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Divine Idea and ‘our Mother’: Elite and Popular Understanding in the Cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In 1648 the creole elite of Mexico City was enthralled to learn that in December 1531 the Virgin Mary had appeared to a poor Indian and had miraculously imprinted on his cape the likeness of herself, which was still venerated in the chapel at Tepeyac just outside the city limits. The moment was opportune, since in 1622 Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna had completed the construction of a new sanctuary devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe and in 1629 the image had been brought to the cathedral in a vain attempt to lower the flood waters that engulfed the capital for four years. In effect, Image of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God of Guadalupe (1648) was a heartfelt response to the growth in devotion to the Mexican Virgin; and its author, Miguel Sánchez, wrote as if inspired by a particular revelation, since his only guides were oral tradition and the stimulus of other apparition narratives. A creole priest, renowned for his piety, patriotism and great learning, Sánchez appears to have modelled his account on Murillo’s history of Our Lady of Pilar and her apparition at Zaragoza to St James, which is to say, to Santiago, the patron saint of Spain.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2006
Footnotes
*
This paper in part summarizes material and arguments presented in my Mexican Phoenix. Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge, 2001).
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