OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE.
The story and celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe are not so familiar to Catholics, or so well appreciated by others, as to render useless or uninteresting, especially in this month of Mary, an account of her veneration in Mexico. What this actually, veritably is, no writer, so far as we are aware, has yet undertaken to show—at least, from such literary evidences of popular conviction as best illustrate the subject. How anything supernatural could shine or blossom in a land of wars, robbers, Indians, is an old doubt, notwithstanding that revelations have taken place in countries which needed them less than did the once idolatrous Aztecs. Let us now endeavor to make clear what the true nature of the miracle of Guadalupe is; to exhibit its real veneration by means of testimonies borrowed from the worthiest Mexicans; and to prove that the faith of Guadalupe is not shallow, but long and well-established, widespread, and sincere.
Here follows a brief history of the renowned miracle of Tepeyac. In 1531, ten years after the conquest, the pious and simple Indian, Juan Diego, was on his way to the village of Guadalupe, near the city of Mexico, there to receive the instructions of some reverend fathers. Suddenly, at the hill of Tepeyac appeared to him the Blessed Virgin, who commanded her amazed client to go forthwith to the bishop, and make known that she wished a church to be built in her honor upon that spot. Next day the Blessed Virgin returned to hear the regret of Juan Diego that he could not obtain the ear of the bishop. "Go back," said the Holy Lady, "and announce that I, Mary, Mother of God, send thee." The Indian again sought his bishop, who this time required that he should bring some token of the presence and command of his patroness. On the 12th of December, Juan Diego again saw Our Lady, who ordered him to climb to the top of the barren rock of Tepeyac and there gather roses for her. To his great astonishment, he found the roses flourishing on the rock, and brought them to his patroness, who threw them into his tilma or apron, and said: "Go back to the bishop and show him these credentials." Again came the Indian before the bishop, and, opening his tilma to show the roses, lo! there appeared impressed upon it a marvellous image of the Blessed Virgin. The bishop was awestruck and overcome. The miraculous occurrence was made known and proved. Processions and Masses celebrated it, and its fame spread far and wide. A large new cathedral was erected on the hill of Guadalupe, and multitudes from all parts flocked thither. Specially noteworthy is the fact that the new shrine to Our Lady was erected in the place where once the Indians worshipped their goddess Totantzin, mother of other deities, and protectress of fruits and fields. The marvellous picture was found impressed upon the rudest cloth, that of a poor Indian's apron, the last upon which to attempt a painter's artifice—and hence the greater wonder, the artistic testimony regarding which is something formidable and wonderful in itself.
What is known in Mexico as the Day of Guadalupe is extraordinary as a popular manifestation. On the 12th of December every year, fifteen or twenty thousand Indians congregate in the village of that name to celebrate the anniversary of the Marvellous Apparition. The whole way to the famous suburb is crowded with cabs, riders, and pedestrians of the poorest sort, a great number of them bare-footed. All day there is an ever-moving multitude to and from the village, and, indeed, the majority of the inhabitants of the city of Mexico seem to be included in the parties, families, and caravans of strangely contrasted people that wend their way to the shrines on the hill. The most numerous class of pilgrims are the saddest and the most wretched—we mean the ill-clad, ill-featured, simple, devoted Indians. On them the luxuries of the rich, the passions of the fighters, the intrigues of politicians, have borne with ruinous effect. Drudging men and women; hewers of wood and drawers of water; bare-breasted peasants, with faces dusky and dusty, the same who any day may be seen on Mexican roads carrying burdens of all sorts strapped to their backs; children in plenty, bare, unkempt, untidy, and sometimes swaddled about their mothers' shoulders; numerous babes at the breast, half-nude—these are some of the features in a not overdrawn picture of the primitive poverty which assembles at Guadalupe, and, in fact, in every Mexican multitude whatsoever. Perhaps nowhere outside of Mexico and the race of Indians can such a problem of multitudinous poverty be seen. Its victims are those over whom the desert-storms of wars and feuds innumerable have passed, and, spite of all their wanderings as a race, they yet wear the guise and character of tribes who are still trying to find their way out of a wilderness or a barren waste. Let enthusiasts for self-willed liberty say what they will, wars of fifty years are anything but conservative of happiness, cleanliness, good morals, and that true liberty which should always accompany them. However fondly we cherish our ideals of freedom, we must yet bear in mind the wholesome, wholesale truth of history, that no actual liberty is reached by the dagger and guillotine, or by massacre, or is founded on bad blood or bad faith. Those who lately celebrated the execution of Louis XVI. and the intellectual system of murder established by Robespierre, and not totally disapproved by Mr. Carlyle, have good reason to be cautious as to how they offend this menacing truth.
