Baltazar de Medina whomakes the comparison in the prologue to Mendoza’s history.

6 173. “Y si Dios con admirable providencia no la hubiera conservado, con tantas inclemenciasde los tiempos se hubera del todo acabado y destruido, y mucho más siendo la materia enque estaba pintada tan deleznable y corruptible.”

7 Today the painting could be seen with modern alterations: gilted putti lay a golden crownon the Virgin’s head while a silver crescent moon shines at the foot of the Marian figure.Unfortunately, the sides andbottom third of the canvaswere cropped so that the compositionnowmisses most of the sepulcher and surrounding saintly figures.



glories of their queen …With this, full of fear and reverence, they placedtheir weapons at the foot of the Virgin and went from being enemies tobeing good friends, adoring Our Lady.8

This Jesuit author, however, begins his account of the miraculous image witha different vignette: traveling in the area, the bachelor Antonio de Sámano yLedesma got caught in a storm and took shelter in the structure, only to quickly“recognize that being inside was exactly the same as being outside; he was aswet by the rain as if he were standing in an open field.”9 In any case, all threeauthors stress the deplorable state of the edifice, the survival of the icon despiteits vulnerability, and the image’s ability to signal its numinous status throughmusic and a golden light.News of the incorruptible, melodious painting spread and the Franciscan

monastery in Toluca provided the hermitage with quick, temporary repairs.Mendoza is clear that, even in its original condition, the structure was a “mis-erable, native construction” (2). There were few amenities and, because follow-ers had few funds, devotionwas accompanied by economic restraint: the “poorIndians” swept her altar, offered incense and flowers, lit their paltry candles,and even collected and exhibited songbirds within the sanctuary so that theQueen of Heaven might be attended by nature’s music throughout the day (2).This last point is an unusual detail—no other hermitage or sanctuary in NewSpain is described as housing birdcages—and our author suggests that theirpresence was constant: “they searched [the hills] for songbirds so that theymight hang them in cages along the walls of the temple (as they are now) con-tinuously alternating sweet songs in admirable harmony …”10 The descriptionof birds within the hermitage and sanctuary brings to mind both the celestial

8 175. “Dos hombres, al parecer vecinos de Toluca, por no sé que diferencias enojados sedesafiearon bárbaramente, y por más sólo escogieron para el duelo el cerro de Tecaxic, alas espaldas de la ermita de la Virgen: y estando ya en la actualidad y empeño del desafíooyeron unamúsica de voces tan celestiales, que suspensos con la novedad, y admirados dela dulzura de la repentina y no esperada consonancia, suspendieron la riña… Entraron enella y vieron la imagen de la Virgen sola y desamparada y se peruadieron que eran ángelesdel cielo los que publicaban las glorias de su reina…Con esto, llenos de pavor y reverenciapusieron las armas a los pies de laVirgen, y haciéndosede enemigosmuyamigos, adorarona la gran Señora …”

9 173. “pero a poco rato adviertió que en ella semojaba comi si estuviera en el campo…” Thestory appears in Mendoza but not in Vetancurt.

10 2. “Solicitan musicos pajarillos que colgados en jaulas por las paredes del Templo esten(como estan) continuamente alternando dulcissimas consonancias en admirable, y con-certada armonia …”

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music heard at the moment of the Virgin’s ascension and the regular inclusionof birds and musical angels in Assumption scenes. But the impression causedby the Marian icon surrounded by live, singing birds has more local import forMendoza. As he explains, Tecaxic, or Tecaxique as it was known in the seven-teenth century, comes from the Nahuatl word for bird’s nest (tecaxitl); this def-inition not only transforms the sanctuary into a heaven-bound tree house butgives addedmeaning to the angelic salutation AveMaria.11 As one can assume,Mendoza exploits these etymological felicities throughout his text.12Awakened by the pious attention, the painting of the Virgin regularly pro-

duced sweet, celestial music—every Saturday according to Florencia—andcontinued to emit a radiant glow. Yet such occurrences were sometimes mis-taken for more sinister acts: when Pedro Millan’s nephew saw flickering lightsand heardmusic coming from the hermitage, he failed to remember his uncle’saccount and instead suspected the “Indians to be practicing some kind of idola-try” (Mendoza 12). He entered the sanctuary with the determination of an idol-oclast only to discover Christian presence. In fact, despite the occasional sus-picion, the natives in Mendoza and Florencia tend to be extremely pious, evenexhibiting a paranormal intimacy with the Christian image. Francisco Fuentesand his family were known to spend nights in the sanctuary and, on one occa-sion, a group of brightly dressed musicians “wearing cloaks of the kind usedby the inhabitants of this land” came to light candles and play sweet melodiesfor the Virgin; once the display was complete, the performers magically disap-peared and their identities could be traced no further (Mendoza 13). Duringanother sleepover, one of the Fuentes sons witnessed something even morephenomenal: two natives were supernaturally elevated “with feet in the air inthe manner in which the angels are painted in the picture of Our Lady.”13

11 1. Ave is the Latin and Spanish word for bird. An association between angels and birdsregularly appears in early colonial Nahuatl, and tropical birds, especially, were consideredthe souls of the heroic dead. According to sixteenth-century Nahua belief, bird-angels“inhabited the heaven of the sun and … spent their time singing praises to their solar lordand descending to earth to suck nectar from flowers” (Burkhart 206).

