Luis Laso de la Vega’s Huei tlamahuiçoltica stands among the most important texts in the history of Guadalupan devotion. Although it is the second-earliest published text on the origins of devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac, the fact that it is the first Guadalupan text explicitly published for a Nahua audience has made it a source of supreme interest for devotees and scholars of the history of the devotion. While today many Guadalupan devotees consider the text to have preserved an authentic sixteenth-century Indigenous memory of the miraculous origins of this Marian devotion, some historians view the text as only an inculturated adaptation of a primarily seventeenth-century Spanish-criollo tradition into Nahuatl.Footnote 1 It should come as no surprise then that this text has played a central role in modern debates over the historicity of the Guadalupan apparition tradition.Footnote 2 Unfortunately, this has also meant that, until recently, much of the interest surrounding this text had been centered around determining its historical value rather than an evaluation of the text on its own terms.
Rather than being a historical account, according to modern expectations, Huei tlamahuiçoltica is the first hagiographic presentation of the Guadalupan narrative. It was written following the standard conventions of this popular Christian genre with the express purpose of convincing its Nahua audience to participate in cultic devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe through a compelling narration of her miracles and to imitate the religious exemplarity of its Nahua characters. Moreover, through the incorporation of Nahua language and culture into the narrative, it was also intended to reflect and shape Nahua-Christian identity through Guadalupan devotion.
Only in the previous decade have scholars begun to examine the text more comprehensively, seeking to identify and contextualize the implicit theological and pastoral concerns behind the text.Footnote 3 Though these studies have yielded great insight into the mind and circumstances of Huei tlamahuiçoltica’s criollo author and intended Nahua audience, failure to properly identify the text as hagiography prevented these scholars from fully recognizing and articulating the author’s aims and strategies in the composition of his text. To be sure, other scholars have briefly noted the text’s hagiographic character, but none to date have offered any substantial consideration of the significance of presenting the Guadalupan tradition in this genre.Footnote 4 Such neglect is largely due to the common modern use of the term “hagiography” to designate a narrative as historically untenable, an attitude that disregards the value, depth, and transformative potential that made it a dominant and enduring Christian genre for centuries.Footnote 5
This article will offer the first serious analysis of Huei tlamahuiçoltica to consider its hagiographic genre. This analysis will provide insight into how this Christian genre operated and, therefore, into Laso de la Vega’s literary, theological, and pastoral approach to influencing Nahua Christians to integrate devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe into their communal identity. Furthermore, it will reveal the extent to which this Nahuatl Guadalupan text is steeped in the medieval European hagiographic tradition and colonial Spanish expectations for Nahua sanctity. Although this article does not intend to make any definitive evaluation of the historicity of the Guadalupan tradition that undergirds this text, it does seek to demonstrate how the use of narrativity and exemplary characters helped to create a communal hagiography of sixteenth-century Nahua Christians and established an enduring hagiographic foundation for Guadalupan devotion that continues to resonate with devotees today.
Huei tlamahuiçoltica: The First Guadalupan Hagiography
The text’s full title, Huei tlamahuiçoltica omonexiti in ilhuicac tlatocaçihuapilli Santa Maria totlaçonantzin Guadalupe in nican huei altepenahuac Mexico itocayocan Tepeyac, translates to “By a great miracle appeared the heavenly queen, Saint Mary, our precious mother of Guadalupe here near the great altepetl of Mexico, at a place called Tepeyac.”Footnote 6 Laso de la Vega was a criollo diocesan priest serving as the vicar of the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac when he published the text in 1649, just six months after the first publication on the Guadalupan tradition, Miguel Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María (hereafter Imagen). In a laudatory letter, Laso de la Vega publicly credited Sánchez’s text with increasing his devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe through its “history of her miracle” and indicated it as the inspiration for his own text.Footnote 7 Given this direct influence, these first two Guadalupan texts naturally share thematic and narrative content with only minor discrepancies.
Although Imagen initially had the more prominent and immediate impact on the development of Guadalupan devotion and theology, through the centuries Huei tlamahuiçoltica has come to enjoy the greater legacy. On the one hand, this is because, having been written in Nahuatl, the text presents a significantly inculturated account of the Guadalupan tradition, which gives it an air of an authentically preserved Indigenous Marian tradition, especially in the opinion of many devotees. On the other hand, the enduring popularity of Huei tlamahuiçoltica can be credited to its more straightforward narration of the Guadalupan event in comparison with Imagen’s narrative, which has been described as consistently interrupted with “baroque conceits and digressions in the field of Sacred Scripture.”Footnote 8 Whereas Sánchez attempted to inspire Spanish and criollo devotion to the image of Guadalupe through his explication of impressive theological connections, Laso de la Vega sought to draw his Nahua audience into devotion through the imperative force of hagiography.
In a 2013 article, Timothy Matovina identified Huei tlamahuiçoltica as “the first Guadalupan pastoral manual.”Footnote 9 He categorized the text as such based on the explicit evangelical and catechetical intentions stated in the preface and the pastoral and contextual implications of the text’s theology. Matovina found Laso de la Vega’s text to be “clearly consistent with that of numerous other clergy who composed pastoral manuals to guide apostolic labor among the various native peoples of the Americas.”Footnote 10 Yet, despite the author’s intent to instruct the native faithful and spread Christian devotion, the text clearly lacks the didactic literary form that pastoral manuals employed to assist nonnative clergy in performing liturgies, administering sacraments, and providing contextually appropriate advice for Indigenous communities.Footnote 11 Instead, the text’s dominant narrativity, illustrative exemplarity, and other compositional features reveal it to actually be the first Guadalupan hagiography.
Hagiography originally meant a writing on a saint or a sacred subject, such as sacred objects, miracles, or apparitions. Over the course of the centuries, this Christian genre has taken different literary forms, such as letters, diaries, court records, hymns, homilies, or collected biographies. Its two most recognizable forms, however, are the medieval narrative vita, or the life of a saint, and the miracle narrative.Footnote 12 This genre arose from early and late antique Christian communities’ desire to preserve the memory of heroic and exemplary lives and deaths of remarkable Christians. What distinguishes hagiography from its contemporary genres of history or biography is its twofold aim of convincing the audience of the subject’s holiness and worthiness for veneration and providing them with a model for emulation. Moreover, to effectively convey this, hagiography presents an image of the saint modeled on the paradigms of Christ’s life and death as recorded in the gospels, those of other well-known saints, and popular miracle narratives. Hagiographers intentionally utilized established Christian values, virtues, and practices as well as easily recognizable patterns from known narratives to confirm the sanctity and mimetic value of their subject, a strategy employed with uneducated lay audiences particularly in mind.
