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Francis Alive and Aloft: Franciscan Apocalypticism in the Colonial Andes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Jaime Lara
Jaime Lara*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
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Extract

The seventeenth century opened with a bang, literally. In the year 1600, on the first Friday in the season of Lent, sometime between noon and 3:00 PM (that is, at the hour of the accustomed Lenten penitential processions), the Peruvian volcano of Huaynapudna began a protracted series of explosions and eruptions. It was the largest recorded volcanic eruption in the Western Hemisphere, greater by far than that of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, or Mount St. Helens in 1980, and only slightly smaller than the colossal eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883. The event sent both Christian Spaniards and neo-Christian Indians searching for answers to apocalyptic questions. On that same Friday, February 18, 1600, several other violent earthquakes leveled buildings nearby.

Type
Tibesar Lecture
Information
The Americas , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , October 2013 , pp. 139 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2013 

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References

My thanks to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and to the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, for support in travel and research for this article. This lecture was originally presented on November 10, 2012 at the Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, California.

1. The volcano, also known as Ornate, Quinistaquillas, Chiquimote, and Chcquepuquina, is located 70 km southeast of the city of Arequipa. According to Simkin, Tom and Siebert, Lee Volcanoes of the World: A Regional Directory, Gazetteer, and Chronology of Volcanism during the last 10,000 Years, 2nd ed. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), p. 143,Google Scholar the eruption of Huaynaputina measured 6 in intensity on what would have been the volcanic eruption index (VEI). The maximum, an 8, has been recorded for only that of Krakatoa.

2. The eruption has been associated with the earth’s largest temperature shift in the last 600 years.

3. Bouysse-Cassagne, Thérèse and Bouysse, Philippe “Volcan indien, volcan chrétien: à propos de l’éruption du Huaynaputina en l’an 1600,” Journal de la Société des Amêricanistes 70 (1982), pp. 43–68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bouysse-Cassagne, , Lluvias y cenizas: dos Pachacttti en la historia (La Paz: Hisbol, 1988), pp. 131–216;Google Scholar and Rey de Castro, Patricio Ricketts Arequipa (Lima: Taller, 1990), pp. 55–61.Google Scholar For a discussion of the interpretation of catastrophes in the Hispanic world, see Petit-Breuilh, Maria Eugenia Sepúlveda, Naturaleza y desastres en Hispanoamérica (Madrid: Silex, 2006);Google Scholar and Pérez, Antonio “Los dioses contra el azar versus el azar de los dioses: las catástrofes ‘naturales’ y los pueblos indígenas,” América Latina Hoy 19 (1998), pp. 101–109.Google Scholar For theories of natural science and volcanology in the seventeenth century, see Sáez, Horacio Capel La Física Sagrada: creencias religiosas y teorías científicas en los orígenes de la geomorfologia española, siglos XVII-XVIII (Barcelona: Serbal, 1985).Google Scholar

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6. Verosiib and Lippman, “Global Impacts.” In Estonia, Switzerland, and Latvia, there were bitterly cold winters in 1600 and 1602. In 1601 in France the wine harvest came late, and the production of wine collapsed entirely in Germany. Similar effects were also felt in Japan and China. The sulfuric acid spike in the Greenland ice sheet was larger than that of Krakatoa.

7. de Ocaña, Diego Un viaje fascinante por la América Hispana del siglo XVI [1603] (Madrid: Studium, 1969), p. 243.Google Scholar Before the Roman Ritual appeared in 1614, the evangelizers used the Liber Sacer-dotalis, also known as the Sacerdotale ad »sam romanorum, compiled by Alberto Castellani OP, which contains a rite for conjuring thunderclouds. See Lara, Jaime Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), pp. 36–37, 273.Google Scholar

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9. The anonymous Jesuit author of the Monumenta Peruana claims (p. 9) that the event was “clearly the work of demons because the thunderous rumbles following one upon the other were so extraordinary and so horrible that it was clear that it could not be a natural thing.”

