Juan Diego

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Saint Juan Diego

Painting of Juan Diego by Miguel Cabrera
Born c. 1474, Tlayacac, Cuauhtitlan, Mexico
Died May 30, 1548 (aged 64), Tenochtitlan, Mexico City, Mexico
Venerated in Roman Catholicism
Beatified April 9, 1990, Vatican, Rome by Pope John Paul II
Canonized July 31, 2002, Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico by Pope John Paul II
Major shrine Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico
Feast December 9
Attributes tilma

Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474 – May 30, 1548) was an indigenous Mexican who reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531. He had a significant impact on the spread of the Catholic faith within Mexico. The Roman Catholic Church canonized him in 2002, as its first indigenous American saint. The reality of Juan Diego's existence has been questioned by modern scholarship who point to the complete lack of sources about Juan Diego's existence prior to the publication of the Nican Mopohua in 1649.[1]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Most of what is known about Juan Diego comes from a mid-17th century literary document called Huei tlamahuiçoltica (also called "Nican Mopohua") written in Classical Nahuatl by a Mexican priest and lawyer Luis Laso de la Vega.

According to this text, Juan Diego was born in 1474 in the calpulli of Tlayacac in Cuauhtitlán, a small Indian village some 20 km (12 mi) to the north of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).

His original or birth name was Cuauhtlatoatzin[2] (alternately rendered as Quauhtatoatzin, Guauhtlatoatzin, or Cuatliztactzin), which has been translated as "Talking Eagle" in the Nahuatl language.

[edit] Conversion to Christianity

A farmer, landowner and weaver of mats, he witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés in 1521, when he was 47 years old. Following the invasion, in 1524, the first 12 Franciscan missionaries arrived in what is now Mexico City.

Cuauhtlatoatzin and his wife welcomed the Franciscans in 1524 or 1525 and were among the first to be baptized — he taking the Christian name of Juan Diego; she, Maria Lucia. Later, they moved to Tolpetlac to be closer to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and the Catholic mission that had been set up by the Franciscan friars.

According to his legend, after hearing a sermon on the virtue of chastity, they reportedly decided to live chaste lives. This decision was later cited as a possible reason for which the Virgin Mary chose to appear to Juan Diego. In 1529, a few years after her baptism, Maria Lucia became sick and died.

[edit] The Apparition on Tepeyac Hill

As a widower, Juan Diego was prone to long periods of silence. He walked every Saturday and Sunday to church, and on cold mornings, like other members of his Indian tribe, wore a woven cloth called a tilma, or ayate made with coarse fibers from the maguey cactus for cotton was only used by the upper class Aztec.

[edit] The encounter

On Saturday morning, December 9, 1531, he reported the following: As he was walking to church, he heard the sound of birds singing on Tepeyac hill and someone calling his name. He ran up the hill, and there saw a Lady, about fourteen years of age, resembling an Aztec princess in appearance, and surrounded by light. The Lady spoke to him in Nahuatl, his native tongue. She called him “Xocoyte,” her little son. He responded by calling her “Xocoyata,” his littlest daughter. The Lady asked Juan Diego to tell the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumárraga, that she wanted a “teocalli,” a sacred little house (church), to be built on the spot where she stood, in her honor, where:

"I will demonstrate, I will exhibit, I will give all my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful mother, the merciful mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind, of all those who love me , of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow and will remedy and alleviate all their multiple sufferings, necessities and misfortunes."

Recognizing the Lady as the Virgin Mary, Juan Diego went to the bishop as instructed, but the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga was doubtful and told Juan Diego he needed a sign. Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac hill and explained to the Lady that the bishop did not believe him. He implored the Lady to use another messenger, insisting he was not worthy. The Lady however insisted that it was of the utmost importance that it be Diego speaking to the bishop on her behalf. On Sunday, Juan Diego did as the Lady directed, but again the bishop asked for a sign. Later that day, the Lady promised Juan Diego she would give him a sign the following day.