In addition to saintly tropes drawn from the lives of Christ and the saints, hagiographic texts had to reflect the expectations of sanctity held by the community for whom they were written. Although the hagiographer is the primary crafter of a saint’s image, it is ultimately the community that determines whether they will accept the presented image of the saint. This is especially true for hagiographies written for communities in which strong oral traditions of the subject already exist or living witnesses remain. In such instances, for a hagiography to become “canonical,” it must effectively capture the communal memory of the sacred subject. Of course, hagiographers could still introduce new things into their narratives, such as deeds, sayings, or values. They might also reintroduce old values they considered in danger of being forgotten by the community.Footnote 13 Thus, hagiography could do more than simply hold a mirror to a community; through the hagiographer’s interpretation of the holy subject, it could become a constitutive text for the reformation of a communal identity of which the saint is manifest.
It is important to note that hagiographic texts are almost always composed following a burgeoning cult or devotion and alongside the establishment of annual commemorations, liturgies, shrines, and the proliferation and veneration of relics and images. Although typically only the wealthy, the literate, and the elite had physical access to hagiographic texts, hagiographies were disseminated back into a community either directly through recitation of texts and theatrical reenactments or indirectly through sermons, iconography, and devotional practices.Footnote 14 Therefore, hagiographic texts cannot be fully understood apart from their cultic context.
Hagiography is not an objective or positivist historical narrative of its subject but one constructed through the deployment of familiar tropes, communal identity markers, and illustrative examples. While critics have often decried these features as the literary and historical weaknesses of hagiography, they are precisely what made it an enduring Christian genre.Footnote 15 This does not mean, however, that hagiographers did not understand their subjects as a historical reality, but only that they have chosen to tell their narrative according to the structure of hagiography and not contemporary historiography. Through compelling narrative and exemplary characters, rather than theological explication or moral didacticism, hagiography seeks to draw its audience into devotion to a particular holy subject and present attractive models for imitation.
As a hagiography, Huei tlamahuiçoltica is composed in this exact way. By presenting a compelling narrative of the origins of Guadalupan devotion, it invites its Nahua audience to imagine the stories of her miracles unfolding once again before them, prompting hope and excitement as they contemplate what Guadalupe might do for them. To be effective in this process, a well-crafted structure and textual flow are essential.
Composed in five parts, Huei tlamahuiçoltica begins with an explanatory preface in the form of a prayer directed to Guadalupe. This prayer emphasizes Guadalupe’s identification with the Nahuas and presents the narrative of the miracles as a continuation of Pentecost. Following this, the text immediately tells the traditional apparition narrative in a section widely known as the Nican mopohua, or “Here is recounted.” The next section, the Nican motecpana, or “Here is an ordered account,” provides the aftermath of the apparitions with fourteen miracle stories associated with the image and shrine of Guadalupe, as well as a short vita of Juan Diego, telling his life before and after the apparitions and up to his death. The narrative text concludes with the Nican tlantica, or “Here ends the story,” where it exhorts the Nahuas to remember and spread Guadalupe’s miracles and to respond to her with love and devotion. The final page is a stand-alone prayer titled “Prayer to Be Directed to the Heavenly Queen, Our Precious Mother of Guadalupe” and modeled after the Salve Regina.Footnote 16 This closing prayer offers the audience a concrete step for beginning devotion to Guadalupe following the encounter with the narrative.
The text’s division into the aforementioned sections and debates about the linguistic integrity of the whole text have led some to consider Huei tlamahuiçoltica a compilation of works varying in content, form, and authorship.Footnote 17 Such a view likely played a role in Matovina’s classification of the text as a pastoral manual, as works of this genre often gathered various liturgical and pastoral texts into a single collection.Footnote 18 Although the division of the text is such that a pastor could easily take a section and implement it into a sermon or catechetical lesson, this portability is also an intentional feature of hagiography so that the audience can more readily spread the narrative. Moreover, the division of the text into a prologue, two major narrative sections recounting a saint’s life or a sacred event and their subsequent miracles, and an exhortatory conclusion is a well-established structure of hagiographic texts from the medieval period through the early modern.Footnote 19 Despite purported discrepancies in the writing styles among various sections, the text presents itself as a unified narrative.Footnote 20 Like many hagiographers before him, Laso de la Vega collected the various sources on the Guadalupan devotion available to him and, drawing on them at his discretion, composed a cohesive narrative unit.
Along with medieval expectations, seventeenth-century hagiographies, like Huei tlamahuiçoltica, were also shaped by factors that arose in the previous century, namely canonization reform and the advent of the printing press. The reforms to the cult of the saints, begun under the Council of Trent and continued under Pope Urban VIII, forbade the public recognition or depiction of any newly reputed saint, image, or miracle without ecclesiastic investigation and approval.Footnote 21 This prohibition included declaring anyone a “saint” or “holy” or promoting a new devotion in text. Such restriction took on even greater importance in New Spain as the few printing presses available were under royal and ecclesiastic control.
As a result, hagiographers had to balance their aim of spreading devotion among the faithful with the task of convincing censors of the true sanctity of their subject and the overall orthodoxy of texts. Thus, whereas the composition of medieval hagiographies was primarily the result of the interplay among the saint, the hagiographer, and the community, the hagiographies of seventeenth-century New Spain also had to balance the expectations of the inquest processes to have their work approved and published. Publication of approval letters, such as a licencia, suma de privilegio, or tassa, provided proof of completing this process. Additionally, including a protesta del autor or carta al lector served as a disclaimer or protection should their content be considered at odds with the expectations of the current stage in the process of the inquest.Footnote 22
To this end, Huei tlamahuiçoltica opens with a letter with the opinion of Father Baltasar González, SJ, an ecclesiastical judge for the archdiocese, stating that he found the text “in accord with what is known of the event by tradition and annals, and … it will be very useful and advantageous for enlivening the devotion of the lukewarm and regenerating it in those who live in ignorance of this mysterious origin of this celestial portrait.”Footnote 23 This opinion aided Laso de la Vega in obtaining a licencia to publish his text, which he included on the following page. Although ecclesiastical concerns were not the primary factor in shaping a hagiography, a hagiographer would do all they could to ensure their text’s approval for publication and dissemination.
In addition to concern for new bureaucratic procedures for approving and publishing a hagiographic text, sixteenth-century Catholic reformers also recognized the need to modernize the cult of the saints. A pioneer in this effort was sixteenth-century hagiographer Alonso de Villegas, author of a popular Flos Sanctorum, a six-volume collection of the lives of the saints in Spanish. Villegas contends that modern hagiography should be written in the vernacular and conveyed credibly to the reader. Additionally, he proposed that the saint in a hagiography should be a positive medium through which the reader can better understand sanctity and how to attain it.Footnote 24
It is in recognizing and reading Huei tlamahuiçoltica as a hagiographic narrative text that Laso de la Vega’s literary and pastoral genius becomes more apparent. His desire to present the Guadalupan narrative in an Indigenous vernacular and to ground it in local cultural realities demonstrates a profound respect for the Nahuas and a zeal for them to regard Guadalupe as particularly their own. It also reflects the text as a product of the general spirit of hagiography in its age.