A cathedral and four chapels are the principal structures of the picturesque hillside village of Guadalupe. By a winding ascent among steep, herbless rocks, tufted here and there with the thorny green slabs of the cactus, is reached at some distance from the cathedral the highest of the chapels, which contains the original imprint of the figure of Our Lady. Looking up to the chapel from the crowd at the cathedral may be seen a striking picture, not unlike what Northern travellers have been taught to fancy of the middle ages, but the elements of which are still abundant in the civilization of Europe. It is simply the curious crowd of pilgrims going up and down the hill, to and from the quaint old chapel, built perhaps centuries ago. The scene from the height itself is charming and impressive. The widespread valley of Mexico—including lakes, woods, villages, and a rich and substantial city, with towers and domes that take enchantment from distance—is all before the eye in one serene view of landscape. In the village there is a multitude like another Israel, sitting in the dust or standing near the pulquerias, or moving about near the church door. As Guadalupe is for the most part composed of adobe houses, and as its mass of humble visitors have little finery to distinguish their brown personages from the dust out of which man was originally created, the complexion of the general scene which they constitute can only be described as earth-like and earth-worn. Elsewhere than in a superficial glance at the poverty of Guadalupe we must seek for the meaning of its spectacle. Is this swarming, dull-colored scene but an animated fiction? No—it is the natural seeking the supernatural. And the supernatural—what is it? It is redemption and immortality, our Lord and Our Lady, the angels and saints.
The cathedral is a building of picturesque angles, but, except that it is spacious, as so many of the Mexican churches are, makes no particular boast of architecture. A copy of the marvellous tilma, over the altar, poetically represents Our Lady in a blue cloak covered with stars, and a robe said to be of crimson and gold, her hands clasped, and her foot on a crescent supported by a cherub. This is the substance of a description of it given by a traveller who had better opportunities for seeing it closely than had the present writer during the fiesta of Guadalupe in 1867. Whether the original picture is rude or not, from being impressed upon a blanket, he has not personal knowledge, though aware that it has been described as rude. Nevertheless, its idea and design are beautiful and tender. Everywhere in Mexico it is the favorite and, indeed, the most lovely presentment of Our Lady. Like a compassionate angel of the twilight, it looks out of many a shrine, and, among all the images for which the Mexican Church is noted, none is perhaps more essentially ideal, and, in that point of view, real. Where it appears wrought in a sculpture of 1686, by Francisco Alberto, on the side of San Agustin's at the capital, it is, though quaint, very admirable for its purity and gentleness. Time respects it, and the birds have built their nests near it. The various chapels in and about the city dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe are recognized by the star-mantled figure. The Baths of the Peñon, the cathedral at the Plaza, the suburb of Tacubaya, have each their pictorial witnesses of the faith of Guadalupe; and to say that its manifestation abounds in Mexico is but to state a fact of commonplace. Rich and poor venerate the tradition of the Marvellous Appearance, now for three centuries celebrated, and always, it seems, by multitudes.
What else is to be seen at Guadalupe besides its crowd and its altar is not worthy of extended remark. The organs of the cathedral are high and admirably carved; over the altar's porphyry columns are cherubim and seraphim, all too dazzling with paint and gold. Here, as in other places of Spanish worship, the figures of the crucifixion have been designed with a painful realism. Outside of the church a party of Indians, displaying gay feathers, danced in honor of the feast, as their sires must have done hundreds of years ago. Inside it was densely crowded with visitors or pilgrims, and far too uncomfortable at times to make possible the most accurate observation of its ornaments. But it may be well to repeat that the church is divided into three naves by eight columns, and is about two hundred feet long, one hundred and twenty feet broad, and one hundred high. The total cost of the building, and, we presume, its altars, is reckoned as high as $800,000, most of it, if not all, contributed by alms. The altar at which is placed the image of Our Lady is said to have cost $381,000, its tabernacle containing 3,257 marks of silver, and the gold frame of the sacred picture 4,050 castellanos. The church's ornaments are calculated to be worth more than $123,000. Two of its candlesticks alone weighed 2,213 castellanos in gold, and one lamp 750 marks of silver. To Cristobal de Aguirre, who, in 1660, built a hermitage on the summit of Tepeyac, we owe the foundation of the chapel there. It was not, however, until 1747 that Our Lady of Guadalupe was formally declared the patroness of the whole of Mexico.