According to Juan Diego, he returned home that night to his uncle Juan Bernardino’s house, and discovered him seriously ill. The next morning December 12, Juan Diego decided not to meet with the Lady, but to find a priest who could administer the last rites to his dying uncle. When he tried to skirt around Tepeyac hill, the Lady intercepted him, assured him his uncle would not die, and asked him to climb the hill and gather the flowers he found there. It was December, when normally nothing blooms in the cold. There he found roses from the region of Castille in Spain, former home of bishop Zumárraga. The Lady re-arranged the roses carefully inside the folded tilma that Juan Diego wore and told him not to open it before anyone but the bishop. When Juan Diego unfolded his tilma before the Bishop roses cascaded from his tilma, and an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed on the cloth, bringing the bishop to his knees.

The bishop acknowledged the miracle and within two weeks, ordered a shrine to be built where the Virgin Mary had appeared. The bishop then entrusted the image to Juan Diego, who chose to live, until his death at the age of 74 — on May 30, 1548 — in a small hermitage near the spot where the Virgin Mary had appeared. There he cared for the chapel and the first pilgrims who came to pray there, propagating the account of the apparitions in Mexico.

[edit] Impact on Mexico and the Catholic Church

News of the apparition on Tepayac Hill spread quickly through Mexico; and in the seven years that followed, 1532 through 1538, the Indian people accepted the Spaniards and 8 million people were converted to the Catholic faith.

According to Daniel Lynch, director of the Apostolate of the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, “An amazing thing happened. Indians became reconciled to Spaniards. And we had a new race of people. Mixed blood. We called them "Mestizos". Our Lady of Guadalupe had appeared as a Mestiza. They call her the dark virgin, the little brown one.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe, as the Virgin Mary came to be known in this context, still underpins the faith of many Catholics in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, and she is recognized as patron saint of all the Americas.

Interestingly, the years 1532 to 1538 which saw a large number of people join the Catholic Church in Mexico based on Juan Diego's vision, were right in the midst of the period of Protestant Reformation of 1521 to 1579 in Europe. Hence as a large number of people left the Catholic Church in Europe, a large number of new Catholics appeared in Mexico, maintaining the overall strength of the Catholic Church. To this day, Latin America remains a major pillar of the Catholic Church.

[edit] Investigations, canonization and symbolism

Juan Diego was recognized by the Church soon after the apparition. He expressed a deep love for the Holy Eucharist, and by special permission of the Bishop he received Holy Communion three times a week, a highly unusual occurrence in those times.

In 1666, at a Church hearing called the Informaciones Guadalupana, Juan Diego was called a holy man, and in 1723 a formal investigation into this life was ordered by Archbishop Lanziego y Equilaz.

[edit] Veneration

On Jan. 9, 1987, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared Juan Diego venerable. Pope John Paul II beatified him on May 6, 1990, during a Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, declaring Dec. 9 the feast of Juan Diego and invoking him as “protector and advocate of the indigenous peoples.”

Controversy over the historical authenticity of Juan Diego was stirred in 1996 by Father Guillermo Schulenburg, a longtime abbot of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who called Juan Diego a mythical character.

The Vatican subsequently established a commission of 30 researchers from various countries to investigate the question. The commission's view was that Juan Diego had indeed existed, and the results of their research were presented to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints on Oct. 28, 1998. Among research documents submitted at that time were 27 Guadalupe Indian documents. One, called the “Escalada,” co-authored by Valeriano and Franciscan Friar Bernardino de Sahagun, contained a death certificate of Juan Diego.

[edit] Canonization

Juan Diego became a canonized saint in the Roman Catholic Church on July 31, 2002.[3] Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him (who said to the Blessed Virgin Mary: "I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf") as a model of humility.

[edit] Symbolism

By 1820, when the Mexican War of Independence from Spanish colonial rule ended, Our Lady of Guadalupe had come to symbolize the Mexican nation. The armies of both Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 and Emiliano Zapata in 1914 flew Guadalupan flags. The first president of Mexico adopted the name "Guadalupe Victoria" during the fight for independence from Spain. Today, the Virgin of Guadalupe remains a strong national and religious symbol in Mexico.

Many Mexicans also see the canonization of Juan Diego as a symbolic victory in the movement for greater recognition of their heritage reflected in the Catholic religion; Pope John Paul II held a Mass in Mexico that borrowed from Aztec traditions, including a reading from the Bible in Nahuatl. The Pope urged the Catholic Church in Mexico to be respectful of indigenous traditions and to incorporate them into religious ceremonies when appropriate.