Criollo Priest and Nahua-Christian Identity
Laso de la Vega’s identity as a criollo priest naturally leads some to question the extent to which Huei tlamahuiçoltica can be considered a representative text for contemporary Nahua Christians.Footnote 25 Is this account a genuine Nahua-Christian tradition that happens to be recorded by a criollo? Or is it an adaptation of a criollo tradition into Nahuatl? For some, an answer to this question necessitates discussion of the debated authorship of the Nican mopohua.
Some argue that the Nican mopohua was not originally written by Laso de la Vega but by the sixteenth-century Nahua scholar and aide Antonio Valeriano. In this view, Laso de la Vega rediscovered Valeriano’s text and incorporated it directly into his work.Footnote 26 Proponents of this position point to the higher quality of Nahuatl in the Nican mopohua than the other sections as reflective of Indigenous authorship, with one advocate proclaiming it a “Nahuatl communication par excellence.”Footnote 27 The payoff of this position is the ability to claim that Huei tlamahuiçoltica preserves an authentic sixteenth-century Nahua tradition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a position particularly attractive to those concerned with defending the historicity of the Guadalupe apparition tradition.
More recent scholarship, however, has maintained Laso de la Vega’s authorship.Footnote 28 On one hand, these scholars recognize that the Nican mopohua was written in ecclesiastic Nahuatl, an established form of elevated Nahuatl used in catechetical writings that intentionally emulates the writing style of Huehuetlatolli, or “old men speech,” an Indigenous rhetorical style used for moral instruction.Footnote 29 Typically, such texts were written with the help of or under the direct hand of Nahua aides. On the other hand, they have also recognized grammatical errors in Laso de la Vega’s publication of the Nican mopohua that are indicative of a nonnative speaker, pointing either to the minimal involvement or total absence of Nahua assistants. Whatever the true authorship of the Nican mopohua may be, the fact is that Laso de la Vega published it within the context of his work without any attribution of sources, seemingly intending to pass the whole work off as his own.
There is very little historical information about Laso de la Vega. He was an American-born Spanish secular priest assigned to Guadalupe’s shrine at the time of his writing. He founded La Capilla de los Indios near the shrine at Tepeyac for Indigenous Guadalupan devotees. This chapel, coupled with the rapidity with which he wrote and printed his text in Nahuatl, points to the presence of an Indigenous community near the shrine with which he eagerly worked.Footnote 30 Taking his own words at face value, he wrote zealously with the intention of bringing to Nahua Christians what he believed was a forgotten part of their history.
Today, the appearance of Guadalupe’s image is popularly credited with leading millions of Indigenous persons to baptism within a short amount of time. This claim, however, does not originate in Sánchez or Laso de la Vega’s texts. Although the narrative takes place in a period of active Christian evangelization, the intended audience of Huei tlamahuiçoltica were seventeenth-century Nahuas, who, if not already baptized, were likely already familiar with Christianity. Thus, the text’s intention is not to convert unbaptized Nahuas to Christianity but to convert baptized Nahuas to Guadalupan devotion. Indeed, much like the intended audience, every Nahua character in the text is already a practicing Christian when they appear.
Previous works have studied extensively the text’s utilization of Nahua-Christian features, such as language, imagery, and philosophy throughout the text.Footnote 31 This includes the transformation of Tepeyac into Xochitlalpan, or “the land of the flowers,” a preconquest Nahua conception of heaven during Guadalupe’s first apparition to Juan DiegoFootnote 32 and the repeated use of Nahuatl religious terms, such as Teotl for the one Christian God and totlaconantzin, “our precious mother,” for Guadalupe, despite the latter’s previous controversial status. This usage represents an authorization of this last term, which is considered an innovation of Nahua Christians themselves despite its similarity to Spanish Marian devotion.Footnote 33 Other characteristically native usages of Nahua terms identified include altepetls for local ethnic states or macehualli and Nican tlacatl for Indigenous persons, where one might expect a criollo priest to use a Spanish loan word. There are also common Nahuatl phrases, such as Juan Diego’s self-description as a commoner who carries “burdens with the tumpline and carrying frame … one of the common people, one governed.”Footnote 34 These examples and the use of common Nahua poetic devices, such as polite speech, diminutives, and accentuating dialogue, help make the text more engaging and theologically accessible to a Nahua audience. They also ensure that the audience perceives the text as grounded in their shared Nahua identity.
As one long Marian miracle story, Huei tlamahuiçoltica was already primed to resonate with a Nahua-Christian audience. By the seventeenth century, miracle stories and Marian devotion were long-established features of Nahua-Christian spirituality. Miracle stories were an early evangelical tool of the Spanish missionaries and an established Nahua-Christian genre by the second half of the sixteenth century. Likewise, other Nahuatl Christian texts employed late medieval Spanish Marian devotion.Footnote 35
An additional aspect of Nahua-Christians’ communal identity in the text is their relationship with the Franciscans. While the historical reality of the relationship between missionaries and Indigenous communities is undoubtedly complex, Huei tlamahuiçoltica suggests that contemporary Nahuas still held a strong affection toward the Franciscans. The text refers to the Franciscans as “those beloved of our Lord,” “our Lord’s precious ones,” and “the precious children of Saint Francis.”Footnote 36 Similar terms are used in Sánchez’s text, but the Nahuatl phrasing is certainly an expansion, perhaps due to adapting to the more affectionate and polite styling of Nahuatl speech. Yet a further connection to the Franciscans is made in the preface with the quoting of Bonaventure, the only theologian cited throughout the text. Adding to this is the recognition that Juan Diego’s vita portrays him as a “model Franciscan lay brother or lay person living a consecrated life.”Footnote 37 But perhaps most suggestive is Laso de la Vega’s inclusion of a previously unpublished miracle in the Nican motecpana, which recounts a Nahua community’s rebellious reaction to a viceroyal decision to replace the Franciscans with the Augustinians as their spiritual leaders. Of course, through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Franciscans were successfully retained. Perhaps a coincidence of history or an intentional literary embellishment, the Nahua who led the revolt was a noble named Francisco Quetzalmamalitzin.