12 Unfortunately, the linguistic agreements proved too good to be true, as tecaxitl reallymeans stone receptacle or mortar and tapazolli is the Nahuatl word for bird’s nest. BothVetancurt and Florencia dispute Mendoza’s definition and offer the correct origin for thewordTecaxic. Yet theremaybe something toMendoza’s lexicon—perhaps the communityreally did refer to the sanctuary as a bird’s nest and even the Virgin as a bird, per the nativetendency to associate birds with angels and the divine.

13 Mendoza 13. Angelic natives became somewhat of a visual trope by the late colonialperiod, employed not only in church spaces but in printed material too. See the recent



According to the historical sources, by the mid-seventeenth century theincorruptible imagewas a popular object of devotion for residents of theTolucavalley including Sinacatepec and the repopulated town of Tecaxic. In 1651, onthe Feast of the Assumption (15 August), a sermon delivered by Franciscanfriar Alonso Bravomotivated the faithful and forced the Tolucamonastery intoaction. Funds and supplies were collected—wealthier residents contributedmoney while the poorer Indians conveniently and “spontaneously offered freelabor.”14 First, a monastery was built adjacent to the hermitage and then con-struction began on a new sanctuary. When funds were exhausted and materi-als were still needed, they miraculously appeared; in the monastery, too, thefood supply inexplicably multiplied before the guardian’s eyes. By 1676, onlythe retablo (altarpiece) remained to be completed; a “master artist” was hiredfor the job and leftovermonieswere used for a portería (a colonnaded entranceto a monastic enclosure) and additional works for the monastery.Like all successful icons,Our Ladyof Tecaxic consoled, healed, andprotected

her faithful. Florencia provides the most extensive collection of miracles: thehealing of a cancerous arm and crippled leg, the protection shown to a drown-ing man and another who was struck by lightning, the reviving of a dead girl,and themercy shown to countless individuals in hopeless situations. In return,followers visited the sanctuary, praying and petitioning the image as expectedbut also taking exact measurements of the icon, touching the figure of the Vir-gin with keep-sake flowers, and collecting the melted wax and burnt remainsfrom the candles in the sanctuary.15 These cenizas y pavesas (ashes) were con-sidered relics and, asMendoza states,weredissolved intowater and given to thesick to drink with favorable results (17). Secondary-relics came in other forms,too: one ill woman with a gangrened arm collected the dust and dirt that had

volume by Cervantes and Redden, Angels, Demons and The NewWorld. Dressed in flowingrobes and feathery artificial wings, native angels also frequently appeared on the colonialstage (Burkhart 206–207).

14 Mendoza 8–9. Florencia amends this slightly, adding that thenatives eagerly donated theirlabor and only asked for a meal in return. Perhaps the details should be read against thecommon claim that the secular church and mendicant orders, in pursuit of sumptuouschurches and extravagant monastic complexes, often exploited a native workforce. Forexample, in a virulent letter to the king dated 4 February 1563, the friarMathurino Gilbertiattacked the bishop Vasco de Quiroga for harassing and over-working natives—“generallywithout pay”—in order to build Patzcuaro’s cathedral, “a project that will have no end”(“Memoria del padre Gilberti”).

15 Such activities extended the power and immediacy of the object and its miraculousproperties. For late medieval precursors, see Bynum and Christian.

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gathered on the picture frame, mixed it with her saliva, and smothered theinfected areawith the concoction—asurgeon attested tohermiraculous recov-ery the next day (16).The ingestion of physical pigment in order to achieve supernatural pro-

tection from some ill or evil underscores the apotropaic properties of theTecaxic composition and is reminiscent of the central function of early Byzan-tine images. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (787ce) relates a case involv-ing a gravely ill woman who, praying before her household icons of Saint Cos-mas and Saint Damian, scraped off bits of their surfaces and, mixing the par-ticles with water, proceeded to drink the potion. She, too, was miraculouslyhealed (Brubaker and Ousterhout 7). Fast forward to fifteenth-century Castileand one finds similar religious practices: pilgrims at the shrine of Guadalupein Extremadura “not only kissed the slab of marble on which the image wasdiscovered, some of them were cured by drinking scrapings of the rock withwater.”16In sum, the town of Tecaxic offers us a success story. At the end of the six-

teenth century it was a site ravaged by weather and disease; its populationhad declined significantly and its humble hermitage was little more than aheap of rubble save for one image. The mid-seventeenth century ushers in anew era defined by a numinous Marian icon, a newly built Baroque shrine,and Franciscan-approved religiosity. The three biggest religious historians ofseventeenth-century Mexico herald and advance the devotion’s transforma-tion, celebrate the icon and ornate sanctuary, and inspire further veneration.The appeal and popularity of the painting and sanctuary appear constantthroughout the late colonial period, even when control of the structure waseventually transferred from the Franciscan Order to the parish church.

II Nuestra Señora De Los Angeles, Tlatelolco

Torrential rains fell on the viceregal capital and surrounding areas in the year1580. According to a devotional history written in 1781, floodwaters carrieda painting of the Virgin of Angels into the neighborhood of Coatlan (in thedistrict of Tlatelolco).17 There, a native noble named Itzayoque rescued the

16 Christian 88. Scraping the encasing or pedestal of the icon, as in this Castilian case, likelyfollows the tactile approach to saints’ tombs in early Christianity, as Christian suggests.

