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The First Guadalupan Pastoral Manual: Luis Laso De La Vega's Huei Tlamahuiçoltica (1649)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2014

Timothy Matovina
Timothy Matovina*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Abstract

Millions of devotees acclaim the Nahuatl-language Nican mopohua account of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego as the foundational text of the Guadalupe tradition. A number of scholarly analyses have also examined the Nican mopohua as a prime source for that tradition. But no previous study has focused on a theological examination of Luis Laso de la Vega's Huei tlamahuiçoltica (1649), in which the Nican mopohua was first published. Huei tlamahuiçoltica is the premier Guadalupan pastoral manual and encompasses other important material, such as the Nican motecpana account of miracles attributed to Guadalupe's intercession, and the earliest published synopsis of Juan Diego's life posed as a model for Christian discipleship. This article explores Laso de la Vega's contributions and the ongoing significance of his treatise for the development of theological works and pastoral ministries centered on Guadalupe.

Keywords

Our Lady of GuadalupeJuan DiegoLuis Laso de la Vegapastoral theologyNican mopohuaNican motecpanaHuei tlamahuiçoltica
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 159 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2013 

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References

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4 Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María, 263.

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7 Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María, 245–55. The Stradanus engraving is reprinted in Cuadriello, Jaime, Galván, Carmen de Monserrat Robledo, and Mariscal, Beatriz Berndt León, La Reina de las Américas: Works of Art from the Museum of the Basílica de Guadalupe (Chicago: Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1996)Google Scholar, 106. The most detailed treatment of the Stradanus engraving is Peterson, Jeanette Favrot, “Canonizing a Cult: A Wonder-Working Guadalupe in the Seventeenth Century,” in Religion in New Spain, ed. Schroeder, Susan and Poole, Stafford (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 125–56.Google Scholar

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9 Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen María, 184–86. Other biblical figures that Sánchez compares to Juan Diego include John the Evangelist, King David's friend Jonathan, Adam, and the patriarch Jacob. Ibid., 179, 193–94, 229–30, 237–38.

10 The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton provides an excellent overview of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary originally created by Chad Pfoutz and available at http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/prayers/LittleOfficeBVM.htm. The cited text is based on the antiphon for Psalm 95 from the Third Nocturn of Matins.

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13 Francisco Verdugo Quetzalmamalitzin, Testamento [Will], 2 April 1563, reprinted in González Fernández, Chávez Sánchez, and Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, 363–64; Juan Bautista, Anales, reprinted in ibid., 325–26; Cawley, Martinus, Anthology of Early Guadalupan Literature (Lafayette, OR: Guadalupe Abbey, 1984), 79–80Google Scholar; Taylor, Shrines and Miraculous Images, 125. For further studies of the history of Guadalupan devotion during the colonial era in New Spain, see the influential works of William B. Taylor cited in note 11 above.

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16 “Información por el sermón de 1556,” reprinted in De la Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda, Testimonios históricos Guadalupanos, 44; Father John Koelsch, letter to the author, 22 September 2009.

17 A facsimile and transcription of the official inquiry can be found in Sánchez, Eduardo Chávez, La Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego en las informaciones jurídicas de 1666, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Ángel Servin, 2002)Google Scholar; quotations at 152, 166, 178–79.

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19 For an overview of contemporary theological interpretations of Guadalupe, see Matovina, Timothy, “Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Spanish Colonial Era to Pope John Paul II,” Theological Studies 70 (March 2009): 78–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar