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Saint (Spanish America)--William B. Taylor
- University of Texas Press
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spanish america Saint William B. Taylor Catholic Christianity has always been a sensual faith, based on belief in an incarnate God. Christ and divine grace are understood to be actively at work in the world, and the rites that glorify this presence have been “fittingly corporeal.”1 This embodied faith, with its conviction of divine immanence , was expressed in distinctive if not unique ways in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish America and Spain. Perhaps nowhere was it expressed in more extravagantly material ways that were understood to be a kind of super- materiality, lifting the faithful viewer into an exalted emotional state of contrition and joy “where men and gods are held to be transparent to one another.”2 Eruptions of sacred presence in human affairs appear at every turn in the sixteenth-century chronicles of American conquest and colonization written by priests and lay Spaniards ; nearly all of them were apparitions, dream visions, or providential signs and favors mediated by exemplary evangelizers and some pious natives. The Council of Trent affirmed the truth and importance of saints, relics, and images in Christian practice, but cautiously, and there was no rush to recognize new American saints and no stream of reports of images of saints and Christ coming to life and working wonders. Such apparitions were problematic for Church authorities. Seers were potential rivals to priests in their claim to privileged access to the word of God, and they might claim ongoing messages that elaborated on the meaning of an apparition in unacceptable ways. Fewer apparitions were reported after the late sixteenth century, and most of them were attributed to Satan. Mendicant evangelizers after the first two or three generations of colonization either kept their visions to themselves or had few to report. The logic of sainthood predominated throughout the early modern period, and the cult of saints flourished in Catholic Europe and Spanish America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with some judicious pruning of names and clearer standards for canonization set out by the papal Congregation of Rites after its establishment in 1588. While Europe’s vast array of saints did not cross the Atlantic intact, many of the saints familiar in Spain were adopted as personal and community patrons in America. Images of them were displayed in churches, chapels, and homes. But America was new to Christianity, with no homegrown saints recognized by the universal Church until Rose of Lima was beatified in 1667 and canonized in 1671. Very few others were recognized before the nineteenth century.3 Without a stock of native saints, authentic relics had to be imported for the consecration of churches and promotion of the cult of saints. Jesuits were active importers and promoters, but relics of the most desired Old World saints were not available. The bones of lesser saints that did reach America failed to capture the popular imagination and become the main attraction in American shrines.4 The shortageof local saints and coveted relics did not mean that only a few beloved New World holy men and women were recognized and regarded as saints in all but name. Virtually every provincial city and diocese had its honor roll of local spiritual heroes. Late colonial Puebla, Mexico, for example, was renowned for its well-remembered, famously holy nuns and laywomen who blessed the city with their aura of sanctity. Signs of divine presence in the world were, if anything, even more anticipated and apparent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the apparitions of the sixteenth century were largely replaced by images—especially sculpted images—of saints or Christ as the way immanence was revealed. Makers, authorities, and beholders of images had high hopes—to make and revere images that somehow gave physical shape to the invisible and fleeting, inviting divine presence with an out- of- this- world beauty. It was created as much by the heartfelt devotion of believers as by the talent of the sculptors and painters, whose best efforts often were attributed to divine inspiration, if not direct intervention.Under the right circumstances, and if it was God’s will, images literally came to life, and wondrous healings and protection occurred in their presence or in their name. Overwhelmingly, Christ and the Virgin Mary were the chosen images in the hundreds of more than local shrines that were accepted by church authorities during the seventeenth century.5 Judging by the founding miracles of the most renowned images, about three- quarters of the Christs and half of the Marys...