Santa Maria Tonanzintla: A Cutural-Religous Bridge

Santa Maria Tonanzintla, Puebla, MX

Santa Maria Tonanzintla, built in the early 1600's and located in  the municipality of Cholula, is a short distance from the city of Puebla, Mexico. The talavera (tile) and brick facade of this church is magnificent, but through its doors lies another world.  Santa Maria Tonanzintla is one of the Folk Baroque  churches of Mexico, where indigenous and Christian elements are mixed.  It is unique among these churches in the extent and clarity of the pre-hispance elements.   Some churches have symbols here and there that are pre-hispanic, but here every argamasa  ( a technique in which a mortar-like substance was sculpted and then painted and gilded) surface of the church is suffused with the pre-hispanic.  This was an area that was populated by Nahua-speaking peoples,  the group to which the Aztecs belonged.  Tonanzin, in this culture, was a goddess associated with the earth and fertility and the word Tonanzintla means" the place of our little mother".  Of course, Maria refers to the Virgin Mary and the name of the church encapsulates the two religious systems.

Make no mistake, it is evident that Santa Maria Tonanzintla is Christian house of worship, but the indigenous identity with its beliefs, sentiments and symbols has found a home here as well. More than any other Mexican church, Santa Maria Tonanzintla, was the place where the Franciscans gave their indigenous flock free artistic reign. In doing this they wisely made a peace between the faiths, letting them co-exist in a way which permitted the indigenous identity to survive and made  Christianity more palatable.  The sort of negotiated accommodation that Santa Maria Tonanzintla represents is explored more fully in my March 24th post "Converting Christianity".  

Technically, no photography is allowed in Santa Maria Tonanzintla although post-cards with images of the church are sold outside.  However, no one seemed to object to the few photos of the interior I took standing outside of the church.  At first glance, Santa Maria Tonanzintla is overwhelming- so many images and so much vibrant color; walking into this church is like walking into a jewelry box.  Every square inch of the walls and ceilings are covered with sculpted figures.   It is hard to know where to focus; the best way to see churches like this is just to sit there and keep looking.  All photos below can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Santa Maria Tonanzintla, Cholula, Puebla

Santa Maria Tonanzintla

Santa Maria Tonanzintla, ceiling detail

To step into Santa Maria Tonanzintla, from the indigenous perspective, was to step into a kind of paradise. The domed ceiling of the chapel represents the sky of Tlaloc, the god of rain and what seem to be angels are actually people who have died drowning or being struck by lightning and have been reincarnated in Tlaloc's heaven.  These figures are mixed in with figures from the Christian tradition. 

Dome Detail, Santa Maria Tonanzintla

Cristo Resucitado (Resurrected Christ)

St. John of the Cross

Throughout the church are figures shown wearing a feathered headdress.  This is highly significant, as the feathers were symbols of the central Meso-American deity Quetzalcoatl.

Figure with Feather Headdress

To the modern visitor, Santa Maria Tonanzintla is a marvel rife with color and form, a place both exotic and visually enticing.  For the indigenous whose hands built this church it must have had a very different significance.  My guess is that it was a place where they felt comforted by the presence of what was familiar and meaningful and learned to be comfortable with the new faith that had become a part of their lives. 

Some scholars believe that Santa Maria Tonanzintla is a folk reinterpretation of the Rosary Chapel in the Dominican church/convent in nearby Puebla.  We will be exploring this chapel and another like it in Oaxaca in the next post, and the proposed connection between Santa Maria Tonanzintla and these will become clearer.

Oaxacan Baroque: Environment and Architecture

I just returned from Oaxaca, Mexico which is about five hours southeast of Mexico City.  Everything about this diverse region- churches, customs, handicrafts, is phenomenal.  It is an area of Mexico in which the indigenous peoples, largely Zapotec Indians, but Mixtec, as well,  have kept their customs and identities alive.  These are the same groups that Cortes encountered during the conquest.  

Apart from seeing all of the unique churches in Oaxaca City and the nearby valleys, there was one thing I wanted to clarify on my trip. This was, what exactly was  "Oaxacan Baroque"?  It was a term I had come across in my pre-trip reading and for some reason it  intrigued me.  

 The Cathedral of the Virgin of the Assumption in Oaxaca is a prime example of Oaxacan Baroque architecture.

Oaxaca Cathedral

There is nothing delicate about this building or any of the churches you will see below. Oaxaca is not a land of tall elegant bell-towers or spires.  The Oaxaca Cathedral is robust, almost stocky, with wide short towers.  Compare it to the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City below.  The architectural difference is dramatic.

Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City

Take a look at two more examples of Oaxacan Baroque style:

Convento of Santo Domingo, Oaxaca

Teotitlan de Valle, Oaxaca

Teotitlan del Valle, side view

In all Oaxacan churches bell towers, if they are present, are short, broad and connected for all or most of their length to the main body of the church.  All have significant side buttresses, a feature designed to support the church nave's vaulted ceiling.  The buttresses in Oaxaca are not the delicate flying buttresses of European medieval churches, but are solid, functional affairs.  Some Oaxacan churches, such as San Augustin seen below, do not have bell towers at all.

San Augustin, Oaxaca

The greenish cantera stone, a volcanic rock,  seen in the above photo is characteristic of Oaxaca's churches. The side view of the same church shows the solidity of the buttress work. 

San Augustin, Oaxaca, side view

I learned that another name for Oaxacan Baroque is "Earthquake Baroque".  Oaxaca is an area, with a considerable amount of seismic activity and the robustness of the church design is an adaptation to the needs of building in an area that is subject to fairly frequent earthquakes.  In the 17th and 18th centuries there were severe earthquakes that required rebuilding in many churches including both the Oaxaca Cathedral and Santo Domingo,which you saw above.   While I was there, one of the churches I had wanted to see, La Merced, was closed for repairs from a recent earthquake.  Advances in engineering have made the churches more earth-quake resistant, but their capacity to survive these has depended upon the basic design features.  

Mestizo Baroque: the Mexican Church's Magnet

 It was the Baroque style that initially drew me to the art and architecture of the Colonial Latin American World.  I loved the elaborate paintings of the Cusco School in Peru at first sight
(I will have more to say about these paintings in a future post)

"Andean Virgin"

and the incredible gilded altarpieces like the one below that are found throughout Mexico and the rest of the Colonial Latin American world:

Altar of Pardon, Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City

 What I did not know then was that my fascination with the Baroque was proof that it "worked", that it was doing what the Church had originally intended for it to do.  Let me explain what I mean.  To do this we have to take a quick look at the history of the Church in Mexico.

By the late 1500's Mexico was no longer Mexico of the Conquest.  The idealistic friars who had spear-headed the evangelization of Mexico were dying-off and with a growing population, the era of cities and cathedrals was starting.  There had also been a significant change in the Church in Europe - a schism in the Catholic Church in Europe that was brought to a head by the 1517 posting of Martin Luther's 95 Theses.   As a result,  the Catholic church was under attack by  Protestants and in danger of losing its sovereignty.  It summoned a council, the Council of Trent, which met from 1545-63 in Trento, Italy and it was from the changes initiated by this council, that the Catholic Counter-Reformation emerged;  Baroque style was one off-shoot of this. 

Faced by the Protestant threat, the Church was under pressure to sell itself and the Baroque style in architecture, music and liturgy was what it needed.  The Church knew how inspirational art could be and spared no costs in building churches that would overwhelm the viewer with complexity and extravagance. The  visually beautiful  spaces, in conjunction with elaborate music and ceremony, kept people coming back for more. The Baroque visual style with its intricate design and curving lines was meant to evoke emotion and to keep people within the church; it worked.   As time went on the Baroque style, as with all artistic styles, became detached from its original purpose and became the standard aesthetic of that time and place.

Let's take a quick tour of the baroque in Mexico and it's antecedents.  The Plateresque is the direct antecedent of the Baroque.  It means in the style of the silversmith and is ornate, but does not have the curving surfaces and movement seen in the Baroque.  This altar is a wonderful example of the Plateresque style in Mexico:

Main Altar, San Bernardino de Siena, Xochimilco, MX 

There were two types of columns seen in Baroque architecture that define its style. 
The first and older of the two is the Solomonic Baroque, whose characteristic are the curving, sinuous columns first seen in Italy in the work the sculptor and architect Bernini and shown in photo below in the magnificent ex-convento of San Juan Bautista in Coyoacan, MX.                       .

San Juan Bautista church, Coyoacan,  MX 

The second and later type of Baroque is defined by the estipite column which is narrower at the base than at the top and is associated with the later, even more elaborate Ultra-Baroque style. 

Side altar, San Bernardino de Siena, Xochimilco, MX 

The Altar of the Kings in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City seen below is probably the pinnacle of the baroque or ultra-baroque in Mexico.  It needs to be seen in person, because photos can never completely  capture it.

Altar of the Kings, Mexico City

In the title of this post, I used the term "Mestizo-Baroque", which is the way  the Baroque in Mexico is usually referenced.   "Mestizo" refers to the admixture of European and indigenous elements present in these buildings as a result of the fact that they were largely built by indigenous workers whose imprint is unmistakeable in various details.  I will be writing about the Baroque in Mexico at greater length in future posts.