Virgin de Guadalupe Holiday - Dec. 12th

[Dina W]

Tomorrow is the holiday for the Virgin de Guadalupe. To me it’s also the beginning of the Christams Holidays in Mexico. The Virigin de Guadalupe is very important in Mexico. Below is some information for those who are interested.

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Nuestra. Virgen de Guadalupe (Our Virgin of Guadalupe) – December 12th

The Virgin of Gudadalupe is the Partron Saint of Mexico. This is the most common version given by devote believers of how the Virgin of Guadalupe became the Mexico’s patron saint.

In 1523, just two years after the Aztec capital of Tenochitlan fell to Hernلn Cortés and his Conquistadors, the first Roman Catholic missionaries arrived to begin the religious conquest of Mexico.

Fray Bernadino de Sahagْn and his fellow Franciscan brothers immediately immersed themselves in the intensive study of indigenous tongues along with the history, customs and religious practices of the Mexicas, whom they called Aztecs. Soon fluent in Nahuatl, they proceeded to translate religious texts and teach the Christian doctrines.

Among their first converts was a man baptized with the Christian name Juan Diego. On the chilly morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego crossed the barren hill called Tepeyac to attend Mass. He was brought to a sudden halt by a blinding light and the sound of unearthly music. Before him appeared an astounding vision--a beautiful dark-skinned woman who, calling the Indian "my son," declared herself to be the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. She told Juan Diego it was her desire to have a church built on Tepeyac hill, and asked him to relay that message to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga.

It was no easy task for the humble Indian to be granted an audience with the top prelate, but the persistent Juan Diego was finally admitted. The incredulous Bishop demanded that he be provided with some proof of the unlikely encounter. Confused and fearful, Juan Diego avoided Tepeyac for several days, but on December 12, while rushing to find a priest to attend a seriously ill uncle, he took a short cut across the hill. The Virgin once again appeared and Juan Diego told her of the Bishop's request. The Virgin instructed him to pick roses from the usually sere and desolate hill and deliver them to Zumarraga as the sign.

Juan Diego gathered up the miraculous blossoms in his mantle and hurried off to complete his mission. Once again before the Bishop, he let the roses spill out before him. To the wonder of all assembled, a perfect image of La Virgen Morena (the Dark Virgin) was revealed emblazoned on Juan Diego's cloak.

By order of the Bishop, a small church was soon constructed on the site designated by the Virgin. Skeptics are quick to point out the unlikely coincidence of the Virgin's appearance on Tepeyac, the very site of an Aztec temple dedicated to Tonatzin (earth goddess, mother of the gods and protectress of humanity) which had been devastated by order of Bishop Zumarraga.

The original church was replaced by a larger structure built in 1709. The Miracle of Guadalupe was officially recognized by the Vatican in 1745. The second sanctuary was declared a Basilica in 1904, but by then it had begun to slowly sink into the soft, sandy soil beneath it. A new Basilica, of modern design and enormous capacity, was dedicated in October of 1976.

In this and other churches dedicated to La Virgen de Guadalupe throughout the nation, millions of the faithful will gather December 12 for processions, prayers, songs, dances, and fireworks to honor "La Reina de México" (the Queen of Mexico).

Juan Diego's mantle, carefully preserved in the new Basilica, has been subjected to extensive analysis over the years. Experts have authenticated the fabric as dating to the 16th century, but have been unable to determine the type of pigment from which the image was rendered. Additionally, although centuries have passed the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe remains clearly imprinted on the cloak without visible signs of deterioration. Faithful Catholics consider this proof that the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe is true.

The following , “Miraculous' Image of Guadalupe” by Joe Nickell is found on the website of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal at http://www.csicop.org/sb/2002-06/guadalupe.html as accessed on September 2006:

Mexico's Image of Guadalupe is a sixteenth-century depiction of the Virgin Mary that, according to pious legend, she imprinted miraculously on an Aztec convert's cloak. The Indian, Juan Diego, is expected to be canonized as a saint, although new evidence confirms skeptics' claims that the image is merely a native artist's painting, the tale apocryphal, and "Juan Diego" probably fictitious.

