Page 300 - Perú indígena y virreinal

Any serious account of the glory that exalted the city must include mention of the fact that the city saw the birth of the New World’s first saint, that the Dominican, Fray Diego de Hojeda found the atmosphere of the city beneficial to the writing of his La Christiada, described by Menéndez Pelayo as “the first of our holy epics”, and finally, that two of the cities prominent law-makers, Solórzano Pereira and Leon Pinelo, drew up in Lima the basis for their Compilation of the Laws of the Indies.
PROFILE OF THE CITY
In the 17th Century, Lima was situated on a plain that sloped gently toward the Southern Sea, ten kilometres away. The layout of the city, which remained by and large unchanged until the 19th Century, was basically triangular, the longest side of which ran alongside the banks of the River Rimac. Inside this triangle were approximately two thousand five hundred buildings distributed within an area measuring fourteen blocks from north to south and close to twenty-five from east to west. In the period from 1614 to 1699 the population grew from 25,494 inhabitants to 37,259.
The Plaza Mayor, as usual, was the focal point of the city centre, and was as big as the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, although the buildings around its edge were not as high. Like its Old World equivalent it fulfilled a number of noteworthy social roles: it was a common meeting place for all manner of occasions, as a religious centre it was the venue for processions in view of the cathedral, it was a market place for all kinds of provisions, military reviews and parades were held there, it was an important thoroughfare as well as being the setting for celebrations and recreational pursuits—formal parties, bullfights, pageants, tournaments and theatrical performances.
The northern side was taken up with the Palace of the Viceroys, from whose balconies the city’s governors could witness the goings-on below. At ground level, the facades of the buildings were home to a number of small shops. On the eastern side of the square, the Town Hall and other civic buildings could be found, as well as a colonnade of some forty arches under which the city’s notaries carried out their business. In fact, to this day these porticoes are known as the Notary’s Arcade. Directly opposite was another colonnade of forty arches, the Button Maker’s Arcade, although these arches also housed silk merchants, hatters and other tradesmen, all vying to sell their wares to passers-by. The fourth side of the Plaza was occupied by the Cathedral, dating from 1604, the year of its last rebuilding. The focal point of the Square was a bronze fountain, built in 1651, the pool of which was decorated with glazed decorative tiles representing the twelve months of the year. With an almost Pythagorean symmetry, a statue of Fame, holding the mythical trumpet, crowned the central column of what is probably the oldest fountain on the American continent.
After crossing the bridge, built to a formidable design in 1611 and still in use, and walking through the San Lázaro Quarter, the traveller found himself in the avenue of bare feet, so-called for being the home to a Franciscan order. This thoroughfare, built in the times of the Viceroy Marquis de Montesclaros, reflected the Paseo del Prado in Valladolid.
The city’s street names of the period (which lasted until the naming process was systemised in the middle of the 19th Century) were due to a trend that was almost unique: instead of public roads having one name for their entire length, street names in Lima only applied to a small section. Each street section, or cuadra as they were known, was named after either its most notable resident (an honour that would pass to the next most famous on the former’s death), the name of the most significant church or convent nearby, or else after the most important public building in the area. The street-naming system soon had a more exotic approach, a custom that still survives today. Cuadras had zoological themes (Monkey, Tiger, Ducks), a botanical or pharmaceutical air (Lettuce, Basil, Quinine), were based on trades (Silversmiths, Sword Makers), referred to a local landmark (Tunnelled Hill, Crosses, Ruined Windmill, Bronze Marble [sic]) or were even more extravagant and inexplicable (Gaspar’s Soul, Devil’s Pouch, Strange Monkey or Sigh).
Through these streets passed over five hundred vehicles; carriages, cabriolets as well as a growing number of Sedan Chairs. It is also worth remembering something that all visitors to the city would have immediately noticed, the closed balconies with their lattice windows (as can still be found in Tenerife), giving the city an unmistakeable North African
air. The continuous lines of such bay windows on the facades of the buildings led one chronicler of the period to describe them as “streets in the air”.
FESTIVE LIMA
Apart from the solemn observation of religious festivals throughout the church year, the splendour of the city shone out in the opportunities for rejoicing and popular devotion, the grasp they held over the city and the chances they proffered to give praise or participate in some ceremonial pageant, be it of religious nature, as in the case of Corpus Christi, the exaltation before the altar of a saint, a jubilee or the burial of a Servant of God, or of a more worldly nature, as typified by regal festivities, the funeral of a monarch, the public entrance into the city of a viceroy or the celebration of some happy event or auspicious piece of news.
In a normal year the total figure of Days of Observation, including Sundays and other religious holidays was more than seventy and yet there were numerous occasions on which the celebrations were of such proportions that their description would merit a volume dedicated to them alone. For example, the jubilation following the birth of Prince Baltasar Carlos took on many forms: allegorical parades, poetry contests, masquerades, bullfights, tournaments, academic events and public revelry, all taking place between November 1630 and March of the following year.
The Marian fervour that enraptured Andalusia in the early years of the 17th Century was echoed to absolute perfection in Lima to the extent that the galas organised by the city’s inhabitants rivalled those celebrated back in Spain. As might be expected, the passion exhibited by Lima’s inhabitants on hearing the first news of the Virgin Mary’s beatification in 1668, and the following year, of that of Isabel Flores de Oliva, canonised as Saint Rosa of Lima, borders on the indescribable. In the various celebratory events, participation was total, from the Viceroy Count of Lemas to the humblest neighbour. No less grandiose were the festivities to mark the beatification of Toribio Alfonso de Mongrovejo, the second archbishop of Lima in 1688.
The public entrance into the city of a viceroy, with all the grandeur befitting a personal representative of the Monarch, was surrounded by unforeseen splendour: when the Count de Castellar took over in 1674, the Merchants Guild showed its loyalty by paving a section of the street known to this day as Merchants Street on which their shops were situated with silver.
Although with less pomp and circumstance, the cavalcades to celebrate degree ceremonies at the University of San Marcos caused similar scenes of commotion. Similarly, those held to celebrate the election of a superior in a religious order were immensely popular.
THE CONVENT CITY
The spiritual passion of the inhabitants of Lima reached its zenith in the 17th Century with almost unbelievable fervour. In order that the flame of their religiousness might burn even brighter, the city was privileged to count upon an unparalleled number of blessed souls: Archbishop Mogrovejo, the Franciscan, Fray Francisco Solano, Isabel Flores de Oliva, and the Dominicans, Fray Martin de Porras and Fray Juan Macias. In later decades, the virtues of two other Venerable figures shone out by their saintliness among other mere mortals, the Mercedarian, Fray Pedro Urraca and the Jesuit, Father Francisco del Castillo. In the city, the first nunnery in the Indies had been founded, La Concepción.
Midway through the century, the cult of the image of Santo Cristo de los Milagros (The Holy Christ of the Miracles), the patron of the city, began to establish itself among the city’s faithful, and ever since then, the typical purple habit can be seen on small multitudes of its devotees. Some years later, a Jesuit, Father Alonso Messia, instituted the practice of reciting on Good Friday the Meditation on the Three Hours of Christ’s Agony, set to music in the 18th Century by Haydn.
For the artistic value of its icons, the richness of its ornaments, its atmosphere of austerity, the numerous members of the Brotherhoods of Light and of Blood, the Easter processions were deservedly famous. Within these congregations, Spaniards, native Indians and black slaves freely mixed.
It is difficult to discern if the countless preternatural prodigies recorded in the chronicles of the time, above all in those pertaining to convents, can be regarded as being authentic, or
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