Healers were the other source for baptismal names used in Santa Cruz between 1733 and 1759. Some were the traditional holy helpers who emerged during the years of the Bubonic plague: Barbara, Blas, Catarina, Gorge, and Margarita. Two were angels, Miguel and Rafael or Rafaela.
Others were Cayetano or Cayetana and Roque, if that name was derived from Saint Rocke who was active during the plague. Bernardo or Bernarda and Joana were healed. Rosa, a Dominican in Lima, was said to have cured lepers.
María de Guadalupe appeared for the first time in the preserved record in 1733 as the daughter of Antonia Martín and Miguel de Agüero. The next year, Antonia de Medina and Juan Luiz Martines named their daughter María de Guadalupe.
The name next was used in 1738 for Marta de Guadalupe Trujillo and in 1739 for Rosa María de Guadalupe Archuleta. After that, María Guadalupe was used twice in the mid-1740s and five times in the 1750s.
Between the baptism of the Agüero daughter and the christening of the Trujillo girl, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe was transformed in México from a miracle worker into one who reversed the course of mysterious diseases. Simultaneously, she was transformed from a cult particular to Natives into a symbol shared by all people born in Nueva España. Of the eleven girls named for her in Santa Cruz, only three were Indians, probably Apache or Comanche. The rest had two known parents.
As discussed in the post for 24 February 2016, an infection began spreading through México in 1736. No one knew what matlazáhuatl was. They could only react with procedures that worked with other epidemics like the smallpox contagion of 1733. The viceroy, Juan de Vizarrón provided food and hospitals. Robert McCaa said, he funded four doctors and six pharmacists.
The city council opted for public prayers and asked the viceroy, who was also the archbishop, to lead a novena for the Virgin of Loreto in early January of 1737. When that failed, they asked to have Nuestra Señora de los Remedios brought to the cathedral for nine more days of prayers led by Bartolomé de Ita y Para.
That too failed to stem the disease that was killing more Indians than Spaniards. Rumors were spreading. Stafford Poole said, "a sick woman in delirium saw the fever in the form of a woman on the causeway to Guadalupe." Another told of an Indian woman shouting in the sanctuary at Tepeyac, "let the Spanish die also." Stories were repeated of Indians dumping corpses into aqueducts and mixing victims’ blood in bread dough.
Members of the city’s council suggested bringing the painting of Guadalupe to the city cathedral; others objected the agave fabric was too fragile. Instead, Vizarrón suggested a pilgrimage there for a Novena. Again Ita y Parra spoke.
Still no relief. A comet was seen, probably at the end of January. In February the council agreed to swear an oath of fealty to Guadalupe, with April 27 set for the ceremony. A partial eclipse of the sun occurred March 1, beginning just after noon and lasting 90 minutes. The oath was made public after a procession and mass on May 26. By chance or divine intervention, the epidemic finally began to recede.
The intensity of veneration that followed was not chance. David Brading suggested, it became the vehicle for Mexican-born criollo clergymen to assert their independence from Spanish superiors sent by the Bourbon king.
Ita y Parra, the man who preached the "The Mother of Health sermon" at Tepeyac in 1737, was a Puebla-born Jesuit. He was explicating a new founding legend couched in Old Testament symbols when he asserted Los Remedios failed to stop the epidemic because she was from Spain, a Ruth forever homeless. Guadalupe, on the other hand, would prevail because she was, like Naomi, a native.
Matlazáhuatl arrived in Zacatecas in 1737 during a grain shortage. The city stockpiled grain and called upon its one hospital, two charitable brotherhoods, and private doctors. The Franciscans took the image of Guadalupe to all the churches in mass processions that probably spread the air-born pathogen.
Within the church, men lobbied for Guadalupe’s elevation to patroness for all Nueva España, distinct from Santiago of Spain. In 1746, delegates from city councils and cathedral chapters gathered to acclaim her patronato. Benedict XIV approved their actions in 1754.
Meanwhile, Francisco de Echávarri began supervising construction of an aqueduct to take water to the shine in Tepeyac in 1741. He had been a mine inspector. This was an extension of the civil engineering then being introduced to drain mines. The water main was completed in 1751, after the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748.
Guadalupe bound the criollos to the Indians against the Spaniards. Once the villa of Tepeyac had its basic necessity supplied, a college of canons was established to officiate at the shrine. To be appointed, one had to speak a native language.
Notes: Marta was probably meant to be María; her last name was written Truxillo.
Comets were still unexpected phenomena, not yet explained by science. In México, Augustinian Matías de Escobar wrote it was "a phenomenon notoriously caused by the exhalations of the seas and the corrupt humours of the body," while at Cambridge Isaac Newton suspected it might appear in 1737 based on orbits of previous comets, but wouldn’t commit himself to friends or to print. It was sighted in 1737 in Jamaica on January 26, in Philadelphia on January 27, and in Lisbon on January 29. Ignatius Kegler, a Jesuit missionary for whom it was named, observed it in Beijing on July 3.
Brading, D. A. Church and State in Bourbon Mexico, 1994.
_____. Mexican Phoenix, 2002.
Brodbeck, Roland. "Solar eclipses, Mexico, Coatzacoalcos, 1700 - 2100," 1998, in cooperation with the Swiss Astronomical Society.
Escobar, Matías de. Voces de Tritón Sonora, 1746; quoted by Brading, 1994.
Ita y Para, Bartolomé de "The Mother of Health," paraphrased by Brading, 2002.
Kronk, Gary W. Cometography, volume 1, 1999.
Lynn, W. T. "The Comet of A. D. 1737," The Observatory, May 1901.
McCaa, Robert. "Revisioning Smallpox in Mexico City-Tenochtitlán, 1520-1950," 27 May 2000.
New Mexico Genealogical Society, New Mexico Baptisms, Santa Cruz de la Cañada Church, Volume I, 1710 to 1794, transcribed by Virginia Langham Olmstead and compiled by Margaret Leonard Windham and Evelyn Luján Baca, 1994. Notes in the records varied, so they couldn’t be used to identify the ethnicity of the baptized. I’m assuming if both parents were known the parents were Españoles; if only the mother’s names were known the child was illegitimate and probably Español but possibly meztiso or captive; if no parents were known I’m assuming the baptized were captives.
Newton, Isaac. Comment on comet quoted by William Whiston and reported by Lynn; elaborated by Kronk.
Poole, Stafford. Our Lady of Guadalupe, 1995.
Raigoza Quiñónez, José Luis. "Factores de Influencia para la Transmisión y Difusión del Matlazáhuatl en Zacatecas 1737-38," Scripta Nova, August 2006.
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