In the following days, Zumárraga built the little chapel requested by Our Lady on Tepeyac, "where she appeared to Juan Diego", and "there was a movement in all the altepetls [Aztec city-states] everywhere of people coming to see and marvel at her precious image. [...] They marveled greatly at how it was by a divine miracle that she had appeared” [ibid., p. 89].

​

​

As Gisela von Wobeser, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, notes: This is a well-known

​

​

narrative, according to which Our Lady appeared to an illiterate person [...]. The scene of the apparition was almost always a secluded and lonely place, such as a forest, cave or hill. Our Lady asked the witness that a church be built for her at the site of the apparition [...]. Clergymen often distrusted the testimony of the witness. Then Our Lady would appear again to reiterate her request. After several attempts had been made, she would leave a miraculous sign, such as causing a spring of water to rise in a wasteland or curing a sick person, a reason for which the ecclesiastical authority was convinced of the apparition's authenticity... 

[Gisela von Wobeser, Orígenes del culto a Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe 1521-1688, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2020, pp. 159-160]

 

​

​Despite this, the Vatican Historical Commission that worked as part of Juan Diego's canonization process (concluded in 2002) considered the traditional account of the Guadalupe apparition to be true.

 

 

One of its three members, Dr. Father Eduardo Chávez (since 2001, also postulator of the cause of canonization), writes:

​

​

All the work that was conducted had to go through the various commissions of the Holy See which specialized in verifying and, at the appropriate time, approving or rejecting the investigation performed. In our case, all the examinations were wholly approved. The Historical Commission successfully completed its scientific study.

[Eduardo Chávez, La Verdad de Guadalupe, ISEG, 2022, p. 41]

 

​

On the other hand, Manuel Olimón Nolasco, a professor and Catholic priest, emphatically emphasized that this commission “has, to date, not had any discussions with Mexican historians or those in Mexican academic circles” [M. Olimón Nolasco, La búsqueda de Juan Diego, Plaza y Janés, 2002, p. 7].

 

 

Father Chávez wrote that “all opinions were considered [...]. All objections have been answered” [Chávez, La Verdad de Guadalupe, p. 41].

​

​

To the contrary, historian Father Stafford Poole rightly pointed out that in the book containing the results of the commission's work (F. González, E. Chávez, J. L. Guerrero, El Encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego), “In most cases, the authors prefer to ignore the objections and challenges which arose against the story of the apparitions” [S. Poole, Una nueva polémica en la controversia guadalupana, in Olimón Nolasco, p. 118].

 

​

Let's allow Professor Gisela von Wobeser to expound upon the position of academic historians regarding Guadalupe (and upon the nearby shrine of Our Lady of Remedies, built around the same time, which, according to traditional belief, came about a result of another Mexican native finding a statuette of Our Lady near an agave):

​

​

The shrines of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Remedies date back to the first few decades following the Conquest, while the legends explaining their origins arose in the late 16th or early 17th century, that is, they were later reconstructions.

[Wobeser, Apariciones de seres celestiales y demoniacos en la Nueva España, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019, pp. 11-12]

 

​

​​

​A Revealing Silence

​

Let's stick to the facts.

​

​

In the 19th century, Mexican Catholic historian Joaquín García Icazbalceta collected documents in order to write the biography of Monsignor Zumárraga and found confirmation as to what had already been pointed out by others. In the writings and actions of Zumárraga, who had been bishop of Mexico City until his death in 1548, there are no references either to apparitions on Tepeyac or to Juan Diego, let alone to such a miraculous event that he would personally witness.

​​

​

Moreover, in a work published by and at the behest of Zumárraga in 1547, the Regla cristiana breve, a theological interpretation is given as to why miracles no longer occur.

​

​

It states that the desire to see visions and revelations “is a lack of faith and arises from great pride [...]. The redeemer of the world no longer wants miracles to be worked because they are not necessary, because our holy faith is so well established by so many thousands of miracles as we have in the Old and New Testaments” [Regla cristiana breve, in Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, The University of Arizona Press, 1997, p. 35]

​

​

Icazbalceta then became convinced of the legendary nature of the event [J. García Icazbalceta, Carta acerca del origen de la imagen de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México, México, 1896].

​

​

In truth, it was not uncommon for converted natives to tell of having supernatural visions.