Such affectionate emphasis on the Franciscans is notable because it is mostly absent in Sánchez. While one might expect such propaganda from a Franciscan author, Laso de la Vega was a secular priest, and there is no knowledge of his relationship with the order. Perhaps he sought to pay homage to the order that was historically present during the period of the Guadalupan event and to the bishop in the narrative, the Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga. He may have been emulating the sixteenth-century Franciscan histories of Mexico to ground the historicity of the events. Or perhaps his ministry among contemporary Nahuas made him aware of a continued positive communal memory of the Franciscans. Indeed, the only thing certain is Laso de la Vega’s confidence that affection for the Franciscans was a characteristic of Nahua-Christian identity from which he could draw.
Huei tlamahuiçoltica is filled with these and many other Nahua-Christian identity markers. The incorporation of these features ensures that the audience perceives the narrative as grounded in history and confirmed in moral authority and imitability. Although a criollo priest selected and utilized these features, the result is nonetheless a remarkably inculturated hagiography that invites its Nahua audience to internalize the Guadalupan tradition and take up the devotion in their lives.
Reading Huei tlamahuiçoltica as Hagiography
All hagiography is a theological interpretation of its subject matter. The task of a hagiographer is to draw the audience into their underlying theological and moral vision through a compelling narrative and exemplary characters. For Edith Wyschogrod, narrativity is the primary vehicle through which one “experience[s] the imperative power” of the life of a saint.Footnote 38 An imperative mood is a constitutive feature of successful hagiographies, but this is not the same as didacticism or moral instruction. Such an approach would disrupt the narrative and undermine the hagiographer’s aim.Footnote 39 Instead, the hagiographer hopes the experience of the narrative instills in their audience a desire to emulate the protagonists and enables them to visualize how to appropriate the examples in their own lives. Thus, a close reading of Huei tlamahuiçoltica will reveal Laso de la Vega’s theological interpretation of the Guadalupan tradition and his vision for Nahua Christianity.
The Narrative Sweep of Huei tlamahuiçoltica
Although the Nican mopohua recounts the apparition story, the whole text must be considered part of Huei tlamahuiçoltica’s narrativity. This begins with the preface, written as an opening prayer by Laso de la Vega to Guadalupe. A preface or prologue plays an important role in hagiography and has standard features within the genre. Here a hagiographer often recounts their topic, humbly protests their insufficiency to recount the narrative, implores the help of the saint or the Holy Spirit in their work, or offers thanksgiving for their subject.Footnote 40 They might also use the preface to highlight major themes or provide a hermeneutic key to the reader. Drawing on the exordium of classic rhetoric, the hagiographer utilizes this opening space to gain their audiences’ sympathy, interest, and trust.Footnote 41
Laso de la Vega’s prefatory prayer follows these lines, beginning with the genre’s standard protestation of humility. He begins by identifying himself as “unworthy” to care for Guadalupe’s “precious house, where we honor [her] perfect and wondrous image.”Footnote 42 (55). He then minimizes his text, calling it a “small” service to Guadalupe written in “humble commoner’s words” and preemptively credits any success of his text to her help rather than to his own skill.Footnote 43 Whether he felt this way was beside the point of these self-effacing statements, as they serve to make the audience sympathetic to his work and model humble devotion as the appropriate disposition for approaching Guadalupe.
The preface then emphasizes the overarching theme of communicating in Nahuatl as integral to understanding the meaning of Guadalupe’s miracles. Matovina notes that the preface functions as “an apparent apologetic” for the decision to write in Nahuatl.Footnote 44 Indeed, Laso de la Vega connects his work with Guadalupe’s own inculturated appearance and communication. These generous acts convey such a strong desire for closeness to the Nahua people that her image is imprinted on Juan Diego’s cloak. The author’s writing in Nahuatl is simply an extension of Guadalupe’s example. A further appeal is made to the authority of the New Testament, as he connects his text to the Gospel of John’s account of the sign written above Jesus on the cross in three languages, with support of Bonaventure’s commentary on the passage. Moreover, pointing to Mary’s presence at Pentecost, he upholds his text as a continuation of the New Testament’s evangelical call to spread the faith in the world’s various languages. He closes his prefatory prayer with a petition to receive the same grace of the Holy Spirit operative at Pentecost and in the miraculous appearance of Guadalupe’s image so that he can communicate her miracles effectively in Nahuatl to “poor humble commoners.”Footnote 45 With this connection to Scripture, another task of hagiography is fulfilled—conveying the narrative as a continuation of biblical narrative and salvation history in the present Christian life.Footnote 46
The apologetic nature of the preface serves a more rhetorical purpose than demonstrating a real need to defend his work. Since the missionaries first learned the language, Christian texts were written in Nahuatl, and throughout the sixteenth century a number of hagiographies had already been translated into Nahuatl.Footnote 47 Framing the preface in this way, however, provides the occasion for situating Guadalupan devotion within the tradition of biblical inculturation and Franciscan scholasticism, a move likely intended to appeal to the Nahua literate priests, who would have comprised the majority of the text’s actual readership.Footnote 48 Nevertheless, as the preface explicitly reveals, Nahua Christians are the primary audience of the text. Thus, the rhetorical apologetic might also serve to gain sympathy from a Nahua audience through its portrayal of the author as refuting critics to ensure that they receive knowledge of Guadalupe’s love for them so that they too may take part.
Laso de la Vega’s repeated use of the term macehualli, such as in icnomaçehuallàtoli or “humble commoner’s words,” also serves to reinforce the Nahua’s identification with the text. Scholars have noted his use of this word, which can be translated as “commoner” or “Indigenous,” because it is regularly used by Nahuas to refer to a member of their own community. A nonnative speaker writing in Nahuatl would have been far more likely to use the Spanish loan word Indio.Footnote 49 Yet, Laso de la Vega uses macehualli throughout the text to describe not only Juan Diego and his intended Nahua audience but also his own writing. This identification of his text with common Nahuas strengthens his attestation that the very telling of the story is for their benefit. It also invites the audience to envision themselves in the narrative through Juan Diego and the other Nahua characters, who are like them.