10. For the cartas annuas, see Monumenta Missionum, Vol. 7, pp. 6–18,404–428, 747–751. The event was later incorporated into the travelogue of Fray Diego de Ocaña, mentioned in n7 above, as well as in Delrio, Martin Disquisitionum magicarum (1603);Google Scholar de la Vega, Garcilaso Comentarios reales de los Incas (1609–1617);Google Scholar de Murúa, Martín Historia del origen y genealogía real de los reyes inças del Perú (1611);Google Scholar de Ayala, Guarnan Poma Primera nueva crónica y buen gobierno (1615);Google Scholar de Espinosa, Fray Antonio de Vásquez Compendio y descripción de las Indias Occidentales (1619);Google Scholar Pereira, Juan de Solórzano Disputationc de Indiarum Jure (1653);Google Scholar Cobo, Fray Bernabé Historia del Nuevo Mundo (1653);Google Scholar and de Mendoza, Fray Diego Chronica de la Provincia de S. Antonio de los Charcas (1665).Google Scholar In the eighteenth century, it was described by Navia, Diego de Esquivcl y Noticias cronológicas de la gran ciudad del Cuzco (1748),Google Scholar and Córdova, Ventura Travada y Suelo de Arequipa convertido en cielo (1750).Google Scholar

11. See for example Bernabé, Cobo SJ History of the Inca Empire: An Account of the Indians’ Customs and Their Origin Together with a Treatise on Inca Legends, History, and Social Institutions, Roland Hamilton, trans, and ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), p. 95.Google Scholar

12. According to the Mercedarian friar Martín de Murúa, the volcano had erupted in the fourteenth century during the reign of the Sapa Inca Pachacuti. The king traveled as close as he could to the volcano and, with a sling, hurled clay balls filled with sacrificial blood far up its slopes. Historia del origen y genealogía real de los reyes incas del Perú [1590], Bayle, Constantino ed. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1946), pp. 397–398.Google Scholar

13. Cordova, Travada y Suelo de Arequipa, pp. 44–51.Google Scholar

14. The friars were also accustomed to throwing relics into the sea during hurricanes when crossing the Atlantic. See de Mariscal, Blanca López “Terremotos, tormentas y catástrofes en las crónicas y los relatos de viaje al Nuevo Mundo,” Revista de Estudios Colombinos 2 (2006), pp. 57–65.Google Scholar The Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher studied the infernal inner workings of the earth in his geological and geographical investigations, and expressed this pseudo-scientific belief in his influential Mundus Subterraneus of 1664. On a visit to southern Italy in 1638, the ever-curious Kircher had himself lowered into the crater of Vesuvius, then on the brink of eruption, in order to examine its interior. Kircher’s fellow Jesuit, de Acosta, José in Natural and Moral History of the Indies [1590], Mangan, Jane ed. (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 154–160,CrossRefGoogle Scholar had earlier ruminated on the operation of volcanoes and earthquakes, and had offered quasi-scientific explanations.

15. Monumenta Peruana, pp. 415.

16. Quoted in Bouysse-Cassagne, “Volcán indien, volcán chrétien, p. 56 and p. 64 n22. For an analogous dispute between two mountains over the topic of human sacrifice, see MacCormack, Sabine “The Heart Has Its Reasons,” p. 460 n60.Google Scholar

17. Diego de Esquivel y Navia, Noticias cronológicas de la gran ciudad de Cuzco, 2 vols., Luna, Felix Denegri ed. (Lima: Fundación Augusto N. Wiese, 1980), Vol. 1, p. 279.Google Scholar On Carnival, chaos, and ritual warfare in Peru, see Harris, Olivia “De la fin du monde: notes depuis le Nord-Potosi,” Cahiers des Amériques Latines 6 (1987), pp. 93–118.Google Scholar

18. Eliade, Mircea in The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1954), p. 97,Google Scholar writes: “Human beings tend to see intentionality behind misfortune. Suffering proceeds from the magical action of an enemy, from breaking a taboo, from entering a baneful zone, from the anger of a god, or—when all other hypotheses have proven insufficient—from the will or wrath of the Supreme Being. The primitive, and the not so primitive, cannot conceive of an unprovoked suffering.” Also see Pérez, “Los dioses contra el azar.”

