Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across Five Centuries

There is no closure to mysteries, only another story, another translation —Greg Dening Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe remains an elusive subject, especially for the early colonial period. Little has been established with much certainty about the nature and scope of the devotion during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. There just is not much to go on. And the four seventeenth-century Guadalupan hagiographers—Miguel Sánchez, Luis Lasso de la Vega, Luis Becerra Tanco, and Francisco de Florencia—whose ready-made narratives are cited over and over are, by themselves, of limited use for a history of faith in the Virgin Mary through this image. Nevertheless, few Latin American traditions have attracted more interest across classes and places, whether in scholarly, devotional, or polemical ways. The interest seems inexhaustible, and with good reason. This image of the Virgin Mary, widely believed and officially recognized to have occurred...