Finally, the prefatory prayer sets up the narrative with its concluding petition to receive “tongues of fire in order to trace in the Nahuatl language the very great miracle by which you revealed yourself.”Footnote 50 By drawing on Pentecost, where the grace of the Holy Spirit prompted the apostles to preach the gospel in different languages immediately, Laso de la Vega conjures in the imagination of his audience a simulated orality, a sense that the story is about to be recounted before them immediately following the conclusion of the prayer.Footnote 51 The Nican mopohua continues this simulated orality, beginning: “Here is recounted and told in an orderly fashion how by a great miracle the consummate Virgin Saint Mary, Mother of God, our Queen, first appeared at Tepeyac, called Guadalupe.”Footnote 52
From the title and preface, the audience knows they are about to receive a miracle story. In fact, it is a story filled with many miracles: Guadalupe’s apparitions to Juan Diego and his uncle Juan Bernadino, the transformation of the natural features of Tepeyac into a preconquest Nahua paradise, the healing of his uncle, the appearance of Castilian flowers on the desert hill in the middle of winter, the antagonists’ inability to grab the flowers gathered in Juan Diego’s cloak, and most importantly, the imprinting of Guadalupe’s image on the cloak. The narration of these wondrous events might have been enough to seize the attention of a Nahua audience, who, like their European counterparts, regarded miracles as necessary to verify devotions.Footnote 53 Moreover, these miracles make for a more compelling and personal story by helping Juan Diego overcome the obstacles to his divine mission, like his self-doubt, Spanish suspicion toward the Indigenous, and his uncle’s impending death. Indeed, they provide occasions to demonstrate Guadalupe’s power to assist Nahua Christians in their common challenges. Thus, encountering the narrative of these miracles of Guadalupe leading up to the appearance of her image would instill hope, wonder, and excitement in the Nahuas as they anticipate what she might do for them.
Lest the audience think that Guadalupe’s miracles ceased with the arrival of her image, the Nican motecpana narrates a succession of fourteen miracles associated with the image and shrine. These miracle stories recount everything from prevention of certain injury to the healing of mild and severe afflictions and even the resurrection of the dead! Of the fourteen miracles recounted, eleven were taken from previously circulated collections like the early seventeenth-century Stradanus Engraving, a reproduction of the Guadalupan image surrounded by depictions of eight associated miracles, and Sánchez’s Imagen.Footnote 54 The other three were new contributions from Laso de la Vega. Circulating miracle stories associated with a shrine not only helped spread devotion but was also necessary to attract new pilgrims and increase financial support.
From the perspective of narrativity, Laso de la Vega uses the Nican motecpana to convince his audience of Guadalupe’s continued faithfulness to the promise she made in the Nican mopohua. There, she told Juan Diego: “I greatly wish and desire that they build my temple for me here, where I will manifest, make known, and give to people all my love, compassion, aid, and protection. There I will listen to their weeping and their sorrows in order to remedy and heal all their various afflictions, miseries, and torments.”Footnote 55 The Nican mopohua presents Our Lady of Guadalupe’s promises, and the Nican motecpana demonstrates their continual fulfillment.
The description of Guadalupe’s image at the close of the Nican mopohua serves as the narrative hinge between the two sections. Before this description, the narrative ends with bishop Zumárraga placing the image in the cathedral and the request to build Guadalupe’s shrine not yet fulfilled. Although the narrative notes the spread of devotion at this moment, with “movement in all the altepetls everywhere of people coming to see and marvel at her precious image,” it does not report the occurrence of any other miracles.Footnote 56 The first miracle of the Nican motecpana, however, the healing of an Indigenous dancer who was mortally struck in the neck by a stray arrow, occurs during the festive processional translation of the image to the newly built shrine. The narrative makes clear that this miracle was the result of the shrine finally being built, concluding that “[Guadalupe] was now carrying out the pledge she made to Juan Diego that she would always help and defend the local people and all those who invoked her.”Footnote 57
The rest of the miracles are presented episodically, beginning and ending without any narrative transition, a common style for miracle collections. Nevertheless, this litany of miracle stories is woven into the broader narrative of the shrine’s history. Collectively, they manifest the fulfillment of Guadalupe’s mission and promises and end with the subsequent lives and deaths of Juan Diego and his uncle. Though the miracle stories play a critical role in keeping the attention of the audience and arousing hope, ending the narrative with Juan Diego’s life after the apparitions makes clear that the cult of Guadalupe is not only about the reception of wondrous miracles that appease suffering in this life. The vita conveys Laso de la Vega’s understanding that the proper telos of Guadalupan devotion is the same as any other Marian or saint devotion: attaining salvation.
In the Nican mopohua, Guadalupe promises Juan Diego that she will reward him for carrying out his mission of convincing the bishop to build her shrine. She tells him: “I will enrich you and make you content for it. You will attain many things as my repayment for your efforts and labors with which you go to put in motion.”Footnote 58 These words seemingly suggest that Juan Diego’s reward entails gifts to be received during his earthly life. Indeed, if one were only reading the Nican mopohua, the honor and respect given to Juan Diego after the miraculous appearance of the image on his tilma, a recognition of the dignity that was previously denied him as a Nahua, might be interpreted as the fulfillment of Guadalupe’s promise to him. The Nican motecpana, however, reveals that Juan Diego’s true reward awaited him in the afterlife.
This emphasis may reveal a tension between the cult’s aims in the Nican mopohua and in the Nican motecpana given Guadalupe in the former never mentions Christ or eternal salvation. This would indicate that desiring to remain faithful to his source for the apparition narrative, he chose to utilize the Nican motecpana as a corrective according to his theological vision rather than alter the words attributed to Guadalupe.
At the end of the vita, Guadalupe appears to Juan Diego on his deathbed and tells him that “the time [has] arrived for him to go attain and enjoy in heaven everything that she had promised him.” Then, “The consummate Virgin and her precious child [Christ] took [Juan Diego’s] soul to where it would enjoy completely the happiness of heaven.”Footnote 59 Laso de la Vega goes further than Sánchez, who does not definitively speak of Juan Diego’s salvation but only states that “he died leaving glorious expectations of his salvation, based in a Christian fashion in the mercy and favors of Mary.”Footnote 60 By depicting both Christ, in his only appearance in the narrative, and Guadalupe as bringing Juan Diego’s soul to heaven, Laso de la Vega complies with the Council of Trent’s mandate that all aspects of the cults of Mary and the saints emphasize their intercessory role in obtaining the one true savior.Footnote 61 Juan Diego’s example underscores attaining sanctity and salvation over receiving miracles as the true end of Guadalupan devotion. Thus, the Nican motecpana concludes with an exhortation to follow his example to receive the same reward: “May it be [Guadalupe’s] wish that we too may serve her and abandon all the worldly things that lead us astray, so that we too may attain the eternal riches of heaven.”Footnote 62
The final section, the Nican tlantica, marks the narrative’s close. Here, Laso de la Vega acknowledges a break in the occurrences of miracles from Guadalupe, not because her promises had expired but instead because the Nahuas had failed to write down her miracles when they happened, and they were forgotten. He laments: “The people of the world have always been like that; only at the very moment when they have obtained [miracles] do they wonder at and give thanks for the favors of the heavenly Queen, but soon they cast them into oblivion, so that those who come afterward in attaining the light of the sun of our Lord arrive too late for them.”Footnote 63 Huei tlamahuiçoltica is his attempt to compensate for their neglect and ensure that “time should not erase the miracles of the heavenly Queen.”Footnote 64 Indeed, he understands his text as part of Guadalupe’s heavenly plan, occurring not late but when she “lovingly saw fit.”