19. Monumenta Peruana, p. 405. On the apocalyptic signs, see The Fifteen Signs before Doomsday, Heist, William trans, and ed. (Kalamazoo: Michigan State College Press, 1952).Google Scholar

20. Ocaña, , Un viaje fascinante, p. 241.Google Scholar

21. The river of hellfire is typical of Byzantine and Italian depictions of the Last Judgment; see for example Miloćević, Desanka The Last Judgment (New York: Catholic Art Book Guild, 1964), pp. 29–59.Google Scholar At Tor-cello, and in Giotto’s interpretation of the theme in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua, the Last Judgment scenes arc located on the interior west walls. The river of fire flows from beneath Christ’s feet off to his left, and thence down to hell.

22. Monumenta Peruana, p. 405. With the invention of movable type, the anonymous Fifteen Signs before Doomsday was printed several times in the fifteenth century. See Heist, The Fifteen Signs, pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

23. de la Calancha, Antonio Crónica moralizada de la Orden de N.S.P.S. Agustín en el Perú [1638], 6 vols., Pastor, Prado ed. (Lima: Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, 1976),Google Scholar Book 1, chapt. 3.

24. The Vaticinium was a thirteenth-century Joachite work. Mount Etna had erupted in 1163. See McGinn, Bernard Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 122–125.Google Scholar

25. See MacCormack, Sabine “Pachacuti: Miracles, Punishments, and the Last Judgment: Visionary Past and Prophetic Future in Early Colonial Peru,” American Historical Review 93:4 (1988), pp. 960–1006;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the images in de Ayala, Guarnan Poma Nueva crónica y bien gobierno, pp. 480 [484], 631 [645] and 637 [651] at http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/titlepage/en/image/.Google Scholar (The brackets refer to an alternative pagination on the official website of the Danish Royal Library where the manuscript is housed.) Guarnan Poma had likely seen one or more of the illustrated Venetian editions of Joachim’s works.

26. In the 1570s, Father Blas Valera SJ, recorded that the pre-Hispanic Incas had hermits who dressed in brown or black habits. See Hyland, Sabine Gods of the Andes: An Early Jesuit Account of Inca Religion and Andean Christianity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 76–79.Google Scholar

27. Divina rcvelatio Erythrée Sibylle cum commentants (Siena,1508); Expositio magni prophète Joachim in librum beati Cyrilli… Liberile magnis tribulationibus… (Venice, 1516); Super Esaiam Prophetam (Venice, 1517); Super Hieremiam Prophetam (Venice, 1516/1525, Cologne, 1577); Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venice, 1527); In Apocalypsim et Psalmos (Venice, 1527); Liber Concordie Novi ac Veteris Testamenti (Venice, 1519); Psalterium decern chordarum (Venice, 1527); Vaticinia, sive prophetiae abbatis loachimi & Anselmi episcopi marsicani; cum imaginibus aere incises, correctione et pulchritudine … Qiiibus rota, el oraculum turcicum (Venice, 1589); Projette dellábbate Gioachino. Et di Anselmo vescouo di Marsico: con l’imagini in dessegno … ; con due ruote, & un’oracolo Turchesco (Venice, 1625); and Divinum Oraculum S. Cyrilli Carmelitae… (Lyon, 1663), inter alia.

28. Milhou, Alain “Apocalypticism in Central and South American Colonialism,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, 3 vols., Collins, John et al., eds. (New York: Continuum, 1998), Vol. 3, pp. 3–35;Google Scholar Urbano, Henrique “Wiracocha, utopía y milenarismo en los Andes de los siglos XVI y XVII,” in Utopía, mesianismo y milenarismo: experiencias latinoamericanas, Ana de Zaballa Beascoechea, comp. (Lima: Universidad de San Martín de Porres, 2002), pp. 15–39.Google Scholar

29. It should be noted that Hartmann Schedel had concluded his World Chronicle (1493) with the vivid image of the arrival of Antichrist.