17 Ventancurt was the first to refer to the devotion (or hermitage?), calling it “Ixayoc’sAssumption,” yet he fails to discuss the image (Vetancurt 69). Florencia andOviedo do not



floating image and resolved to render it proper veneration in a small oratoryor santocali. When the painting on cotton began to flake, the cacique (nativeleader) ordered that a faithful copy be painted directly onto the adobe wall ofthe chapel (fig. 1).The oratory was officially recognized in 1595 and the Franciscan church

and monastery in Santiago Tlatelolco were allowed to oversee the site.18 Still,devotion declined, the adobe chapel fell into ruin once more, and new floodscame. Pablo Peñuelas specifically highlights the destruction caused by thefloods of 1607 and 1629. Chimalpahin, a native contemporary source, confirmsthe damage in his diary:

Then came the month of August [1607], in which likewise there werestrong rains … starting with the Church of Santo Domingo, much watersprang up and gushed forth; the inside got very full of water. No longercould anyone go in, andmass couldno longer beheld there, because it canreally be said that the church was half filled with water along the nave …And in Santiago Tlatelolco the altepetlwas flooded everywhere too…Andall the religious, the friars, and also all the female religious, the nuns, wholived inMexico were all worried about the churches and themonasteries,their houses, how theywere greatly flooded everywhere andwater sprangup inside.19

Between inundations, the adobe sanctuary was quickly and poorly restored.Following the 1629 catastrophe, construction on a new chapel was hamperedby lack of funds and interest. It was not until 1685, according to Peñuelas, thatmass was finally celebrated. It was precisely at this time that Vetancurt jot-ted down the sanctuary’s existence, duly recording it as one of twenty her-mitages in Tlatelolco (69). Other than that brief mention, the structure, image,and veneration were unremarkable in 1695. Peñuelas claims that by 1735 the

refer to it at all. The colonial bibliography is extremely sparse; see Haro, Patiño, Peñuelas,and Viera. For a recent yet limited analysis of the devotion and what it might mean toeighteenth-century claims of elite native identity and community-formation, seeOsowski45–51.

18 No documentation regarding the image from this early period remains. The first writtenaccount of the painting’s sixteenth-century origin is Peñuelas’s 1781 text.

19 Altepetl is a Nahuatl word meaning city and community. I have taken the English transla-tion of Chimalpahin from Lockhart et al. 97–101. Vetancurt also mentions the 1607 down-pour, incidentally comparing it to the flood of 1580 (120).

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figure 1 Guillermo Kahlo. Our Lady of Angels in Tlatelolco, 1910. Gelatin silver print,28×35.5cm. Guillermo Kahlo Photographic Inventory of Spanish Colonial ChurchArchitecture in Mexico, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles CA, Acc. No. 90.R.75.Image courtesy of the Getty Research Institute, Special Collections.



building, now under the protection and authority of the Church of Santa Anain Tlatelolco, was again in complete ruin and without devotion of any kind(15). It was not until 1745 that a sturdier stone foundation was laid for a newchapel. JoséHaro, a tailor fromMexicoCity, renovated this stone chapel in 1776.A year later, Mexico City resident and historian Juan de Viera would findmuchto admire:

[T]he icon is encased in crystal with a rich frame made of pure silver.The Mother of God performs so many miracles through this image that,from morning until night, the chapel is frequented by all of her faithfuland even governing elites such as the viceroy, archbishop, barristers, andpeople of the highest class.20

Harowas fundamental to the devotion’s eighteenth-century renewal, approval,and future life. According to Peñuelas, the tailor was traveling one day to thecollege of Tlatelolco in order to take a student’s measurements for a suit. Ona whim he stopped at the chapel and, peering through the doors, becamemesmerized by the icon and amazed by the deplorable state of the sanctuary.He returned to the site, decorated the altar, and vowed to restore the edifice. On3 May 1776, the archbishop blessed the space and mass was held the followingSunday. With the tailor’s zeal and the powerful support of the archbishop,construction began on a new, sumptuous, and solid sanctuary around the year1782. The building was completed in 1808 and, despite its current bare andunkempt state, still stands.21

III The Virgin of the Assumption or the Immaculate Conception?

In the town of Tecaxic, an incorruptible icon commanded sweet, celestialmusic. In the seventeenth century, witnesses testified to hearing the melodies;

20 53. “… la tienen bajo de cristales y en riquíssimo marco de plata maciza. Son tantos losprodigios que está haciendo por medio de esta Santa Imagen la Madre de Dios, que de lamañana a la noche está frequentada su capilla de todos los fieles y aúnde los príncipes quegobiernan, como es el Señor Virrey y Arzobispo, togados y personas de primera esfera.”

21 For analysis of its nineteenth-century renovations and modifications, including the addi-tion and eventual closure of an adjacent cemetery, see HerreraMoreno. For an eyewitnessdescription of the sanctuary and its surroundings in the nineteenth century, see Altami-rano 105–129.