 

 

Father Toribio de Benavente, known as Motolinía, one of the dozen Franciscan missionaries who arrived in Mexico in 1524, wrote:

​

 

Many of these converts have seen or spoken of various revelations and visions that, given the sincerity and simplicity with which they're told, seem to be true. However, since it could be the other way around, I do not write them down, confirm or deny them, partly because many would not believe me.

[Fray Toribio de Benavente "Motolinía", Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, Real Academia Española - Centro para la Edición de los Clásicos Españoles, 2014, p. 132]

 

​

Therefore, during the years when Zumárraga was bishop, it's also possible that a native had actually told of having had an apparition of Our Lady on Tepeyac, as the Vatican Historical Commission has tried, with limited results, to prove.

​

​

At any rate, there was certainly no recounting of events as we know it and, what interests us the most, there was no belief in the miracle of the tilma.

 

​

In fact, the tilma didn't even exist.

​

​​

​

The Late Emergence of the Devotion to What Would Become Known as the Tilma of Juan Diego

​

In June 1554, after six years of a vacant seat, the new archbishop of Mexico City, Dominican Alonso de Montúfar, took office.

 

​

On September 6, 1556, Montúfar, during a homily in the cathedral, spoke of the popular veneration of an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe displayed in a chapel, a small shrine, on the hill of Tepeyac and claimed that it worked miracles.

 

 

This is the first mention we have of an image that's identified with what's now referred to as the tilma of Juan Diego, a full 25 years after its alleged appearance.  

​

​

Keep in mind that at the time, belief in the miraculous power of images (especially in those of Mary) was widespread. Historian Luis Weckmann, based on sources of the time, points out that, between the years of 1517 and 1650, “among the miraculous images of New Spain, the most numerous - about a hundred -  are those of the Virgin Mary” [L. Weckmann, The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, Fordham University Press, 1992, p. 278].

​

​

Just two days after Archbishop Montúfar's homily, on September 8, 1556, Franciscan Provincial Francisco Bustamante, in a sermon delivered in the chapel of San José de los Naturales, called the devotion practiced in the Hermitage of the Guadalupe of Tepeyac Hill idolatrous and blamed the imprudence of those propagating unproven miracles from the pulpit.  

​

​

The allegations created scandal among the faithful, and three complaints were filed against Bustamante with the archbishop.

 

 

According to records from the so-called Información de 1556, nine witnesses (six lay persons and three religious persons) are heard.

 

 

As Father Stafford Poole noted, "all the witnesses in this inquiry appear to have been favorable to Montúfar" [Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 62].

​​

​

From the complaint and, even more clearly, from the testimonies, however, it's clear that devotion to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was new, so it most certainly didn't date back to 1531.

 

 

According to the complaint, Bustamante had stated

​

​

that it seemed to him that the devotion which the people of this town brought to the hermitage and house of Our Lady, which they referred to as Guadalupe, was a great detriment to the natives because they were made to understand that that Image painted by a native performs miracles, and this meant making them believe that it's God, contrary to what they [the Franciscans] have preached and taught since they came to this land, namely, that one should not worship these images, but that which they represent in heaven [...], and he also said that it wasn't good to preach miracles from the pulpit that were said to have taken place before they've been verified.

[Información de 1556, in Ernesto de la Torre Villar, Ramiro Navarro de Anda, Testimonios históricos guadalupanos, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999, p. 43] 

 

​

​Witness Juan de Salazar (procurator of the Real Audiencia), says that he has seen “for a long time now, both in the time of the previous Señor Archbishop [Zumárraga] and the present, many people going to the fields” to “play games and take part in other excesses,” but “since the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe became popular, a great deal of what he said has ceased” and “it has been a great asset and benefit to souls that devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe has begun” [ibid., p. 53].

​

​​

Witness Alonso Sánchez de Cisneros states that Bustamante spoke of “this new devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe” [ibid., p. 63], and Juan de Masseguer affirms that the Franciscan Provincial spoke of “that image recently [ayer] painted by a native” [ibid., p. 71]. 

​

​

Furthermore, it all adds up, since on January 10, 1570, Antonio Freire, chaplain of the shrine of Guadalupe, wrote in an official report:

​

 

The chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Tepeyac [...] was founded and built over the course of approximately fourteen years by the Most Illustrious Archbishop with offerings given by the Christian faithful.