30. For an image of this painting, see http://caterpillarpublishing.com/?attachment_id=3748, accessed July 19, 2013.

31. Salinas, Diego de Cordova Crónica franciscana de las Provincias del Perú (Lima, 1651), p. 1113.Google Scholar

32. See note 30 above.

33. de Mendoza, Diego Chronica de la Provincia de S. Antonio de los Charcas del Orden de N. Seráfico P. S. Francisco (Madrid, 1664), pp. 41–45, 133.Google Scholar

34. Francis of Assist: Early Documents, 3 vols., Armstrong, Regis et al., eds. (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1999), Vol. 2, p. 527.Google Scholar While Bonaventure may have employed the “sixth angel” in a metaphorical way, later friars like Ubertino da Casale and Peter John Olivi claimed that, in private, Bonaventure professed a literal reading. The “seal of the living God” was always understood as the stigmata that Francis received from the winged seraph on Mount Alvernia.

35. In Inca culture, an era or epoch is a “sun,” and vice versa.

36. Salinas, Cordova Crónica Franciscana, pp. 72 and 1111.Google Scholar

37. Bernard, Carmen “Un sargento contra un rey,” in Negros, mulatos, zambaigos: derroteros africanos en los mundos ibéricos, Arés, Bertha and Stella, Alejandro eds. (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 2000), esp. p. 69.Google Scholar

38. On the earthquake, see Chronicle of Colonial Lima: The Diary ofjosephe and Francisco Mtigabitru, 1640–1697, Miller, Robert Ryal trans, and ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

39 Archivo San Francisco de Lima, “Cuadernos de apuntes varios,” Ms. 42, f. 216 and ff.

40. On this legend, see Reeves, Marjorie The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 73, 96–100,164–165, 230, 266, 460, 479.Google Scholar

41. The story is first mentioned in the 1261 Chronica Minor of the friar Erfut. The earliest printed mention is Francesco Sansovino, Venctia città nobilissima et singolare (Venice, 1581), pp. 34r–v.

42. Olivi was a reformist hero not only to the Spiritualists of his own day, but to the Observant friars who later traveled to the New World.

43. Bartholomew of Pisa, Liber conformitatum viu beati ac seraphici patris Francisci ad vitam lesu Christi, domini nostri [1399]. Reprinted in Analecta franciscana, vols. 4 and 5. (Quaracchi: Collegio di San Buonaventura, 1906–1912).

44. Erasmus Alber, Alcoranusfranciscanorum (Frankfurt, 1531 ), in reply to which Henry Sedulius published his Apologetictts adversas Alcorantim Franciscanorum pro libro Conformitatum (Antwerp, 1607).

45. de las Llagas, Juan Triumphos de la sancta evangèlica pobreza en la religion scraphica de Nuestro Padre San Francisco (Lisbon: Pedro Craesbeeck, 1625).Google Scholar For the image in question, see http://purl.pt/ 17295/1 /r-17447-p JPG/r-17447-pJPG_24-C-R0150/r-17447-p_0015_est_t24-C-R0150.jpg, accessed July 19,2013.

46. Ceyssens, Lucien “Pedro de Alva y Astorga, O.F.M, y su imprenta de la Inmaculada en Lovaina,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 11 (1951), pp. 5–35.Google Scholar

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48. Martin, Lavilla “El Naturae Prodigium” pp. 243–44.Google Scholar

49. Naturae Prodigiumgratiae portentum (Madrid: Julliani de Paredes, 1651), text para. 4.

50. See Askew, Pamela “The Angelic Consolation of St. Francis of Assisi in Post-Tridentine Italian Painting,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 32 (1969), pp. 280–305;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Krischbaum, Engelbert and Bandmann, Giinter Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonografie, 8 vols. (Rome: Herder, 1968–1976), Vol. 6, pp. 311–312 Google Scholar and illus. 16. The engraving was probably inspired by an image of Christ and Francis crucified together on the cross from the anonymous Summae santimoniae paradigmata (Rome, 1582), an image that was later suppressed. See Llobet, Silvia Canalda i “El grabado internacional en la génesis del programa iconográfico de San Francisco de Asís en Terrassa Barcelona,” in Verum, Pulchrum et Bonum: Miscellanea di studi offerti a Servís deben in Occasione del suo 80° complanno, Teklemariam, Yiannes ed. (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2006), p. 701 and Fig. 3c.Google Scholar