[edit] Depiction and image

There was controversy over the official image of Juan Diego selected by the Archdiocese of Mexico City in 2002. Critics feel that it depicts Juan Diego as having European features rather than the features of a Mexican Indian. [4]

Some faithful Catholics believe they can see a reflected image of Juan Diego in the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The first reported case was in 1929, when Alfonso Marcue, the official photographer of the old Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City stated that he had noticed a reflected image of a bearded man in the right eye of the Virgin. Church authorities in Mexico instructed him to remain silent about it at the time. In 1951, Jose Carlos Salinas Chavez, publicly reported discovering the image and also a reflection in the left eye. Since then fascination with the reflection has continued.

In 1979 Jose Aste Tönsmann, PhD used high quality scanners at IBM and applied filtering techniques to enhance a digitized images of the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe to eliminate noise. He published his studies on the eyes on the tilma in the book "El Secreto de sus Ojos", along with several photographs. He reported that in one of the photographs bishop Zumárraga and a “translator" can be seen next to Juan Diego. [5]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Poole 2006 & 2002
  2. ^ Biografía de San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin
  3. ^ Canonization of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin
  4. ^ Juan Diego's makeover causes a stir
  5. ^ The Mystery in Our Lady's eyes

[edit] References

Adams, David (2002 July 31), written at Mexico City, "Pope reaches out to Mexico", St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, FL: Times Publishing Company), http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/31/Worldandnation/Pope_reaches_out_to_M.shtml. Retrieved on 15 November 2007 
Allen, John L., Jr. (2001 December 28). "Controversial figures set for canonization" (NCR Online reproduction). National Catholic Reporter. Kansas City, MO: The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company. ISSN 0027-8939. OCLC 42860339. Retrieved on 2007-11-14. 
Allen, John L., Jr. (2002 January 25). "Maybe he isn't real but he's almost a saint" (NCR Online reproduction). National Catholic Reporter. Kansas City, MO: The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company. ISSN 0027-8939. OCLC 42860339. Retrieved on 2007-11-14. 
Brading, D. A. (2001). Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80131-1. OCLC 44868981. 
Burkhart, Louise M. (2001). Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, IMS Monograph Series Publication No. 13. Albany, NY: State University of New York at Albany, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies; distributed by University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-942041-21-6. OCLC 47790941. 
Grayson, George W. (2002 April 05). "Canonizing Juan Diego: Mexico City politics" (Reprinted online at The Free Library). Commonweal 129 (7): p.9. New York: Commonweal Foundation. ISSN 0010-3330. OCLC 38584114. Retrieved on 2007-11-15. 
León-Portilla, Miguel (2000). Tonantzin Guadalupe: pensamiento náhuatl y mensaje cristiano en el "Nicān mopōhua". Mexico D.F.: El Colegio Nacional, Fondo de Cultura Económica. ISBN 978-968-16-6209-7. OCLC 47136909.  (Spanish)
Noguez, Xavier (1993). Documentos guadalupanos: un estudio sobre las fuentes tempranas en torno a las mariofanías en Tepeyacac. Mexico D.F.: El Colegio Mexiquense,Fondo de Cultura Económica. ISBN 968-16-4206-6. OCLC 94178343.  (Spanish)
Peralta, Alberto (2003). "El Códice 1548: Crítica a una supuesta fuente Guadalupana del Siglo XVI". Artículos. Proyecto Guadalupe. Retrieved on 2006-12-01.(Spanish)
Poole, Stafford (1995). Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-816-51526-3. OCLC 31046653. 
Poole, Stafford (2002 June 14). "Did Juan Diego exist? Revisiting the Saint Christopher syndrome" (Reprinted online at The Free Library, under the title "Did Juan Diego exist? Questions on the eve of canonization"). Commonweal 129 (12): pp.9–11. New York: Commonweal Foundation. ISSN 0010-3330. OCLC 38584114. Retrieved on 2007-11-15. 
Poole, Stafford (2006). The Guadalupan Controversies in Mexico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5252-7. OCLC 64427328. 
Restall, Matthew; Lisa Sousa, and Kevin Terraciano (2005). Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatán, and Guatemala. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-01221-8. OCLC 60323147. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Diego"
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