City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (review)

In this interdisciplinary study, Jaime Lara seeks to illuminate the sixteenth-century dialogue between friars and indigenous people that gave rise to spectacular theatrical performances, impressive architectural complexes (such as those at Huejotzingo and Tlaxcala), atrial crosses, and convento murals. Many of the monuments and sites discussed are well-known to scholars of colonial Mexico, yet Lara's erudition makes this book noteworthy. His reflection on the spiritual and historical sources for Christian projects in New Spain forms the core, and real strength of this volume.

Eschatology—its evocation and multiple modes of meaning—organizes Lara's examination of conventos in central Mexico and the liturgical dramas that unfolded in these spaces. He focuses explicitly upon the iconography of eschatology, and what he calls "root metaphors," the meta-narratives friars and Nahuas relied upon to construct their understanding of the world. Key examples of these metaphors include cosmic space and holy cities, which Lara anchors in European writings on apocalypse and millennialism as well as pre-Hispanic Aztec ideas about the end of time. Through clear prose and examples that well build upon each other, Lara suggests how coherent spiritual meaning took shape in Mexico out of ideas and practices of diverse origins.

To make his case, Lara engages current scholarship in religion, history and art history. And he challenges the "spiritual conquest" model of evangelization. Indeed, the primary question he poses is one of considerable interest in sixteenth-century studies: how indigenous people both responded to and shaped the Christianity friars brought to the Americas. Lara's analysis of European sources for Mexican urban planning, processional architecture, and theatrical events is marked by depth and perceptive observation. His discussion of Jerusalem stands out in this regard. Across several chapters Lara traces the connotations evoked by Jerusalem and its architecture; drawing upon texts by Joachim of Fiore, painting by Gentile de Fabriano and ordinances issued by Philip II, Lara shows how Jerusalem took form, in Europe and New Spain, as metaphor, holy site and ideal temple-city.

While Lara rightly encourages us to see beyond simple dichotomies (i.e., Europeans and indigenous people), his research does not delve substantially into indigenous materials. This skews his narrative. European-derived perspectives and practices consistently emerge as more complex and influential than those with Nahua origins. Moreover, Lara's narrative is ultimately a synthetic one. When relevant, he identifies and traces the Islamic, Judaic and Christian models for specific buildings and ideas, yet the differences between Augustinians and Franciscans or Nahaus and Otomís seem largely inconsequential. This approach has its advantages, underscoring patterns and affinities among different peoples and beliefs. It also obscures very real struggles that transpired in New Spain.

For instance, Lara notes the horror of conquest but says little about the actual transmission of Christianity to the Americas or the political power this required. He argues that ritual substitution—a mode of mendicant practice highly dependent upon perceived, if not actual, convergences—was fundamental in New Spain. And he describes missionaries and chatechumens seeking to fill a ritual vacuum, in part by erecting churches atop sacred pre-Hispanic sites. Left largely unexamined, however, is how this 'vacuum' came to be, or how Nahuas and Franciscans might have struggled in varied ways to understand its implications. This book thus portrays the transmission of ideas and images, as well as their transformation in the Americas, as a process largely lacking missteps or reticence (let alone resistance). This is not merely a question of politics. Lara also sidesteps the personal and psychic struggles of friars and indigenous people as they wrestled with the spiritual demands created in sixteenth-century New Spain.

For Lara, iconography not social history remains the prime concern. This book is certainly a fine iconographic study, solid in its sources and sharp in its insights. Readers interested in the daily and ritual labor of creating lived meaning from...