With Huei tlamahuiçoltica, Laso de la Vega sought to usher in a new age of Nahua-Guadalupan devotion. Indeed, he emphasizes Guadalupe’s appearance and miracles as occurring particularly for the Nahua. Even though “she now helps all different kinds of people who in their affliction come to greet her in her home,” he wants the Nahua, “the local people, the humble commoners, [to] be sure that it was for their very sake that their Queen condescended to house herself there.”Footnote 65
Early and medieval Christians considered the mere reading of miracle stories akin to performing them anew, filling them with wonder and hope as if they had seen them with their own eyes.Footnote 66 Nahua Christians were just as captivated by miracle stories. By retelling these miracle stories within an overarching narrative, Laso de la Vega intends to make the past miracles present in the mind of his audience so that these wondrous deeds might open their eyes to Guadalupe’s invitation to turn to her as a loving mother. Thus, he concludes with an urgent attestation for his text to be shared with the Indigenous:
Granted that this is so, [the miracle tradition] was fully verified here in our land of New Spain, so that it is very necessary for the local people, the humble commoners to awaken and open their eyes to see and read what has been written here that the heavenly precious lady did for their sake, in order to consider what they need to do to return and pay back her love for people and along with others attain her aid when they call upon her, or if they come to her home to greet her and see her precious, revered image. She will keep her word, because she lovingly wished her home to be built there to help the humble commoners.Footnote 67
Immediately after this concluding paragraph is the phrase “Laus Deo,” words traditionally used to indicate the end of a hagiographic text. This is followed by an appended prayer, offering the audience a first step into entering Guadalupe’s unceasing promises. By providing a prayer resembling the already familiar Salve Regina and integrated with the Guadalupan tradition, the audience can enact the call to respond to Guadalupe’s love by crying out their temporal and spiritual needs before her image.
The enduring popularity of the Nican mopohua throughout the centuries speaks to the beauty and appeal of the apparition narrative. However, reading sections of Huei tlamahuiçoltica in isolation obscures the narrative force of the entire text. When read as a literary whole, the text invites the reader to imagine they are presently witnessing the performance of the Guadalupan miracles, stoking wonder and hope in their hearts and shepherding it toward devotion. Moreover, it highlights the rhetorical and pastoral vision of Laso de la Vega in his effort to spread Guadalupan devotion and shape Nahua-Christian identity accordingly.
Communal Hagiography of Nahua Christians
The previous section highlighted Laso de la Vega’s use of compelling narrative to draw his audience into practicing Guadalupan devotion. This final section will focus on his depiction of the Nahua and their role as exemplary characters. Although Our Lady of Guadalupe is undoubtedly the subject of Huei tlamahuiçoltica, it is also a communal hagiography of sixteenth-century Nahua Christians for seventeenth-century Nahuas to admire and emulate.
The text presents its Nahua characters in a remarkably positive light. The narrative does not mention the concept of sin, which only appears in the prayer appended at the end of the text. This stands in contrast to the prominence of its discussion in catechetical and hagiographic works for both Nahua and European Christians at the time. Similarly, demons play no role in the narrative and are only briefly mentioned in the Nican tlantica’s discussion of the Nahua’s preconquest idols before Guadalupe’s appearance. Though it acknowledges that some Nahuas still kept their idols after hearing the first missionaries preach the gospel, it credits Guadalupe’s image with leading many to vehemently reject the so-called “images of the demon.”Footnote 68 Despite the historical reality of Nahua Christians continuing to hold on to aspects of their ancestral religion even beyond the seventeenth century, this is not a characteristic present in any of the narrative’s Nahua characters. Perhaps even more striking, neither sin nor demons are presented as an associated cause for any illness or affliction in the Nican motecpana’s miracle stories, as one might expect. For instance, the description of a snake slithering out of a Spanish woman healed of hydropsy is reported without explanation or interpretation.Footnote 69 If there is one criticism leveled against the Nahuas, it is their failure to remember the miracles of Guadalupe. Yet even this is softened by the acknowledgment that this failure is a recurring and universal human neglect.
Thematically, this text provides a triumphalist image of Guadalupe, presenting her as one who has stomped out idolatry among the Nahuas. Whereas the idols kept the Nahuas “submerged in night and darkness,” Guadalupe’s divine image “opened their eyes wide … as if the dawn had come upon them.”Footnote 70 Missionaries used light and darkness as metaphors to teach good and evil to the Nahuas, and that imagery appears to be operative here. The night was synonymous with disorder and light with order, categories the Nahua understood better than the abstract concepts of good and evil.Footnote 71 Hence, from a rhetorical and theological standpoint, the time to portray the moral and religious faults of the Nahua would have been before the coming of Guadalupe. The Nican mopohua, however, begins with the dawning of light on Tepeyac, providing a rationale for the narrative’s idealized image of this early generation of Nahua Christians, spiritually powered by the light of Guadalupe.
This is evident first and foremost in the depiction of Juan Diego. Throughout the narrative, Juan Diego’s humility and obedience to Guadalupe and church authorities are at the forefront of his characterization. He is introduced as a “humble commoner, a poor ordinary person,” and the audience is repeatedly reminded of his status.Footnote 72 Modern interpreters have read Juan Diego’s self-effacement and low self-esteem as his internalization of the systemic trauma and abuse that Indigenous people suffered through the conquest, a reading not without narrative support.Footnote 73 Indeed, the bishop and his aide’s suspicion toward Juan Diego as either having a deceptive or credulous nature reveals an awareness of a common attitude Spanish and church officials held toward the Indigenous, an experience undoubtedly relatable to a contemporary Nahua audience.Footnote 74 Nevertheless, the narrative portrays Juan Diego’s disposition as an exhibition of his preeminent Christian virtue.
As the visionary of Guadalupe, Juan Diego’s depiction as a poor, humble, and common field worker aligns with a well-established Marian apparition trope.Footnote 75 A fact the narrative acknowledges when Guadalupe tells Juan Diego, who doubts his worthiness to be her messenger, “Be assured that my servants and messengers to whom I entrust it to carry my message and realize my wishes are not high ranking people.”Footnote 76 That Guadalupe could choose a “maçehualtzintli” or humble commoner like Juan Diego for her mission would stir hope in all low-born Nahuas that she could also choose them.