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subsequently, the faithful—sometimes accompanied by actual birdsong—contributed to the chorus in celebration of the icon and advocation. John ofDamascus, writing on the ancient tradition of the Assumption, affirms that theApostles heard angelic music during Mary’s entombment in Gethsemane, apoint that was noted by the Mexican devotion’s biographer Juan Mendoza. Nosuch music was ever emitted by the Tlatelolco painting. In fact, although theMarian devotions at Tecaxic and Tlatelolco are said to be in honor of the Vir-gin of the Assumption, the Tlatelolco icon lacks many of the traits customarilyassociated with Mary’s Assumption.No one can deny the unambiguous Assumption scene revealed in the Te-

caxic altar: assisted by a gathering of angels and cherubs, the Virgin rises upfrom her sepulcher to take her place in heaven. The presence of the stunnedapostles down below emphasizes the absence of her body and the act of divinetranslation. In Tlatelolco, the Virgin is also surrounded by cherubs (no angels),yet her body appears static instead of ascending; her downward-cast eyes andthe crown floating above her head emphasize the gravitational pull. No Trin-ity awaits her in heaven, nor do witnesses bid her farewell. In fact, a sepul-cher does not appear at all. Actual viewer experience might have been evenmore confounded, since we know that the wall image was habitually dressedand obscured by costly metals, semi-precious stones, and fabrics.22 Peñuelasdescribes Haro’s inspiration and determination to outfit the image of Mary’sbody with fine fabrics in 1776, and this was certainly how she was still viewedin 1884when the historian and critic IgnacioAltamirano saw the icon in her lat-est sanctuary setting.23 The painted figure was “covered in silks, gold-threadedsilk tapestries, jewelry, and eclipsed only by the brilliance of the candelabra andangelic court.”24

22 The practice of dressing sculptures in the early modern Spanish world is well-known.“Dressed” paintings in Spain and Spanish America receive less study, partly becausemanywere strippedof their popular accoutrements starting in thenineteenth century. Certainlyin the case of Tlatelolco, the mixed-media served to underscore theological points (Maryas resplendent Queen of Heaven) while, again, emphasizing the materiality of the repre-sentation.

23 According to Peñuelas, only God could have inspired Haro with the idea to “outfit withcloth, and with much propriety, an Image painted on a wall as if it were a sculpture”(43).

24 Altamirano 128. The author goes on to explain that by “angelic court” he means all of thecolorful children in the sanctuary.



The literature on theTlatelolcoVirgin adds to the confusion surrounding herdesign. It is true that Vetancurt refers to the hermitage as “Ixayoc’s Assump-tion,” but failing to describe the image, it is hardly clear whether the histo-rian ever saw the icon. Haro believed she was dedicated to the ImmaculateConception, not the Assumption, as is apparent in the title of his 1777 pub-lished novena (a type of prayer book), and in the frontispiece accompanyingit. The engraving shows the Virgin flanked by her parents Saint Joaquim andSaint Anne—iconography that typically underscores her immaculate nature.The same image was included in a 1797 printing of the novena and a similardesign illustrated the confraternity’s patent in the early nineteenth century(fig. 2).The confraternity was dedicated to the icon and the membership charter

repeatedly refers to the image as “the Immaculate Queen of Angels.” Not oncedoes the book suggest that the icon is the Virgin of the Assumption. Perhapsmost tellingly, the icon’s feast was not celebrated on the day of the Assumption(15 August), as was the case in Tecaxic, but the day reserved for Our Lady ofAngels (2 August).In his short history of 1781, Peñuelas is perfectly aware of the confusion

and offers his own explanation of the Virgin’s identity: the town’s residentsmight have referred to the icon as “Izayoque’s Assumption” because of all thecherubs in the painting, wrongly assuming that they were angels guiding herto heaven. The author categorically identifies the icon as the Immaculate Con-ception anddisavows the idea that somehow the artistswho created the adobe-backed painting misread an Assumption model or were incapable of imitatingit “as some have said.” Evidently, some unlearned residents of the period evenbelieved that “although thepainterwanted a copyof theAssumption, thepaint-ing miraculously transformed itself into the Immaculate Conception” (Peñue-las 18–19). For this pious and learned writer, model and copy were the same: laPurísima Concepción de María (Mary Immaculate).Marian advocations do more than determine a devotion’s feast day; they

might also signal historical associations, local contexts, and religious patron-age. The Virgin of the Assumption was hugely important in New Spain. Forthe conquerors, she was a preferred advocation who provided much neededprotection and military success in the New World: Tenochtitlan fell just twodays prior to her feast and so future celebrations habitually linked themomen-tous historic occasion with the liturgical festival. The cathedrals in MexicoCity and Guadalajara, amongst others, were dedicated to her devotion. Elitepainters such as Alfonso López de Herrera and Juan Rodriguez Juarez dazzledcolonial viewers with their interpretations of the theme. Mary’s Assumptionwas popular beyond the Spanish community, too: the religious devotion was

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figure 2 Anonymous. Frontispiece to Patente de la Congregación de Nuestra Señora de losÁngeles (Mexico: Valdés, 1833), c. 1800. Engraving, F1207.C545. Courtesy of theBancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.



