Shrines and Miraculous Images: Religious Life in Mexico before the Reforma by William B. Taylor (review)

This is an important book by an accomplished historian. William B. Taylor provides us with an innovative collection of six essays that demonstrate how historians can use images to analyze social and cultural history. The emphasis is on Mexican religious history, primarily in the colonial era, though the book concludes with essays tracing the redefinition of beliefs and practices originating in the colonial era in the nineteenth century and beyond.

As Taylor asserts in his quasi-biographical introduction, "My goal as a historian has been to enlarge the view of history, especially Mexican history, by making Mexico both larger and smaller—larger territorially and in subject matter; smaller in terms of manageable, place-centered research and identities" (p. 3). In his analysis of devotional images, sites, and practices, Taylor develops detailed portraits of local contexts, shaped by their engagement with transregional or even global cultural influences. The result is a collection of essays that bridges elite and popular culture, while giving precise, locally focused meanings to relatively empty terms like "syncretism" and "cultural hybridity."

Taylor succinctly defines historical study as "a restless kind of discipline of context" (p. 2). The essays he has selected are notable for their straightforward prose, depth, and detail, though they also range widely across space and over time. While the book is arguably most important as a guide to the use of images for historical research (see especially pp. 6-8), another important contribution is its situation of the history of devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe in (and ultimately beyond) Mexico within a diverse, largely autonomous network of locally focused devotional practices and pilgrimage sites. Thus, in chapter 1 we are treated to histories of shrines and images in places like Tulantongo (p. 15), Zapotlán del Rey, Jalisco (p. 17), and Hauquechala, Puebla (p. 49).

Chapter 2 compares Christo-centric and Marian forms of religious devotion in New Spain, noting the widespread presence of both and their links to regionally varied political practices and conflicts. At times, links between religion and politics mapped to social divisions of race and class, though they also frequently served to reinforce a sense of local identity. All of these fascinating and at times charming local stories allow us to situate the narrative of events at Tepayac within a more varied and diffuse cultural complex. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to the history of the Virgin of Guadalupe, examining hagiography, historiography and local practices, while chapter 5 provides an original reconsideration of the positioning of Guadalupe and Remedios in terms of Mexican and Spanish national identity during the era of Independence. Chapter 6 concludes with an assessment of changes in devotional practices during the nineteenth century.

Taylor wisely cites Saint Augustine's ancient admission that "What we teach is one thing, what we tolerate another" (p. 61), as useful a guide to religious practices in colonial Mexico as it is to the more secular concerns of the contemporary classroom. The book succeeds in providing a model for the use of images in historical research while recovering overlooked and occasionally forgotten aspects of local colonial religious practices.

Taylor's exemplary career and original scholarly contributions are widely recognized and deeply appreciated, especially among those interested in the history of colonial religion. He concludes this book by asserting, in reference to divisions of rural and urban, elite and popular, and the endurance of mentalities in the midst of historical change, that "we know too little about the many aspects of devotional practices in the past to make sweeping claims with much confidence" (p. 205). Whether one considers this claim to be unduly cautious or sensibly prudent seems to be a matter of taste rather than substance, though this reviewer could envision more definitive conclusions. Nevertheless, Taylor succeeds in making yet another original contribution to the study of colonial religion in Mexico, an accessible and engaging...