[Descripción del Arzobispado de México, AGI, S. Audiencia de México, issue 280, in González, Chávez, Guerrero, p. 401]

 

​

It's likely, as apologists claim, that around 1555, Montúfar had simply re-dedicated an existing Marian chapel, but the Información de 1556 makes it clear to us that the image was created and placed there no earlier than the middle of that century.

​

​

Professor Richard Nebel, a Catholic theologian and member of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia, notes:

​

​

According to sources, this Guadalupe shrine became the center of a formidable movement only from the second half of the century, gaining great influence later in the 17th and 18th centuries.

[Richard Nebel, Santa María Tonantzin Virgen de Guadalupe, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013, p. 138]

 

 

Father Francisco Miranda Godínez, founder of the Centros de Estudios Históricos y de Estudios de las Tradiciones at the University of Michoacán, thus reconstructs what happened after Archbishop Montúfar's arrival:

​

​

Growing rumors that miracles were being performed there revived the devotion of the faithful, who began talking about the new Image, a painting depicting an indigenous Immaculata with the features of a fifteen-year-old mestizo maiden. 

[Francisco Miranda Godínez, Dos cultos fundantes: Los Remedios y Guadalupe, 1521-1649: historia documental, El Colegio de Michoacán, 2001, p. 240]

 

​

In light of all that's been said so far, one of the arguments that apologists keep repeating, that the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe foreshadowed a mestizaje that did not yet exist in 1531, is thus revealed as false.

​

​

For example, Msgr. Antonio Staglianó (appointed president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology in 2022) stated that “there was no such thing as a mestizaje when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared imprinted upon a veil” [A. Staglianò, Et-Et. Il Magistero Pastorale e Teologico, vol. III, Diocesi di Noto, 2020, p. 548].

​

​

Yet even if we admit that a mestizaje did not exist ten years after the Conquest, it certainly existed and was widespread around the middle of the century.

 

​

​

Marcos Who?

​

Father Eduardo Chávez comments on Bustamante's words (reported in the testimonies) regarding the image, pointing out that he "only threw in that it had been a certain Indigenous by the name of Marcos who painted it, at the moment of hanger in his sermon; he did not present any proof"[Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego. The Historical Evidence, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, p. 80]

​

​

In reality, everything leads us to deduce that in 1556, the belief in the supernatural origin of the image did not even exist. As it turns out, no one (neither the archbishop, nor Bustamante, nor witnesses) made reference to it.

 

​

As for Bustamante, it should be emphasized that he had been in New Spain since 1542, and “it is inconceivable that Bustamante [...] did not known the archbishop [Zumárraga]” [Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 62].

​

​

Mexican historian Edmundo O' Gorman, professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, noted in a book first published in 1986 that, among the witnesses, “no one was surprised that Father Bustamante attributed the image to a native painter named Marcos, and one would have expected that if this information was new to the archbishop, he would have called this painter to testify" [E. O' Gorman, Destierro de sombras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2016, p. 246].

 

 

In fact, it's well known to whom, in all likelihood, Bustamante was referring. He was referring to a native painter who converted to Christianity, named Marcos Cipac de Aquino, who lived until the early 70s of that century.

​

​

In a well-known passage of his book, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (finished in 1568), Bernal Diaz del Castillo writes:

​

​​​

There are currently three natives in Mexico City: Marcos de Aquino, Juan de la Cruz and El Crespillo, who are so excellent in their work as carvers and painters that if they were in the time of the ancient and celebrated Apelles, Michelangelo or Berruguete, they would be counted among them.

[Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1939, p. 326] 

 

 

In the Anales del indio Juan Bautista (a chronicle of sorts written by a Christian native named Juan Bautista, who lived in Barrio de San Juan), we're told that Marcos Cipac had been taught by a Flemish artist, a Franciscan missionary named Pedro de Gante (Pieter van Gent) [cf. Torre Villar, Navarro de Anda, p. 132] (we have already seen how the image on the tilma is similar to those created at the time in various parts of Europe including, in fact, the Flemish region).

