Page 297 - Perú indígena y virreinal

stones (God) can make sons of Abraham; stones, shaped by the hammer of the hard work carried out over two centuries, that will be strong and vigorous sons of the church who will be Princes to their brothers across this vast American land (Navarro 2001, 92). These were not Peru’s gold miners but its future saints, destined to restore to the New World a new Apostolic Latin American Church.
The universal nature of the cult surrounding the continent’s first saint serves as an explanation to the supposed miracle performed from her cradle, when, barely three months old, her face was literally transformed into a rose, with eyes nose and mouth, an incident that did not pass unnoticed. It was portrayed in numerous paintings both in Peru and Nueva España and her eulogists took this as a sign that the Virgin of Guadalupe had appeared in Nueva España to reveal to the Indian Juan Diego the roses from Castile that had preceded the first rose from the Americas which was to auger a new golden age of Hispano-American spirituality. That her following was the first expression of Creole belief was clear when, after her beatification in 1668, Rosa was declared by the Vatican to be an exceptional case, with papal dispensation and the universal Patron of All the Americas and Dominions of Spain before she was finally canonised in 1671.
The ethnic origins of Saint Rosa have still to be documented. In the very title of her Ordinary Process of Beatification it stresses that the bendicta soror (“Blessed Sister”) Rosa de Santa Maria was a Creole of this City of the Kings; she was, to use the terminology of Antonio de la Vega Loayza, Rosa’s Jesuit confessor, the sacred Creole of this emblematic Republic (MSRSM, Proceso Ordinario 1617–1618, fol. 208). Nevertheless there is further evidence of the mixed race origins of Saint Rosa. In his eulogistic sermon given in Madrid in 1668 during the festivities to celebrate her beatification, the Creole Franciscan monk, Fray Gonzalo Tenorio stated that he had known her, her family and those around her personally and that her maternal grandparents Francisco de Oliva and Isabel Herrera, were pure Indians, from the ranks of the newly converted (Parra 1670, 634). Could this be the real reason why Rosa’s mother, would not allow anyone to call her by her real name, Isabel Flores de Oliva, like her indigenous grandmother? Is this the key to her name change when she was confirmed by the Archbishop, later Saint, Mogrovejo?
It is difficult to either prove or disprove these hypotheses, although there would have been reasonable grounds for hiding her racial origin. At the beginning of the 17th Century, the Dominicans had prohibited, except in the cases of rare exceptions, the admittance of Indians or mixed race Mulattos to their order, only allowing Spaniards and Creoles (Tibestar 1955, 230–231). What is more, in the 18th Century, the previously cited Planctus Indorum based its argument that indigenous Americans were worthy, not only of the priesthood, but also being named saints, on the mixed race background of Saint Rosa. We might remember that during the reign of Charles II, an indigenous chief from Jauja (Peru) by the name of Jerónimo Lorenzo Limaylla unsuccessfully sought authorisation from Spain to found an Order of Knights for the descendants of Ingas (sic) and Moctezumas, under the patronage of Saint Rosa (Lohmann Villena 1947, XXVIII). An Indian visionary, the famous Chiclayano tailor Nicolás Ayllón (1632–1677), the founder of an order of lay brothers and also the object of a process of beatification, claimed to have seen Saint Rosa ascend to heaven. Ayllón said she was carrying Creole emblems in both hands, an image he ordered to be painted. He also claimed that she was carrying the Christ child (with a wedding ring on his finger) in a garland of roses, flowers and olive branches, in secret reference to the Creole names of her parents: Gaspar Flores and Isabel Oliva, whilst in the other hand she had the city of Lima, the new City of God, upon an anchor, the symbol of hope (see Cuadriello 2003).
In the midst of the Bourbon era, the indigenous nobility attributed Saint Rosa with an apocryphal political prophecy, charged with political demands, and responsible for fermenting many of the Indian conspiracies and rebellions of pre-independence Peru between 1750 and 1783. According to this prophecy once the Spanish crown had reigned as long as the Incas before them, the sceptre of power would fall from their hands and the ancient figure of Tawantinsuyo would be restored by an Inca (Stevenson 1825, 290–291; Mújica Pinilla 2001, 340–347). Curiously, this was not to be a return to the splendour of the Incas and their idol-worship. Rather, the prophecy foresaw the restoration of the monarchic Viceroyalty, associated with the spiritual and temporal government of the Jesuits, that had
preceded the reforms imposed by the supposedly “enlightened” Bourbons. As an evangelising strategy, these had promoted symbolic processes of cultural synthesis, with a deliberate view to Christianise native religious practices in order to emphasise and bestow prestige upon the ethnic identity of the cultured indigenous elite. It is no coincidence that after the fall of the Spanish Empire in 1767 during the reign of Charles III, a group of radical Latin American Jesuits in Italy collaborated with the political process of Independence (Vargas Ugarte, 1934). Strangely, the canonisation of Saint Rosa confirmed the previously questioned equality between Europeans and indigenous Americans, further reinforced when she was named as the Patron of San Marcos University. As José María de Córdova y Urrutia claimed in his historical and statistical accounts of Lima, published in 1839: Santa Rosa de Santa Maria, whose virtues stilled the tongues of all the universities in Europe that promoted inflamed debate as to whether or not Latin Americans should be considered as rational beings (Córdova y Urrutia 1877, 132). In 1816, the emancipating Congress of Tucumán declared Saint Rosa to be the supreme emblem of Creole religion in the Peru of the Viceroys and the Patron Saint of Pan American Independence.
the “inca baby jesus” and the jesuits in cusco under the viceroyalty
Ramón Mujica Pinilla
The recent discovery of a canvas dating from the Viceroyalty depicting an “Inca Baby Jesus” raises a number of new questions regarding the syncretic methods of acculturation and evangelization used by the Society of Jesus in Cusco during the early 17th Century (Mujica, 2003, 292). The depiction appears on a pedestal between glass vases featuring floral decoration. The raised curtains reveal the sacred nature of the image, which radiates with a supernatural light in the painting, in reference to the Counter-reformist theological conception of the icon as a mediator between the visible and invisible worlds. This example complements another painting from Cusco (lost today and last seen in Argentina) featuring a standing Baby Jesus giving his blessing and wearing a white lace unku, featuring a multi-coloured feather collar, with a pearl clasp and imperial tassel, as well as a red cape over his shoulders held together by two puma heads, motifs that also adorn his thighs and groins (Schenone, 1998, 118–119). Both paintings are extremely rare realist “portraits” or altar images carved in multi- coloured wood, figures that would have been placed on the altarpiece tables of the Southern Andes.
Based on their iconographic characteristics, these images show the Baby Jesus in his invocation as Saviour of the World. He is depicted with his right hand raised, blessing the world that he holds in his left. Here we can observe two themes taken from Ancient Roman Imperial art that were adapted to Christianity and persisted throughout the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. In order to represent the universal omnipotence of Christ the King as the universal monarch and Sol Invictus or “invincible sun”—the military victory motto of the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great—he is shown holding the orb of the world in one hand. In addition, in accordance with the Platonic tradition, Christ was also frequently depicted in his role as Logos cosmocrator or the Creative Word, with the fingers of his right hand forming the sign of the orator (gestus oratorius)— later employed for the benedicti latina of Catholic ritual and for sermons—, using this gesture to hieratically praise the salvific power of the word and the wisdom of God (L’Orange, 1982, 139–197).
The political-religious significance of this iconography acquired new local and potentially rebellious meanings when the Baby Jesus—rex et sacerdos—was depicted in
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