The emphasis on Juan Diego’s humility is important for another reason, namely establishing his credibility as a visionary. The rules for verifying claims of a visionary, a late medieval practice known as “the discernment of spirits,” dictated that a visionary’s humility be scrutinized first.Footnote 77 Any hint of superbia or a self-righteous sense of worthiness to receive a vision was grounds for discrediting a visionary. Hence, Juan Diego asks himself during the first apparition: “Am I so fortunate or deserving as to hear this? Am I just dreaming it? Am I imagining it in sleepwalking?”Footnote 78
Similarly, obedience was the second virtue necessary for the verification of visionaries, emphasizing the importance of patient compliance with the decisions of church officials in the face of serious doubt. Juan Diego’s prompt willingness to comply with Guadalupe and the bishop’s requests showcases his mastery of this virtue. His prompt, joyful, and eager commitment to comply with their requests despite awareness of their certain difficulty demonstrates his possession of the virtue of obedience to a heroic degree, as it would later be defined.Footnote 79 Furthermore, his obedience to the church is demonstrated in his patient and reverential interactions with the bishop and faithful reception of the sacraments. He devotedly attended Sunday Mass and understood the importance of getting a priest to hear Juan Bernadino’s confession while on his deathbed. Although one could object that clerical paternalism also played a role in the emphasis on humility and obedience as model virtues among the Nahuas, these motives are not mutually exclusive.Footnote 80
The fourteenth miracle story, however, reveals that Laso de la Vega’s vision for Nahua-Christian obedience does not entail a negation of agency. In this story, he recounts the Nahuas’ rebellious reaction to a 1558 royal-ecclesiastical decision to remove the Franciscans and the reversal of this decision after they prayed to Guadalupe. The story suggests to the Nahua audience that the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe empowers them even to influence church decisions. The inclusion of this previously unpublished miracle story is telling, as it presents the Nahuas’ voices being heard as a miraculous outcome on par with healings and resurrections.
The depiction of Juan Diego in the short vita presents a decidedly more idealized image than in the Nican mopohua, portraying him as living like a third-order religious.Footnote 81 After the apparitions, Juan Diego leaves his home and possessions behind in order “to devote himself daily to spiritual things” at the shrine of Guadalupe.Footnote 82 He takes care of the shrine, maintaining the Indigenous devotional act of sweeping holy sites. Yet, he also practices contemplative spirituality, seeking remote places to pray and converse with Guadalupe. Additionally, he is said to have observed regular ascetic practices, such as fasting and bodily mortification, like wearing a metal cilice, penitential practices said to have been enthusiastically undertaken by Nahua Christians.Footnote 83 The vita also reveals that Juan Diego frequented the sacrament of confession and received communion often. Although confession was the most widely practiced sacrament among the Nahuas, frequent reception of communion, like for European Christians, was reserved only for the spiritually elite, making this aspect of Juan Diego’s piety less imitable for a general Nahua audience.Footnote 84
Even more striking is the vita’s presentation of Juan Diego’s chastity. It claims that Juan Diego remained a virgin throughout his entire life despite being married to María Lucía, who died two years before the apparitions. The vita relates that upon hearing a sermon on chastity by the Franciscan Toribio Motolinía, the Indigenous couple decided to live a celibate marriage. Given the historical difficulty and relative failure of teaching the Christian concept of marriage and the virtue of chastity to the Nahuas, such a claim of Juan Diego’s virginity is remarkable, even if lacking historical plausibility.Footnote 85 Here, the vita provides a distinctive example of Juan Diego’s piety going over and above Nahua cultural norms and Catholic moral necessity.
If presenting Juan Diego according to these religious ideals made him perhaps less relatable to a Nahua audience, his depiction nonetheless provides them with ideals of virtue and piety to strive toward. Medieval hagiographies knowingly shaped their holy subjects according to ideals the audience could never perfectly replicate. An audience familiar with the genre, however, understood that the perceived distance between a saintly model and themselves was intended to challenge them to find a way to live them out as best they could according to the particularities of their lives.Footnote 86 It is a reminder that saints are meant to be imitated but not replicated. To this end, Huei tlamahuiçoltica consistently provides hope that these ideals for Nahua sanctity are possible with Guadalupe’s help. Further, presenting Juan Diego with the virtues of humility and obedience, as well as patience, truthfulness, and charity, virtues believed to be demonstrated by Mary in the annunciation story, verifies his status as a true and worthy visionary, according to late medieval standards, which in turn serves to verify the very image of Guadalupe.Footnote 87
Juan Bernadino also plays an exemplary role in the narrative. As the only other Nahua character in the Nican mopohua, he joins his nephew as a visionary of Guadalupe while also being the first person miraculously healed by her and the one to whom she first revealed her name. Within the narrative, his faithfulness to church teaching, such as his request for a deathbed confession, confirms his worthiness to receive miraculous healing. Moreover, in Nahua culture, the maternal uncle represented continuity of life, making Juan Bernadino’s healing symbolic of the healing of the Nahuas through Guadalupe.Footnote 88 From this view, no other Nahua character was necessary in the Nican mopohua as he and Juan Diego stand in for their people together.
If Juan Diego’s response to Guadalupe can be considered akin to taking on traditional monastic vows, Juan Bernadino models an alternative response. The vita relates Juan Bernadino’s desire to follow his nephew’s example of living and serving at the shrine, but Juan Diego would not allow him. Instead, he instructs his uncle to take care of their ancestral home because historically uncles acted as the custodians of familial property.Footnote 89 His acceptance of that role assures the audience that a devotee of Guadalupe does not have to live like a monastic but can practice devotion while continuing to fulfill their domestic and familial duties. The validity of Juan Bernadino’s response is confirmed when, once again, on his deathbed, Guadalupe tells him in a dream that “she would take him to her royal home in heaven since he had always dedicated himself to her and invoked her.”Footnote 90
He received the same reward as Juan Diego, which demonstrates to the audience that they do not need to live a consecrated life at the shrine to receive the fullness of Guadalupe’s promise. Juan Diego’s example was an individual call, as he tells his uncle that Guadalupe “commanded him to be all alone,” but it is not for everyone.Footnote 91 To be sure, some do follow Juan Diego’s path, such as a Nahua warrior brought back from the dead in the first miracle story of the Nican motecpana, as he, too, stays at the shrine and sweeps it.Footnote 92 This response, which is joyfully and voluntarily undertaken, demonstrates a dedication commensurate with the miracle of having one’s life restored from death. Not all are called to the same. Instead, most are likely called to follow the way Juan Bernadino exemplified as a secular lay Nahua Christian, offering daily witness to Guadalupan devotion in their families and altepetls.