​​

​

Fidel González, chairman of the historical commission points out the scarcity of information we have on Marcos:

​

​

Where did he paint? What are his works, and where are they located? It all remains in a fog of inaccuracy and complete lack of historical sources. When compared to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the paintings supposedly completed by this Marcos native, don't stand up to pictorial-historical criticism. Comparing and analyzing the layout elements of the images proves there's no relationship between them.

[Fidel González, Guadalupe: pulso y corazón de un pueblo, Ediciones Encuentro, 2004, p. 379; cf. González, Chávez, Guerrero, p. 296, note 99]

 

​

​It hardly bears noting that if there are no preserved paintings that are 100% attributable to Marcos, no critical pictorial-historical comparison can be made, and it's unclear how and with what paintings the commission wishes to insinuate that it has done so. 

​​

​

​

More Silence Regarding the Tilma

​

Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún had began his missionary work in Mexico in 1529 (i.e., in the time of Zumárraga).

 

 

In his General History of the Things of New Spain, written between the 1540s and 1570s, Bernardino, like Bustamante, considers the Guadalupian worship on Tepeyac (also called Tepeyacac or Tepeacacac at the time) as pagan:

​​

​

...there is a hill that is called Tepeacac and the Spaniards call Tepeaquilla and now is called Our Lady of Guadalupe. In this place they [the natives] used to have a temple dedicated to the mother of the gods , whom they called Tonantzin, which means "our mother" [...]. The gathering of people in those days was great [...]. Now that the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been built there, they also call her [or it] Tonantzin, taking their cue from the preachers who call Our Lady, the Mother of God, Tonantzin. [...] This appears to be an invention of the devil to cover over idolatry under the ambiguity of this name Tonantzin. They now come to visit this Tonantzin from far away, as far as in former times. The devotion itself is suspect because everywhere there are many churches to Our Lady and they do not go to them. They come from distant lands to this Tonantzin, as they did in former times.

[Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, vol. III, México, Imprenta del Ciudadano Alejandro Valdés, 1830, pp. 321-322; cf. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe, p. 78]

​

 

As can be seen, this influx of the faithful isn't even remotely related to the presence of an assumed acheropite image of Our Lady. 

 

​

Members of the Vatican Historical Commission, seeking a difficult justification for it all, make the situation worse. In fact, as their president writes:

​

​

All [religious people in Mexico, including Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians] shared the idea that the Guadalupan worship there could be dangerous to the righteous way of living the Christian faith, since the ancient worship of idols could be camouflaged there.

[González, p. 363]

 

​

It's not one bit believable that the clergymen of the time, knowing of the miracle that was allegedly certified by the bishop, censured it for fear of idolatry. For them, it would have been like censoring Our Lady.

​

​

The obvious truth is that, at that time, no one - not even those among the late Zumárraga's Franciscan brethren - attributed a miraculous origin to that image.

 

 

This shows that Zumárraga had not only never written about witnessing the alleged miracle of the tilma, but evidently never even mentioned it.

 

 

Still, at the end of the 16th century, Franciscan Gerónimo de Mendieta devotes chapter VII of his Historia eclesiástica indiana to “several miracles that occurred at the beginning of their [the natives] conversion” [G.de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, Mexico, Antigua Libreria, 1870, pp. 38 and ff.].

​

​

There's no trace of the amazing miracle of the tilma.

 

 

The historical commission appointed by the Vatican, wanting to find arguments to support Juan Diego's historical existence, in a book entitled El Encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, collected all the documents attesting to devotion to the Mexican Our Lady of Guadalupe in the 16th century, but, in doing so, made a highly problematic fact even more evident.

 

 

Until the final years of that century, there are a few dozen documents, written by both lay persons and religious persons, in which there are direct or indirect references to the worship of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Tepeyac, but very rarely is there any reference to the image of Our Lady, and (beyond a couple of texts in the Nauhatl language from an uncertain timeframe, which we are about to discuss) there's never the slightest reference to the alleged miraculous origin of the image itself.

​

​

Indeed, there are documents that refer to the presence of a silver statue of Our Lady (donated by Alonso de Villaseca in 1566) and completely ignore the painting (this is the case with the Anales del indio Juan Bautista [cf. González,  Chávez, Guerrero, op. cit., p. 325] and the description of the chapel left to us by the English privateer Miles Philips, who visited it in 1568 [ibid., pp. 398-400). 