51. Naturae Prodigium, csp. text para. 49–53.

52. Ibid., text para. 37.

53. Manselli, Raoul “La resurrezione di san Francesco dalla teologia di Pietro de Giovanni Olivi ad una testimonianza di pietà popolare,” Collectanea Franciscana 46 (1976), pp. 309–320.Google Scholar

54. Tenorio, Gonzalo Compendium ldeae et totius operis (Madrid, 1665).Google Scholar

55. The figure of the unnamed bishop appears to be based on that of the Paris theologian William of Saint Amour, as recounted by de Lisboa, Marcos Crònica de la Orden de los Frailes Menores, (originally published in Portuguese between 1557 and 1570), pp. 24 and 31.Google Scholar

56. Buitrón, Juan de Soria Epílogo de la vida, muerte y milagros del Serafin Llagado y Singularísimo Patriarca San Francisco (Cuenca, 1649).Google Scholar The same tale was repeated by Cornejo, Fray Damián Chronica Seráphica del glorioso patriarca San Francisco y sus discípulos, Part I (Madrid: Juan García Insançon, 1682),Google Scholar reprinted in Mexico in 1878.

57. Soria Buitrón, Epílogo de la Vida, Part 3, chapt. 30.

58. Ibid.

59. Pinilla, Ramón Mujica Ángeles apócrifos en la América Virreinal (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), pp. 163–213.Google Scholar

60. Doig, Federico Kauffmann Pinilla, Ramón Mujica et al., Las plumas del sol y los ángeles de la Conquista (Lima: Fondo por Recuperación del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación and Banco del Crédito del Perú, 1993), pp. 12–48.Google Scholar

61. Herzburg, Julia “Angels with Guns: Image and Interpretation,” in Gloria in Excclsis: The Virgin andAngelsin Viceregal Painting ofPeru and Bolivia (Center for South American Relations, New York, 1985), pp. 64–77.Google Scholar

62. Mills, Kenneth Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation 1640–1750 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 58–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Although the skull was common in European Baroque depictions of Saint Francis as a sign of his penitential meditation on mortality, in the Andes it took on a localized meaning.

64. There were 128 uprisings in Peru and Bolivia alone.

65. Buga, Manuel and Galindo, Alberto Flores “La utopia andina,” Allpanchis 17:20 (1982), pp. 85–101.Google Scholar

66. Galindo, Alberto Flores In Search of An Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 68–79.Google Scholar His adopted title meant “Juan Santos, the Resurrected Atahualpa and Lord Inca.”

67. Zazar, Alonso Apo Capac Htiayna, Jesús Sacramentado: mito, utopía y milenarismo en el pensamiento de Juan Santos Atahualpa (Lima: Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica, 1989).Google Scholar

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69. Estenssoro, Juan Carlos “La plástica colonial y sus relaciones con la gran rebelión,” Revista Andina 2 (1991), pp. 415–439.Google Scholar

70. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that one of the honorific titles of Saint Francis in a colonial Franciscan litany is also “shining path.”

71. See Govv, Rosalind Kay Pacha: tradición oral andina (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos, 1976), p. 20;Google Scholar Urbano, Henrique “Dios Yaya, Dios Churi y Dios Espíritu: modelos trinitarios y arqueología mental en los Andes,” Journal of Latin American Lore 6 (1980), pp. 111–127 Google Scholar; and Marzal, Manuel The Indian Face of God in Latin America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996), pp. 83–87.Google Scholar

72. Ossio, Juan “Contemporary Indigenous Religious Life in Peru,” in Native Religions and Cultures of Central and South America, Sullivan, Lawrence E. ed. (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 200–220.Google Scholar Coropuna, a volcano neighboring Huaynaputina, is Peru's highest peak at 20,900 feet (6,377 meters) above sea level. See http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=47114, accessed July 23, 2013.