Of the many celebrations of Mexico, none are altogether as significant as that of Guadalupe. It has become national, and, in a certain sense, religiously patriotic. Maximilian and Carlota, the writer was informed, washed the feet of the poor near the altar of Our Lady, according to a well-known religious custom. The best men and women of Mexico have venerated the Marvellous Appearance—which, however amusing it may be to those who are scarcely as radical in their belief in nature as conservative in their views of the supernatural, is but a circumstance to the older traditions which have entered into the mind of poetry and filled the heart of worship. What of the wonderful happenings to the great fathers of the church and the mediæval saints, all worshippers of unquestionable sublimation? Say what you please, doubt as you may, saints, angels, miracles, abide, and form the very testament of belief. There is not a Catholic in the world who does not believe in miracle, whose faith is not to unbelievers a standing miracle of belief in a miracle the most prodigious, the most portentous; and yet to him it has only become natural to believe in the supernatural. The Mexicans venerate what three centuries and uncounted millions have affirmed, whence it appears that their veneration is not a conceit or humbug, but at root a faith. How can this be more clearly illustrated than by quoting the following very interesting poem of Manuel Carpio, Mexico's favorite, if not best modern poet:
THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE.
The good Jehovah, dread, magnificent,
Once chose a people whom he called his own.
And out of Egypt in a wondrous way
He brought them in a dark and troublous night,
And Moses touched the Red Sea with a rod,
And the waves parted, offering them a path.
His people passed, but in the abyss remained
Egyptian horse and rider who pursued.
Marched on the flock of Jacob, and the Lord
Spread over them his all-protecting wings,
As the lone eagle shields her unfledged young.
He gave them lands, and victories, and spoils—
Glad nation! which the Master of the heavens
Loved as the very apple of his eye.
But now this people, seeing themselves blessed
By him whose slightest glance they not deserved,
Erected perishable images
In homage unto strange and pagan gods.
The Lord in indignation said: "They wished
To make their Maker jealous with vain gods.
Bowing in dust the sacrilegious knee
Before the dumb creation of their hands.
Well, I will sting their hearts with jealousy,
Showing myself to all unhappy lands
Without employing vail or mystery."
He said it, and his solemn word fulfilled,
Convoking from the farthest ends of earth
Nations barbarian and civilized—
The Gaul, the Scandinavian, Roman, Greek,
And the neglected race of Mexico,
Whom the Almighty Sovereign loved so well
The holy truth he would reveal to them—
So that the hard hearts of his people should
Be softened. Yet his mercy was not full:
Down from the diamond heavens he bade descend
The Virgin, who with mother's sorrowing care
Nursed him in Bethlehem when he was a child.
Near to the tremulous Tezcoco lake
Rises a bare and solitary hill.
Where never cypress tall nor cedar grows,
Nor whispering oak; nor cooling fountain laves
The waste of herbless rocks and sterile sand—
A barren country 'tis, dry, dusty, sad,
Where the vile worm scarce drags its length along.
Here is the place where Holy Mary comes
Down from her home above the azure heavens
To show herself to Juan, who, comfortless,
Petitioned for relief from troubles sore.
Sometimes it chances that a fragrant plant
In the dense forest blooms unseen, unknown,
Though bright its virginal buds and rare its flowers;
So doth the modest daughter of the Lord
Obscure the moon, the planets, and the stars
Which all adorn her forehead and her feet,
When lends she the poor Indian her grace
In bounty wonderful to all his kind.
She tenders him the waters and the dew,
Prosperity of fruits and animals,
A heart of sensible humility,
And help unfailing in his future need.
The Angel of America resumes
Her radiant flight. With grateful ear he heard,
Twice did he wondering kneel, and twice again
He kissed the white feet of the holy maid.
But did not end God's providence benign:
The Almighty wished to leave to Mexicans
His Mother's likeness by his own great hand,
In token of the love he had for us.
He took the pencil, saying: "We will make
In heaven's own image, as we moulded man.
But what was Adam to my beauteous one?"
So saying, drew he with serenest face
The gentle likeness of the Mother-maid.
He saw the image, and pronounced it good.
Since then, with the encircling love of heaven,
A son she sees in every Mexican.
Mildly the wandering incense she receives,
Attending to his vow with human face;
For her the teeming vapors yield their rain
To the green valley and the mountain side,
Where bend and wave the abundant harvest fields,
And the green herbs that feed the lazy kine.
She makes the purifying breezes pass,
And on the restless and unsounded seas
She stills the rigor of the hurricane.
The frighted people see the approach of death
When the broad earth upon its axis shakes,
But the wild elements are put to sleep
With but a smile from her mild countenance.
And she has moved the adamantine heart
Of avarice, who saw decrepit age
Creep like an insect on the dusty earth,
To ope his close-shut hand, and bless the poor.
She maketh humbly kneel and kiss the ground
No less the wise than simple. She the great,
Dazzled by their own glory, doth advise
That soon their gaudy pageant shall be o'er,
And heaven's oblivion shall dissolve their fame.
How often has the timid, trembling maid
Upon the verge of ruin sought thy help,
Shutting her eyes to pleasure and to gold
At thought of thee, O Maiden pure and meek!