​

​

​​

Unsubstantiated Dates

​

According to apologists, the oldest sources referring to the alleged miracle of the tilma consist of two texts (anonymous beyond entirely hypothetical attributions) in the Nahuatl language: a poetic-type composition called Nican mopohua and a short story handed down by the name of Inin huey tlamahuizoltzin, better known as Relación primitiva ("The Original Narrative"), because, being shorter and more basic than Nican mopohua, it's assumed to be earlier than this.

 

​

According to Fidel González, president of the Vatican-appointed historical commission, “the Nican Mopohua [...] was written between 1550 and 1560” [González, p. 94].

 

 

According to Eduardo Chávez, a member of that same commission, it was instead “written between 1545 and 1548" [Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego, p. 47].

 

​

In reality, no one knows with certainty when the Nican mopohua was written, and it's not entirely impossible that it may date from the first half of the following century.

 

​

The issue is complex, but here it suffices to refer to a well-balanced summary presented by Professor Rodrigo Martínez Baracs, a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Historia:

 

 

There's no proven position one way or the other, either that the oldest account of the apparitions comes from the 17th century, or that it's from the 16th century...
[Rodrigo Martínez Baracs, La aparición del Nican mopohua, in Pilar Máynez, Salvador Reyes Equiguas, Frida Villavicencio Zarza (a cura di), Contactos lingüísticos y culturales en la época novohispana. Perspectivas multiculturales, México, CIESAS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2014, pp. 379-380]

 

 

​​As for the Relación primitiva, it's contained in a manuscript collection of homilies (i.e., a sermonary) dating from approximately 1585-1600 [T. Rosas Xelhuantzi, La Relación Primitiva: Análisis del manuscrito Ms. 1475 de la Biblioteca Nacional de México, "Korpus 21", vol. 23, no. 7, 2023, pp. 105-120].

​

​

In this regard, Fr. Eduardo Chávez writes that the Relación primitiva, “included in the Sermonario of 1600 by Father Juan de Tovar, S. J." was "written approximately between 1541 and 1548” [Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Juan Diego, p. 47].

​

​

Surprisingly, the reader is not told the basis on which it's alleged that a text found in a manuscript circa 1600 would date from 1541-1548.

​

​

The fact is that some “extreme” apologists speculate that the text from the Relación primitiva contained in the "Sermonario of 1600” is a copy of an original dating back to the 1540s.

​

​

They don't, however, provide any justification for this dating, which is actually only rooted in an arbitrary conjecture that, as O' Gorman puts it, "originated in the mind of Father Cuevas” [O' Gorman, p. 207](Mariano Cuevas was a Jesuit historian and Guadalupe apologist working in the first half of the 20th century).

 

 

This dating is so blatantly arbitrary that it was neither proposed in the volume containing the commission's work (F. González, E. Chávez, J. L. Guerrero, El Encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, Ed. Porrúa, 2001) nor in the description and analysis of historical sources found in the aforementioned Guadalupe: pulso y corazón de un pueblo, written by the commission's chairman, Fidel González.

 

 

*****

​

​

​Incidental references to the image that “appeared by a very great miracle” [Nican motecpana, in Sousa, Poole, Lockhart, p. 101]  are found in another document entitled Nican motecpana.

 

 

The commission affirms:​​

​

​

The Nican Motecpana is a text that, like the Nican Mopohua, is written in náhuatl; it was written in 1590 by mestizo Fernando de Alva Ixtlixóchitl.

[González, Chávez, Guerrero, p. 357]

 

 

The Nican motecpana, in addition to reporting hagiographic news regarding Juan Diego, presents several miracles attributed to Our Lady of Guadalupe, with the obvious intent of demonstrating the pre-eminence of the Tepeyac shrine over the competing shrine of Our Lady of Remedies. 

​

​

In it, we read that during the festivities held for the inauguration of the chapel requested by Our Lady to Juan Diego, a native was accidentally wounded by an arrow and died but was placed before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and “she not only revived him and gave him life, but he was also immediately healed where the arrow had passed through” [Nican motecpana, in Sousa, Poole, Lockhart, pp. 93-95].