commemorated in Nahuatl theatre, and the native nobility in Tlaxcala dedi-cated churches in her honor and even included an Assumption image in thecity’s coat of arms.25What is not in dispute is the title applied to both images from their late

colonial transformation onward: Mendoza refers to the painting in Tecaxicas Nuestra Señora de los Angeles (1684) and Haro gives this same title to thepainting in Tlatelolco (1777). Traditionally, the Queen of Angels could havean Immaculist design or it could incorporate Assumption iconography; quiteoften it carries both. Even in our Tecaxic example, the Virgin rests on a cres-cent moon and keeps her hands closed as if in prayer; a typical Assumptionscene would have her arms apart and rising toward heaven—as she appearsin works by Titian, El Greco, Carracci, and Rubens. Significant for our pur-poses is that all three Marian advocations (Assumption, Immaculate Concep-tion, and Our Lady of Angels) were closely associated with the FranciscanOrder.Examining devotions in the various neighborhoods of Mexico City during

the colonial period, Francisco Morales found that the Assumption and theImmaculate Conception were almost exclusively the patrimony of the Fran-ciscan Order (371). As opposed to the Dominicans, the Franciscans were thegreat defenders of thedoctrineof the ImmaculateConception—adoctrine thatbecame dogma only in 1854. And, one might argue, devotion to Our Lady ofAngels was inseparable from the figure of Francis and Franciscan identity asa whole. When Saint Francis prayed before a crucifix and was given the orderto repair the church, he initially took the directive literally and got to work onthree ruined chapels including one in theUmbrian forest knownas the Portiun-cula, or little chapel. Overgrownwith vines and partially lit by natural sunlight,the altar had a medieval Assumption painting that, to the Poor Man of Assisi,appeared like a vision of the Heavenly Queen surrounded by a court of angels.The chapel (now basilica) continues to be dedicated to Our Lady of Angels andvenerated for its importance in the saint’s life and legacy. Our Lady of Angelswas the site where Francis was inspired and had frequent visions, where thesaint died, and where the Franciscan Order was established. Due to these con-nections, the Pope granted a rare plenary Indulgence for visits to this chapel—soon the Indulgencewas extended to all Franciscan churches for visitsmade on

25 ForNahuatl plays dedicated to theAssumption, see Burkhart andHorcasitas. The Tlaxcalacoat-of-arms, which Charles V granted the loyal city, depicts the Virgin of the Assumptionas patron of Tlaxcala. See Travis Barton Kranz 66.

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1 or 2 August. In New Spain, Our Lady Queen of Angels was the name givento cities, cathedrals, churches, and sanctuaries. For friars in colonial Mexico,the title and its feast day (2 August) were specific to the mendicant order’sbirthplace and mission.

IV Incorruptible Signs

The devotions in Tecaxic and Tlatelolco locate their miraculous origin in oneimportant trait: incorruptibility—their supernatural survival under circum-stances that would normally lead to decay, deterioration, or complete destruc-tion. Resistance to destructionwas not only amiraculous triumph, it alsoman-ifested life; that is, the defiance of corruption elevated the icons from artis-tic representation to divine presence. Incorruptibility has long been a sign ofsanctity. Francis’s dead but incorrupt corpse, as much as the stigmata, showedgathered mourners (and later followers) just how blessed the Poor Man ofAssisi was in the eyes of Christ.26 Yet incorruptibility—the refusal to decay—is a status usually reserved for the deceased; one claims incorruptibility indeath. Similarly, Tecaxic and Tlatelolco were rendered incorrupt because oftheir surroundings: a landscape made bleak by floods, disease, and a precari-ously built edifice. Their survival is not just added evidence of their thaumatur-gic properties—it is what brings their status as icons into focus. A survey of thecorresponding colonial engravings shows the importance of the environmentalthreats.At least eight engravings dedicated to the Virgin of Angels from Tlatelolco

were produced during a twenty-year period, the first published with Peñuelas’s1781 history.27 Each engraving presents the Virgin surrounded by angels and/orcherubs and observed by the Trinity in the form of three figures. The text at thefoot of the engraving invariably celebrates the image’s endurance on an adobewall since the sixteenth century. The 1798 engraving by José de Molina (fig. 3)proudly notes the object’s miraculous survival: “Copy of the Image of Our Ladyof LosAngeles, painted on a crude adobewall and conserved for the spanof two

26 Brother Elias of Cortona, an early follower of Francis, describes the saint’s dead corpseas having “a most beautiful mien, with wonderfully rosy, white skin which brought joy tothose who saw it. And the limbs which had previously been rigid, were now so very soft;they had changed such that, mutatis mutandis, they appeared those of a delicate boy.”Quoted and discussed in Trexler 214.

27 Engravings for Tecaxic, by comparison, are scarce and all appear to date from the latenineteenth century onward.



figure 3 José de Molina. Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, Tlatelolco (Our Lady of Angels,Tlatelolco), c. 1798. Engraving. Collection of Mexican religious engravings,1700–1830, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles CA, Acc. No. 960027. Imagecourtesy of the Getty Research Institute, Special Collections.