Centuries and ages will have vanished by,
Within their currents bearing kings and men;
Great monuments shall fall; the pyramids
Of lonely Egypt moulder in decay;
But time shall never place its fatal hand
Upon the image of the Holy Maid,
Nor on the pious love of Mexico.
Manuel Carpio, who wrote this, his first poetic composition, in 1831, when forty years of age, was a scholar and professor, and in 1824 a congressman. He made the Bible, we are told, his favorite study; and certainly it supplied him with the themes for his best poems. But he was not the only poet of Mexico who bore earnest witness to the faith of which we speak. Padre Manuel Sartorio, who wrote about the time of Iturbide, deprecates the idea of preferring a capricious doubt respecting "la Virgen de Guadalupe" to a constant belief founded in tradition. In the following lines the nature of his own belief is fully attested:
"Of Guadalupe, that fair image pictured
Unto the venerating eye of Mexico;
With stars and light adorned, the figure painted
Of a most modest Maiden, full of grace;
What image is it? Copy 'tis divine
Of the Mother of God.
*****
In other lines on the same subject, Sartorio speaks of the Lady of Guadalupe as "the purest rose of the celestial field," and pays special respect to her image in the Portal of Flowers, of which there is a tradition, not vulgar, of having spoken (hay tradicion no vulgar de haber hablado) to the Venerable Padre Zapa, in order to instruct the Indians, as relates Cabrera, "Escudo de Armas de Mexico, numero 923." Who this Cabrera may be we are not aware, and cannot affirm that he is identical with the great painter Cabrera, whose belief in Our Lady of Guadalupe was so distinct and positive.
One other poet of Mexico we shall summon to give testimony. It is Fray Manuel Navarrete, who wrote a series of poems, well-known to his countrymen, called "Sad Moments." He was also the author of a number of tributes to the fame of Carlos IV. and Ferdinand VII., and seems to have possessed more influence, if not more merit as a poet, than Padre Sartorio. From a posthumous volume, bearing date of 1823, we take the following lines, the allusions of which sufficiently explain at what time they were written:
TO THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN UNDER THE INVOCATION OF GUADALUPE.
From her eternal palace, from the heavens,
One day descended to America,
When in its worst affliction, the great Mary,
Its sorrows to maternally console.
Behold in Tepeyac how watchfully
She frustrates the designs of heresy,
How she extinguishes the fire that flames
From the far French unto the Indian soil!
What matter, then, if proud Napoleon,
With his infernal hosts the world appalling,
Seeks to possess the land of Mexico?
To arms, countrymen: war, war!
For the sacred palladium of Guadalupe
Protects our native land.
The deity of peace have painters skilled
Portrayed with bounteous grace and elegance,
Painting a virgin who with fair white hands
An offering of tender blossoms bore.
Thus were their pencils' finest excellences
A promise and foreshadowing of this,
The image of Our Lady, which in heaven
Received its colors. Thus beheld it he,
The fortunate Indian, at Tepeyac,
That bare and desolate hill, a miracle,
That unto day has been perpetuate.
Now while the world's ablaze with lively war,
Seems that affrighted peace has taken refuge
Within the happy households of our land.
How sadly, how oddly, sounds in modern ears this felicitation of a poet that peace, which has left the greater part of the world, has taken refuge in Mexico! Evidently our Fray Navarrete did not foresee the results of the war begun by the clerical revolutionist Hidalgo. But whatever may have been the political bias of this religious writer, he retains the esteem of his countrymen as one of the fathers of their fragmentary literature.
Our last witness is Miguel Cabrera, the great Mexican painter, whose merits have with reason been compared by an Italian traveller, the Count Beltrami, to those of Correggio and Murillo. Altogether, as carver, architect, and painter, the New World has not produced the equal in art of this extraordinary man, who wrought almost without masters or models, without emulation or fitting aid and recompense, and whose worth has yet to be made well known to the continent which he honored. But our object now is to lend the weight of this preface to the following statement of the Mexican writer, Señor Orozco y Berra:
"Cabrera wrote a short treatise dedicated to his protector Sr. Salinas [Archbishop of Mexico] with the title of The American Marvel, and Conjunction of Rare Marvels, observed with the direction of the Rules of the Art of Painting, in the Miraculous Image [prodigiosa imagen] of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico. It is a small book in quarto, printed in 1756 by the press of the college of San Ildefonso, and containing thirty pages, with dedication, approbations, and license at the beginning, and the opinions of various painters at the end. The reason given for this writing was the invitation made by the abbot and council of the college to the best known painters of Mexico, in order that, after examining the painting on cloth of Our Lady of Guadalupe, they might declare if it could be the work of human hands. Cabrera was one of those who joined in the examination, and in his book he undertakes to show that the Virgin is not painted in a manner artificial and human."