​

​

Moreover, as we're told, the native who found the statuette of Our Lady of Remedies, having fallen ill with the plague, did not ask for grace by praying before the image he miraculously found but had his sons take him to Tepeyac. Upon his arrival, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to him, saying:

​

​

"I command you that on the top of the hill, where the maguey [agave] plants stand, where you saw my image, you build a small temple, where it will be". [...] At the very moment he recovered. [...] When he arrived, he immediately carried it out; he built the small temple for the precious image of the heavenly Lady, called Remedios, where she is now. After her temple was finished, she herself entered, all by herself she went to stand on the altar as she is today...

[Ibid., p. 99]

 

 

The commission considers the Nican motecpana “one of the most interesting additional writings about Juan Diego's life” [González, Chávez, Guerrero, p. 211].

​

​​

In reality, contrary to what the commission asserts, the attribution of this (blatantly propagandistic) text is dubious (“as in the case of Nican mopohua, the author's identity is [at any rate] an unclarified question due to the lack of reliable information” [X. Noguez, Documentos guadalupanos, El Colegio Mexiquense, 1995, p. 31]).

 

 

Regarding the alleged date of 1590, no objective justification is provided (and there is none).

 

​

More recently, Don Chávez was somewhat less peremptory, writing that the Nican Motecpana would have been written “around 1590” [Chávez, La Verdad de Guadalupe,  p. 255].

​

​

This date, in itself, is not impossible, but it remains purely hypothetical and should be stated.

​

​

In reality, the only thing for certain is that the Nican motecpana, like the Nican mopohua, was first published in 1649 in a book in nauhatl, written by the chaplain of the Shrine of Guadalupe, Luis Lasso de la Vega (Huei tlamahuiçoltica).

​

​

Some scholars consider it plausible that the Nican motecpana and Nican mopohua are precisely the work of Lasso de la Vega and thus date from 1649 [this is the thesis proposed and argued bySousa, Poole, Lockhart, in the book The Story of Guadalupe, Stanford University Press, 1998].

​

​

​

The Legend's Even Later Diffusion

​

At any rate, at whatever point the account of the acheropite origin of the tilma came about, what's certain is that its true dissemination began only in 1648 (i.e., a few months before the publication of Lasso de la Vega's book).

 

 

In that year, Father Miguel Sánchez published the oldest Spanish-language account of the apparitions and the miracle of the tilma.

 

 

Lasso de la Vega handed him a laudatory text, which Sánchez published as an afterword in his own book. 

 

 

In the inflated style of the 17th century, Lasso de la Vega confessed that up till that point, he, like his predecessors, had very little knowledge of these “facts”:

​

​

I and all my predecessors were sleeping Adams, possessing this second Eve in the Paradise of her Mexican Guadalupe, among the miraculous flowers that painted her...

[El Licentiado Luis Lazo de la Vega, Vicario de la S. Hermita de Guadalupe, al Autor, in M. Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen Maria Madre de Dios de Guadalupe, milagrosamente aparecida en la Ciudad de Mexico, Imprenta de la Viuda de Bernardo Calderos, 1648, unnumbered page]

 

​

​

So Many Stories

​

At the end of El Encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, the Vatican Historical Commission seems to realize that it cannot provide any direct evidence for the account of the apparition:

​

​

Someone could repeat Joaquín García Icazbalceta's objection [...]: “All apologists, without exception, have fallen into a misunderstanding that's inexplicable in so many talented men, to constantly confuse the antiquity of the worship with the authenticity of the Apparition and the miraculous painting on Juan Diego's mantle. They were so eager to prove the first thing (which no one denies, since it's proven through actual documents), insisting that this was how the second thing was also proven, as if there were the slightest relationship between them."

[González, Chávez, Guerrero, p. 545] 

 

​

The commission then resorts to an extremely naive concept:

​

​

In reality, this objection shows that those who raise it don't understand the objective interdependence of one from the other. This worship could not have existed unless it began with the historical fact of the apparition.

[Ibid.]

 

​

​This would be akin to saying that the worship of the Spanish Guadalupe would never have arisen if the son and cow of Gil Cordero, the shepherd of Cáceres, had not actually been resurrected, or that Rome would not have been founded if the she-wolf had not actually nursed Romulus.

