D/Escribiendo lo sagrado: texto y contexto de las dos primeras crónicas marianas de América

Abstract

Mercedarian friar Luis de Cisneros wrote a chronicle on Our Lady of Remedios, first patroness of Mexico City that was published in 1621. Significantly, that same year Augustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán's history on Our Lady of Copacabana, patroness of Peru and Bolivia, was printed in Lima. This paper compares these two founding accounts, not only in their literary structures, but also their patronage, and reception. It also ponders how both cults aimed to integrate both Spaniards and Indigenous peoples under one symbolic figure—the mother of God—as a key element for the consolidation of colonial society, not by coincidence, one of the key goals of the local Church councils that took place in the 1580s.     

Entre destellos se desvanece una devoción: la imagen de oro de la Asunción,patrona de la catedral metropolitana de México

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze representations of the Assumption of the Virgin, patroness of the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral in New Spain. In 1610, a superb golden figure of the Assunta was acquired and located in a silver tabernacle by the new main altarpiece, which was dedicated in 1673. In the eighteenth century, this altarpiece was substituted with a new one designed by Jerónimo de Balbás, where the golden statue was eventually relocated. Since the Assunta has generally been overlooked in colonial historiography, I intend to answer the following questions: What were the aesthetic and symbolic values, based upon the theological ideas at the time in the Spanish and Catholic worlds, guiding the representation of Mary in this golden image? What was its agency in relationship to materiality, form, and usage in liturgical contexts and religious festivals?