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centuries and venerated in its sanctuary extramuros fromMexicoCity. Touchedby the Original.”28A similar engraving (fig. 4) by José Nava (c. 1790) adds other specifics, stating

that the image is venerated in the “barrio de Santiago de Tlatelolco” and hasbeen “miraculously conserved for more than 200 years against the injuriesof time, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.”29 A 1798 print, included in an1805 printing of Peñuelas’s history, visually stresses the natural surroundingssurvived by the image: a winged Atlas, or Saint Christopher-like figure, carriesthe icon safely across severe flood waters (fig. 5). The loose, horizontal linemakes it easy to see that the neighborhood buildings are considerably flooded.The central Marian portrait is surrounded and aided by several allegoricalpersonifications, including Divine Providence (child with candle), Fortitude(crowned female holding up the side of the icon), Fame (holding and playingtrumpets), Religion (crowned female standing with a cross), and Time (theSaint Christopher figure).30The Mexican icons not only triumph over their environment, they do it

despite themselves. The material support of each object—whether adobe orlocal cotton—is repeatedly emphasized in the recorded devotions and consis-tently characterized as fragile, humble, and Indian. TheMarian design and pig-ments evinced their luster despite their nativemanufacture or contexts. In bothhistories, there is a sense that native religiosity alone cannot provide sustaineddevotion: Tecaxic’s crumbling hermitage is inadequately restored until Fran-ciscan friars assume the task; the adobe painting in Tlateloco does not find asuitable home until non-native benefactors build a sanctuary of stone. In fact,despite the cacique (chief) Izayoque’s early desire to protect and venerate theMarian picture that wades into his hands in 1580, he finds that his efforts areinsufficient: the original painting is all-too corruptible and disintegrates almostas soon as the cotton dries.

28 “Copia de la Imagen deN.S. de los Angeles, que pintada en una pared de adobe crudo se haconservado por espacio de dos siglos y se venera en su santuario extramuros de la Ciudadde Mexico. Tocada a su Original.”

29 “Verdadero retrato de la Milagrosa Imagen de Maria Santisima Nuestra Señora que con elglorioso titulo de Los Angeles, se venera en el Barrio de Santiago Tlatelolco extramurosde la Ciudad de Mexico. Pintada en una pared de adobe y maravillosamente conservadapor mas de docientos años, contra la injuria de los tiempos, uracanes, inundaciones, yterremotos.”

30 The text at the foot of the print claims that Our Lady of Angels, painted on an adobe wallinMexico City, has survived rain and floods for 218 years, and that this feat is due to divineprovidence and celebrated by the trumpets of fame.



figure 4 José de Nava. Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, Tlatelolco (Our Lady of Angels,Tlatelolco), c. 1790. Engraving. Collection of Mexican religious engravings,1700–1830, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles CA, Acc. No. 960027. Imagecourtesy of the Getty Research Institute, Special Collections.

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figure 5 Anonymous. Frontispiece to Breve Noticia de la Prodigiosa Imagen de NuestraSeñora de los Ángeles by Pablo Antonio Peñuelas (Mexico: Felipe de Zuñiga yOntiveros, 1781), c. 1781. Engraving. F1203.P16.V.119:2. Courtesy of the BancroftLibrary, University of California, Berkeley.



While Tecaxic’s story is one of a Marian painting that endured severeweather and harsh circumstances for decades, Tlatelolco’s legend is more am-biguous. We know, or are told, that Izayoque dutifully ordered a copy of theruined painting. But why would a copy of a painting that was destroyed in aflood in itself be miraculous? That is, what would make the copy exceptional?If the wall painting’s numinous status was due to its incorruptibility, how longdid it have to survive (moreover, what did it have to survive) before it wasdeemed miraculous? Unfortunately, the sources are mostly silent on the mat-ter. Certainly, Vetancurt says nothing about an Assumption painting nor doesthe author even suggest that there is anything remotely miraculous housed inthe Tlatelolco chapel.31Wemight assume the painting in the adobe chapel wasnot particularly important at all until the eighteenth century. It is only thenthat the sources begin to stress the icon’s triumph over severe floods (1607 and1629) and its inadequate sanctuary structure.While the floods were severe, and sun and salt-wind hammered the adobe

painting when not under water, the biggest threat to the image in the eigh-teenth century was human. Both human negligence and improper venera-tion plagued the sanctuary immediately prior to Haro’s patronage. In 1737, theGiraldo family tried to repair the sanctuary but the edifice continued to crum-ble and the image attracted few residents. Peñuelas writes that by 1745, onecould see only specters of past devotion in a ruined hermitage (15). Weedspushed up through the floor and became a habitat for insects. Don MiguelBibanco decided to rebuild the space but made the unfortunate decision ofallowing (or telling?) the faithful to believe that the painting had miraculouslyrenovated itself (it was apparently retouched during this time), a legend thatattracted the uneducated masses and invited them to perform their own inter-pretation of religious veneration and sacred celebrations without any supervi-sion. Soon, Peñuelas states, the space was abuzz with commercial, social, scan-dalous, and even criminal activity, attracting not the pious believer but the sin-ner. Men and women freely interacted, vendors sold food and drink, and theloud chatter of the people drowned out any attempt at pious prayer. At issuewas not simply that impropriety was replacing piety; the lack of oversight alsomeant that building projects, sacred rituals, and religious activitieswere all tak-ing place without license and official church approval.Whispers of gluttony and immorality in Tlatelolco reached the ears of the

archbishop and viceroy. On 27 October 1745, the archbishop mandated that

31 Peñuelas argues that the name “Asunción de Ixayoc” refers only to the title seventeenth-century natives used to describe the chapel, due to a misreading of the Lady of Angelspainting.