Another Indigenous recipient of Guadalupe’s healing in the Nican motecpana is Don Juan de Tovar, a well-known devotee to Our Lady of Remedios, the most popular image of Mary in Mexico City, brought over from Spain by the conquistadors. When Juan becomes gravely ill, rather than turning to Remedios, he remembers the healing of Juan Bernadino and asks to be brought to Guadalupe’s shrine. After Juan is healed, Guadalupe instructs him to build a small temple dedicated to her as Our Lady of Remedios. He complies, demonstrating another way to give thanksgiving and devotion to Our Lady away from the shrine. Nevertheless, Juan de Tovar’s story reinforces Guadalupe as the primary recourse for Nahuas to flee to when in distress. It also provides an example of how to approach Guadalupe: “He prayed to her tearfully, he bowed down and humbled himself before her, and asked her to do him the favor of healing his earthly body.” Seeing his manner of approach, Guadalupe “received his prayers benevolently. She was very happy, she smiled when she saw him, and she showed him affection.”Footnote 93 Thus, Juan de Tovar’s way of petitioning Guadalupe with humility, tears, and trust is presented as a sure way to bring her happiness.
Through these Indigenous characters, Laso de la Vega presents his audience with several examples of how Guadalupan devotion can be enacted in their lives. In their depiction, he utilizes exemplarity and relatability to shape contemporary Nahua-Christian identity into that of flourishing Guadalupan devotees. His repetitive use of the term “commoner” reveals his desire for them to identify, above all, with Juan Diego. He is a model Nahua Christian. This miracle is for Nahua Christians. The shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe is a place established especially for Nahua Christians. They need only to come to her to receive the graces promised. These graces are intended to assist them not only in relief amid the struggles of their earthly life but ultimately to attain eternal salvation.
Yet despite Laso de la Vega’s attestation that Juan Diego and Juan Bernadino are in heaven and emphasizing their devotion, piety, and virtue, he never goes as far as to call them intercessors, holy, or saints. Such an omission is striking when considering Juan Diego’s recent status as a Roman Catholic saint, officially canonized in 2002. Although one can only speculate about the reason for this omission, there are a few possible explanations.
Thematically, Huei tlamahuiçoltica is concerned with promoting the cult of Guadalupe as one particularly intended for the Nahuas. Thus, the triumphalist approach to spreading her devotion among the Nahua might have led to an intentional neglect in promoting others. Historically, this omission could point to Laso de la Vega’s lack of awareness of a cult to Juan Diego at the time of his writing. The absence of a prominent preexisting cult to Juan Diego aligns with the dearth of historical reference to him before the seventeenth century. It also supports the text’s claim that the Nahuas had forgotten the narrative and cult of Guadalupe. Additionally, even if Laso de la Vega saw Juan Diego as a saint, he might have been concerned about censorship because Urban VIII’s non-cultu decrees forbidding the proclamation of any person as “holy” or “saint” before initiating the official processes of canonization were already operative. Of course, none of these reasons are mutually exclusive.
Attaining approval for the cult of Juan Diego would likely have been difficult given the widespread belief that the Indigenous were only capable of the faith of a neophyte.Footnote 94 Although Huei tlamahuiçoltica seemingly presents Juan Diego as more spiritually advanced than a neophyte, no Indigenous person had ever been championed as a saint at this point in history. Even the three young Nahuas known as the Child Martyrs of Tlaxcalan, whose stories were recounted in the sixteenth-century Franciscan histories, were not yet honored with this designation.Footnote 95 Therefore, it is also a possibility that Laso de la Vega never even considered attempting to establish an official cult to Juan Diego, despite regarding him as a role model for Nahua Christians. To have done so would have put him ahead of his time.
Conclusion
Understanding a text’s genre is essential to knowing how to approach, interpret, and evaluate that given text. For too long, examinations of Huei tlamahuiçoltica either misidentified its genre or dismissed its significance based on the text’s perceived historical value. By identifying and studying this text as a work of hagiographic literature, this study has revealed the rhetorical, pastoral, and theological strategies employed by its author, Laso de la Vega, to communicate his understanding of what Our Lady of Guadalupe should mean for the Nahua-Christian community and prompt their participation and internalization of the devotion. Determining the immediate impact of the text is difficult to fully ascertain because there is no direct evidence of how contemporary Nahua Christians reacted to it and the text had a limited publication run and was not reprinted in its entirety until the early twentieth century.Footnote 96 The one possible insight comes from the Indigenous testimonies taken in 1666 for a capitular inquiry conducted for a papal petition to establish a new feast day and liturgical office in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe; these testimonies reveal some familiarity with the details of Huei tlamahuiçoltica, which could suggest a successful reception.Footnote 97 What can be ascertained more confidently, however, is that the last century of Guadalupan devotion has witnessed to the hagiographic success of Huei tlamahuiçoltica, one that goes beyond its originally intended Nahua audience.
A successful hagiography is that narrative that so effectively instills in its audience a desire to conform their life according to the example of its protagonists that it becomes a canonical version. That Huei tlamahuiçoltica has achieved this designation of a successful hagiography is evidenced in the major role that the text played in the canonization cause of Juan Diego and the engraving of quotes from the Nican mopohua above the main door and walls of the modern Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.Footnote 98 Indeed, these examples demonstrate the enduring quality of Huei tlamahuiçoltica to speak to new generations of Guadalupan devotees, who despite not being seventeenth-century Nahuas are able to identify with Juan Diego, Juan Bernadino, or the other Nahua characters and feel that the love that Guadalupe has shown these poor, humble macehualtin also extends to them.
The extent to which Huei tlamahuiçoltica’s presentation of the origins of the Guadalupan image, shrine, and devotion are governed by the conventions of medieval European hagiography makes clear that the text cannot be perceived as preserving a pure and authentic Nahua memory of the Guadalupan event as some devotees proclaim. Nevertheless, this does not discount the possibility that Laso de la Vega is drawing from some Nahual communal tradition on the text. Moreover, the text evinces a great effort to present this tradition in a relatable way for Nahua Christians. Writing in Nahuatl, imbuing the narrative with Nahua cultural and religious terms and practices, presenting Juan Diego as a relatable and exemplary protagonist, the overall positive portrayal of Nahua Christians, and above all the emphasis on Guadalupe’s message as particularly directed toward caring for the Nahua’s physical and spiritual needs—in a time when their dignity and spiritual capacities were still being questioned—these are some of the remarkable aspects of this text that should be acknowledged and appreciated.
After Miguel Sánchez published his Imagen, Laso de la Vega worked with zealous haste to produce a text that presents the Guadalupan tradition to the Nahuas. That he chose to do this through the medium of narrative hagiography, rather than through a sermon or a predominantly theological or catechetical text, speaks to his pastoral sensibilities with the local Nahua community. Furthermore, the fact that of the foundational Guadalupan texts of the seventeenth century, Huei tlamahuiçoltica is the one that continues to resonate with devotees centuries later should prompt a continued consideration of hagiography’s enduring value.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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