 

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In fact, so-called foundational legends (i.e., those which, in fanciful terms, attempt to explain the origins of a devotion, sacred place or city) tend to follow pre-established narrative patterns and are gradually enriched with (sometimes conflicting) details and specifics, partly in response to the natural desire to, at the same time, make the narrative more and more amazing and more “believable” (e.g., in the Spanish Guadalupe, only in the 17th century does the anonymous shepherd protagonist take on the name of Gil Cordero [cf. Francisco de San José, Historia universal de la primitiva, y milagrosa imagen de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Madrid, Antonio Marin, 1743, p. 17]).

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In 1651-1653, Dominican Father Narcís Camós, in Catalonia alone, visited 117 Marian shrines whose origins were said to be tied to the miraculous discovery of a sacred image (mostly by a shepherd through the help of a domestic animal, in a cave or underground space, near a tree, shrub or spring, all of which were worshiped as part of ancient pagan nature religions) and 20 Marian shrines that were said to stem from an apparition (with or without the subsequent finding of an image) [cf. N. Camós, Iardín de Maria plantado en el principado de Cataluña, Barcellona, Iayme Plantada, 1657 and W. A. Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain, Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 16-18]. 

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Confirming the lack of a reliable tradition even regarding the Mexican Guadalupe, there's the variability of narratives that circulated from the early to mid-1600s.

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I'll provide here only the example that, to me, seems the most important.

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Today, all devotees “know” that the four apparitions to Juan Diego allegedly occurred from December 9 to 12, 1531 (which is exactly why the Church celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12).

 

 

In fact, it's quite clear to me that this is the usual layering of details.

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In the Relación primitiva, there are only two apparitions referred to, and neither the year, season, nor month in which the events would have taken place are given. Additionally, the native and the archbishop involved in the situation are unnamed.

 

 

By the way, there's a serious discrepancy in the document.

 

 

As is known to all scholars, the text of the Relación primitiva repeatedly speaks of the “archbishop” (i.e., the arçobispo, in 16th/17th century nauhatl, from the Spanish arzobispo) [see paleographic transcriptions, with attached Spanish translation, in Noguez, pp. 205-210 and in  Rosas Xelhuantzi, pp. 114-115; cf. O' Gorman, p. 207].

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However, the Episcopal See of Mexico City was elevated to Archbishopric only in February 1546. As such, Zumárraga was not archbishop in 1531. 

 

 

It follows that the original account most likely intended to refer to Archbishop Montúfar, not before 1555 (incidentally, it should be noted that the Anales del indio Juan Bautista place the apparition itself in that year: "In 1555, St. Mary of Guadalupe deigned to appear on Tepeyácac” [González, Chávez, Guerrero, p. 325]) or that, in any case, the original story arose when the memory of a period in which Mexico City was a simple episcopal seat had been lost.

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In the Nican mopohua, the apparitions become four over as many days (and a fifth is also added to an uncle: Juan Bernardino, who was miraculously healed), the bishop is explicitly identified with Zumárraga and we're told that it all began, “right in the year of 1531, just a few days into the month of December [...]. It was Saturday” [Nican mopohua, in Sousa, Poole, Lockhart, p. 61] (so, according to the Julian calendar, it could be December 2nd or 9th).

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The same vague chronological data is presented in 1648, in Father Miguel Sánchez's book [Sánchez, f. 19].

 

 

Only from that point on, based on the scant information provided by Father Sánchez, do the alleged events begin to be traditionally placed between Dec. 9 (the day after the feast of Mary's conception) and Dec. 12, 1531.

 

 

William B. Taylor, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, based on what's contained in the Acts of the Cathedral Chapter of Mexico City (Actas de cabildo), observes:

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The absence of [...] any mention of December 12 or the Virgin of Guadalupe among the December religious events in City's actas de cabildo before 1648, also suggest that the apparition story as we know it had not yet become established, at least not officially.

[William B. Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico Before the Reforma, University of New Mexico Press, 2010, p. 106 (in the note no. 34, p. 240, Professor Taylor specifies that"For the period before 1648, actas de cabildo survive for 1524-1630 and 1635-1643")]

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The first version of the account where the dates of December 9-12 appear is published by Jesuit Mateo de la Cruz in 1660, 129 years after the alleged events: Relación de la milagrosa aparición de la Santa imagen de la Virgen de Guadalupe de México, sacada de la historia que compuso el Br. Miguel Sánchez [in Torre Villar, Navarro de Anda, pp. 267-281].

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It's a tilma, but it's not a tilma...

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