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Eucharistic celebrations and the collection of tithes cease. All sacred objects(ornaments and vessels) were confiscated and the image, most alarmingly, washidden from view. The architect who had been hired by Bibanco to constructthe sanctuaryplacedpetatesmojados (wet reedmats) over the imageandnailedwooden boards over this area. Yet in due time, area residents would have noneof it. By 1747, a native cacique named Benito Alvarado Moctezuma headeda confraternity organized in the icon’s honor, construction on the sanctuaryresumed, tithes were collected, and the image was back on full view. Thedefiance led to a formal inquiry andeventually tomore extensive testimonies in1777 (withHaronowpetitioning for church support). Alas, a dealwas seeminglystruck.Peñuelas spends much space explaining that the riffraff of Tlatelolco had it

all wrong c. 1745: the image was miraculously conserved rather than miracu-lously renovated. And yes, perhaps some paint was applied to the image butit was certainly limited to the surrounding cherubs: “an artist’s brush nevertouched the figure of the Virgin” (Peñuelas 102). It seems that the false claimto miraculous renovation was one reason the archbishop tried to suppress thedevotion. In 1801, a discalced Franciscan from Mexico City, Pedro Patiño, wasevenmore adamant about defending themiraculously preserved icon. His 138-page dissertation reminds critics—skeptics and the “false philosophers” of theday—of the Council of Trent’s defense of sacred images and icons, noting thatthere is much difference between an image that has been miraculously pre-served and one that has been supernaturally renovated. Assuring readers thathe is well aware of the distinction between examined miracles and unfoundedfables, Patiño quite clearly answered detractors who thought the devotionmisleading if not a hoax. The late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century literature regarding the Tlatelolco icon, alongside the abundance ofcorresponding prints, offers us an established view of a devotion that mightsatisfy both church and enlightened critic. As such, the corpus is less a recordof popular devotion andmore an indication of the desire to correct it in accor-dance with changing elite attitudes and church expectations. The transforma-tion apparently worked: when, in 1884, the neo-atheist Altamirano ridiculedthe residents for their gluttony and extreme drunkenness on the icon’s feastday, he was nevertheless satisfied with the devotion’s restrained tradition—atleast the painting’s survival “is not entirely improbable nor does its fame restupon ridiculous apparitions.”32 He further writes:

32 Altamirano was clearly refering to Guadalupe and Ocotlan, both of which are acheiropoi-eta (literally, “not hand-made”) icons.



This image has a straight and narrow origin, with some exaggerations… It is not [the icon’s] fault if the loving idolatry of an old cacique, thestubbornness of a tailor, and passion for [the alcoholic beverage] pulquecolorado have made of her a type of Mexican Demeter, the good goddessof the wretched, the protector of a neighborhood full of saline, mud, andmisery.33

V Colonial Instauration

Both Tecaxic and Tlatelolco make important claims to religious renewal. Withboth devotions, however, it was not simply the case that inspirational paintingsled to church repairs or a new sanctuary. Rather, the icons found themselves inruined hermitages or unsupervised sanctuaries, structures physically unsuitedfor spiritual devotion. That such “fallen spaces” were leveled and (re)built asnew structures with new functions (official sanctuary spaces were licensedby the church, overseen by religious friars or secular clergy, and followed thechurch’s liturgical calendar) significantly points to the power politics at play inlate colonial local religiosity. (In)corruptibility had adouble effect: it delineatedthe divine and sanctioned official intervention.The literature involving colonial Mexican sanctuaries often misleads, draw-

ing us to the fascinating if misguided notion that Marian sanctuaries some-how replaced the temples of pagan goddesses. Yet our real focus should be therapid rate at which officially recognized sanctuaries were replacing illegitimateChristian spaces. Tlatelolco and Tecaxic are just two ofmany examples. To fullyunderstand the church and mendicant tendency to replace supposedly fallinghermitages with proper sanctuaries, we should remember that oratories, her-mitages, and hermits fill the pages of the first Provincial Council of Mexico.One decree warns against the use of personal homes and unsanctioned spacesas religious places; doing so, the council stresses, neglects, and belittles the

33 109. “Esta imagen tiene un orígen liso y llano, con algunas exageraciones … no es suculpa si el cariño idólatra de un viejo cacique, el capricho de un sastre y la pasion porel pulque colorado han hecho de ella una especie de Demeter mexicana, la buena diosade los miserables, la protectora de un barrio lleno de salitre, de fango y demiseria.”Pulquecolorado is the fermented maguey sap, prepared (or ‘cured’) with the red fruit of a pricklypear cactus. Tlatelolcowas associatedwith saline throughout the colonial period, not onlybecause salt was amajor commodity in themarketplace, but because thewinds off of LakeTexcoco regularly blew salt into the neighborhood and because a saline residue wouldalways remain after severe floods.