The story of Juan Diego is related in the Nican Mopohua ("an account") written in the native Aztec language and sometimes called the "gospel of Guadalupe." According to this account, in early December of 1531 (some ten years after Cortez's defeat of the Aztec Empire) Juan Diego was a recent convert who supposedly left his village to attend Mass in another. As he passed the foot of a hill named Tepeyac he encountered a young girl, radiant in golden mist, who identified herself as "the ever-virgin Holy Mary, mother of the true God" and asked that a temple be built on the site. Later, as a sign to a skeptical bishop, she caused her self- portrait to appear miraculously on Juan's cactus-fiber cloak.

The legend obviously contains a number of motifs from the Old and New Testament as well as statements of specific Catholic dogma. Indeed, the tale itself appears to have been borrowed from an earlier Spanish legend in which the Virgin appeared to a shepherd and led him to discover a statue of her along a river known as Guadalupe ("hidden channel"). Moreover, the resulting shrine at Tepeyac was in front of the site where the Aztecs had had a temple for their own virgin goddess Tonantzin (Smith 1983). Thus the Catholic tradition was grafted onto the Indian one, a process folklorists call syncretism.

The image itself also yields evidence of considerable borrowing. It is a traditional portrait of Mary, replete with standard artistic motifs and in fact clearly derived from earlier Spanish paintings. Yet some proponents of the image have suggested that the obvious artistic elements were later additions and that the "original" portions-the face, hands, robe, and mantle-are therefore "inexplicable" and even "miraculous" (Callahan 1981).

Actually, infrared photographs show that the hands have been modified, and close-up photography shows that pigment has been applied to the highlight areas of the face sufficiently heavily so as to obscure the texture of the cloth. There is also obvious cracking and flaking of paint all along a vertical seam, and the infrared photos reveal in the robe's fold what appear to be sketch lines, suggesting that an artist roughed out the figure before painting it. Portrait artist Glenn Taylor has pointed out that the part in the Virgin's hair is off-center; that her eyes, including the irises, have outlines, as they often do in paintings, but not in nature, and that these outlines appear to have been done with a brush; and that much other evidence suggests the picture was probably copied by an inexpert artist from an expertly done original.

In fact, during a formal investigation of the cloth in 1556, it was stated that the image was "painted yesteryear by an Indian," specifically "the Indian painter Marcos." This was probably the Aztec painter Marcos Cipac de Aquino who was active in Mexico at the time the Image of Guadalupe appeared.

In 1985, forensic analyst John F. Fischer and I reported all of this evidence and more in "a folkloristic and iconographic investigation" of the Image of Guadalupe in Skeptical Inquirer. We also addressed some of the pseudoscience that the image has attracted. (For example, some claim to have discovered faces, including that of "Juan Diego" in the magnified weave of the Virgin's eyes-evidence of nothing more than the pious imagination's ability to perceive images, inkblot-like, in random shapes) (Nickell and Fischer 1985).

Recently our findings were confirmed when the Spanish-language magazine Proceso reported the results of a secret study of the Image of Guadalupe. It had been conducted - secretly - in 1982 by art restoration expert José Sol Rosales. Rosales examined the cloth with a stereomicroscope and observed that the canvas appeared to be a mixture of linen and hemp or cactus fiber. It had been prepared with a brush coat of white primer (calcium sulfate), and the image was then rendered in distemper (i.e., paint consisting of pigment, water, and a binding medium). The artist used a "very limited palette," the expert stated, consisting of black (from pine soot), white, blue, green, various earth colors ("tierras"), reds (including carmine), and gold. Rosales concluded that the image did not originate supernaturally but was instead the work of an artist who used the materials and methods of the sixteenth century (El Vaticano 2002).

In addition, new scholarship (e.g. Brading 2001) suggests that, while the image was painted not long after the Spanish conquest and was alleged to have miraculous powers, the pious legend of Mary's appearance to Juan Diego may date from the following century. Some Catholic scholars, including the former curator of the basilica Monsignor Guillermo Schulemburg, even doubt the historical existence of Juan Diego. Schulemburg said the canonization of Juan Diego would be the "recognition of a cult" (Nickell 1997).

However, the skeptics are apparently having little if any effect, and Pope John Paul II seems bent on canonizing "Juan Diego" who is as demonstrably popular among Mexican Catholics as he is, apparently, fictitious.