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Conclusion In one of the early seventeenth-century Jesuit annual letters, a Muisca woman recounts a telling vision to her confessor. Twenty years earlier she had been seriously ill and sought the services of a shaman (jeque) who asked her to make an offering of a parrot and a monkey to a temple that the local encomendero had destroyed: Already at the end, a woman whom he visited and knew sent for a jeque, a priest of idolatry. The evil old man entered the house of the sick woman, bringing what he needed for his task. He chewed coca, drank tobacco, and began in a low voice to intone certain chants that are like consevios [?]. He called the demons by name, spoke with them, and when he finished all of his ceremonies in the presence of the sick woman he then informed her, telling her, “You should know that the ancestors of this native woman made in a certain place a temple of idolatry that was destroyed by the cursed encomendero of that town and for this great sin the gods punished the innocent native woman. But there is an easy remedy if she obeys what the idol demands, which is that the sick woman buys a parrot and a monkey and raises them during two years and at the end takes them to the jeque to offer in that temple. And if she promises this, she will not only get well but will be very rich and of good fortune.” (agcg/r 1611–12, 67v–68r)1 When the woman refused to comply with the jeque’s demands, he became furious. Suddenly, she fell into a deathlike state and was placed 252 • • • concluSion in a shroud for burial. However, she had not died, but lived to recount the following vision to a Jesuit: She seemed to be in bed, very quiet and still, but sick, and being awake, the most serene of the angels, Our Lady of the Rosary, entered her hut seated in a golden chair with the Christ Child in her arms, who was beautiful to an extreme. The child did not say a word to the sick woman but looked at her with a very happy and smiling face. The Virgin had a face that undid the good native woman in her efforts to appreciate its beauty, and she finally said that she lacked the words to explain how from her head and her tresses emanated rays and a brilliance like that of the sun when it comes out in the morning, and her clothing was like sheets of gold. The Virgin, in all her majesty, neared the bed and very affably touched her on the head, saying that soon two Dominican fathers would visit her and she would be cured. Having said this the vision disappeared and then she saw two small children of hers who had died once baptized, dressed in golden cloth with their hair like Nazarenes and four angels much more beautiful than them, also clothed to the knees very richly with beautiful golden crosses on their foreheads. Behind the angels the two Dominican friars arrived and placed their hands on her head. And praying for her they left in procession, as when they entered, and they appeared no more. The sick woman woke out of a sweet sleep and when she realized she was enshrouded, began to make noise and scream, at which point the householders undid and removed the shroud, very frightened by the event, which they perceived as miraculous, and although they asked her many things she never wanted to say anything from then on, living her life in a new manner. (ibid., 68r)2 In fact, it is the vision that cured the woman, bringing her out of her deathlike state and into a sweet sleep from which she awoke. The woman’s dream image is predicated on a well-known iconography, the image of the Virgin of the Rosary holding the infant Jesus. This comes from the miraculous image of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá (plate 2), a devotional painting that restored itself after falling into disrepair (the first miracle associated with the painting). Soon afterward, numerous other miracles were attributed to the image, including the curing of the sick and bringing an end to a drought (Cummins 1999). The Church of Chiquinquirá soon became a major pilgrimage shrine in the region. In the painting, the Virgin stands, holding a rosary, with the Christ Child in her arms...

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