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Church structure and the mass performed therein, setting a bad example forthe newly converted Indians to follow.34The same Mexican Council prohibits, under penalty of excommunication,

the construction of unlicensed oratories and hermitages (think of Izayoque’sadobe shrine) and bans friars and priests fromperforming religious riteswithinsuch spaces (Lorenzana 92–94). Furthermore, the decree outlaws hermits orpersons wishing to retreat and lead an alternative and singular lifestyle out-side of an approved, religious monastery (94). The reason for these edicts isclear: unlicensed religious structures and those whowill inhabit them are liter-ally and spiritually outside the sanctioned religious culture of the viceroyalty.Hardly veiled is the fact that the church found these places and people difficultto control; hermits and hermitages were, in more ways than one, potentiallyhostile to religious orthodoxy and ecclesiastical (and hence political) hierar-chies. When Archbishop Francisco Lorenzana publishes the council’s findingsin the eighteenth century, he offers even more explicit advice: do not let theIndians, he warns, construct hermitages or neighborhood chapels since theselead to misguided simulacra, scandalous religious practices, and the abandon-ment of parish churches (389). Here it is the parish church, not the hermitage,which fears collapse.Given the council’s recommendation, the archbishop’s need to suppress

or appropriate local hermitages in Tecaxic and Tlatelolco is clear, as theirconstruction conflicted with the council’s newly established guidelines. Isay-oque’s Assumption, particularly, presented a violation: the unsanctioned spacewas the personal project of a native cacique. Even after the space supposedlyreceivedChurch license (1595), its supervision andmaintenancewere erratic atbest. During the seventeenth century and much of the eighteenth century, thesite was in constant need of repairs and its jurisdiction unexpectedly changedfrom the hands of the FranciscanChurch andCollege of Santiago to the Churchof Santa Ana (neighboring and competing native communities then and now).Even its eighteenth-century devotion, prior to Haro’s patronage, was suspect:

34 Lorenzana 80. Archbishop Alonso Montúfar convened the First Mexican Council in 1555.The final decrees consist of ninety-three chapters and are largely concerned with theinstruction of Christian doctrine to natives in the new territory. The Second MexicanCouncil, consisting of twenty-eight chapters, was inaugurated in 1565 and also convenedby Montúfar. The controversial Third Mexican Council, convoked by Archbishop PedroMoya de Contreras, met for nine months in 1585 and was the most enduring and far-reaching in Spanish America. The indefatigable Bourbon reformer Archbishop FranciscoAntonio de Lorenzana published the first two councils in Spanish, the third in Latin, andconvened his own synod in 1771.



the sanctuary’s popularity in 1745 appears linked to the unqualified claim thatthe image had “supernaturally repaired itself” (Peñuelas 17). As scandalous wasthe form thenewly reviveddevotion took. Indeed, the sanctuary becameabois-terous marketplace where drunkenness and carousing were not only toleratedbut perpetuated, particularly surrounding the feast day. Altamirano would callit “Catholic bacchanalia” in his day (108). Yet the eighteenth-century transfor-mation of the Marian cult at Tlatelolco, propagated by the Haro and Peñue-las, was informed and curtailed by the Mexican Church as well as by reformedcritics. By the early nineteenth century, the icon definitely did not claim super-natural renovation but instead was billed as a sixteenth-century painting onadobe that had, by divine providence, survived a harsh environment. Althoughthe icon attracted revelry, its conceits were few. No exvotos graced the sanctu-ary (Altamirano 128), no official miracles were ever approved by the Church.She is “the Madonna of the Poor, and nothing more” (Altamirano 108).

VI Conclusion

Queen of the Americas, the Virgin of Guadalupe looms large in Latin America’sdevotional landscape and in thehistory of colonial religion. “Appearing” shortlyafter the conquest, her origin is divine, her shrine is immense, her faithfulnumber in the millions, she spawns true copies with equally powerful satelliteshrines, and she eventually transforms a people into a nation. By contrast, theMarian icons presented in this paper are two little-known devotions that aremade by human hands, located in unpredictable environments, and lodgedin precariously built structures. For Tlatelolco’s Virgin in particular, neglect,abandonment, and abuse appear more prevalent than pious devotion.Throughout the seventeenth century, New Spain experienced amaterializa-

tion of piety alongside the institutionalization of religious practice.35 Officialreligious structures were fast replacing community shrines in areas such asTecaxic and Tlatelolco; patrons, church officials, friars, and local devotees oftensought official recognition of miraculous images. The Tlatelolco and Tecaxic

35 I borrow the notion “materialization of piety” from Caroline Walker Bynum and hergroundbreaking work on medieval materiality. Like the late medieval period, religionin seventeenth-century New Spain was increasingly focused on physical objects in bothofficial and paraliturgical practices; yet unlike medieval Europe, Spanish America did nothave a steady import or circulation of relics. Images (rather than relics and hosts), bothMarian and Christological, were the bedrock of colonial materiality.

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icons and their histories not only demonstrate the politics of patronage and thecomplex task of “instauration,” they also draw attention to the significant peri-ods of disengagement shown by church elites and the larger lay communityfrom the seventeenth century onward. In a sense, all sanctuaries are precari-ously built and few icons have received unchanging levels of devotion through-out their histories. Yet central to our icons was that surrounding distress, acrumbling hermitage, and a community’s neglect played a crucial role in theclaim for miraculous recognition and elite intervention. Defying corruption,the two icons were life-like, holy, miraculous, and, for late colonial residents,official.

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Mexican Instauration: Devotion and Transformation in New Spain

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