The Fransciscan Basilica of San Antonio de Padua
In the bright sunlight of Yucatan, the "Yellow City" of Izamal is dazzling as you enter the main plaza. Dominated by the Basilica of San Antonio de Padua, the colonial city is the home of the patroness of Yucatan, the Virgin of Izamal.
The Basilica was built on the base of the largest of four main pyramids, a temple known as P'ap'hol-chaak, the home of Chaac.
Friar Diego de Landa writes: "Here in Izamal is a building, among the others, of a startling height and beauty... There were eleven or twelve of these buildings at Izamal, this being the largest... It is eight leagues from the sea, in a beautiful site, good country and district, and so in 1549, with some importunity, we had the Indians build a house for St. Anthony on one of these structures." 1
A symbol of the triumph of Christianity, the monastery was by far the most ambitious Franciscan building project in the Yucatan.
Many cures have been attributed to the Virgin of Izamal.
However, P'ap'hol-chaak, the orginal pyramid upon which the Basilica is built, had been a place of Maya pilgrimage for millenia, and Itzamna, for whom the city was named, was also associated with healing and medicine.
Sam Edgerton, in his groundbreaking "Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico", writes:
"The friars were quick to take advantage of that mysterious but natural phenomenon whereby a new shrine founded upon an earlier holy site osmotically assumes the latter's hallowedness even when the old cult has been supplanted. From the native Indian masons' point of view, placing visible chunks of their old temples in the walls of the new churches was not necessarily a desecration but a preservation of sacred material, reinvesting the succeeding shrine with the primordial sanctity of the old." 2
Inga Clendinnen wrote: "The design derived its undoubted grandeur from the scale and distribution of its great spaces for processions and collective ceremonial. The structure was flung across the land like the grandiose gesture it was: a most material testament of Landa's vision of the Church he and his brothers were building in Yucatan." 3
Sam Edgerton agrees that "If one tradition was shared in common by all indigenous peoples in preconquest Mesoamerica, it was obsession with pageant and spectacle. If one tradition characterized the Spanish Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, it was likewise obsession with pageant and spectacle... I argue that the Mexican conventos more and more evolved into theaters — literally — of pageants and spectacles celebrating the Christian religion.
Their architectural layout not only accommodated the sacred direction of Indian processions but also allotted stage space for native plays with live actors, pictorial backdrops, movable scenery, locations for singers, dancers, musicians with instruments, and props for special dramatic effects. The convento also became a convenient "theater of memory" in which various elements of its architecture could be used as mnemonic cues to reciting the catechism according to the popular Renaissance revival of Ciceronian ars memorativa." 4
Stones for the construction of the Basilica, as well as for most of the buildings surrounding the main plaza in Izamal, were supplied by the Temple of P'ap'hol-chaak.
Luis Alberto Cabrera Euan, the self-appointed guide to the Basilica, greets visitors with a smile and rewards them with an enthusiastic tour of the intricate Franciscan architecture.
This stone staircase leads to the camarin, a dressing room housing the wardrobe of the Virgin.
A statue of the Virgin, replacing the original one destroyed by fire in 1829, is kept here in a glass cabinet and wears a silver crown and richly embroidered gowns from Spain. Her silver crown was a gift delivered by Pope John Paul II when he visited in Izamal in August of 1993 to celebrate a mass for the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
This statue of Bishop Diego de Landa stands in front of the Basilica and acts as a traffic regulator or glorietta. Catholicism has been embraced by the Maya, but does not replace the ancient religion and its traditional rituals. The Mayan customs are observed, with the addition of Christianity, making for a rich religious experience.
On December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a pilgrimage to visit the Virgin in the Basilica is followed by a walk to the pyramid of Kinich Kak Mo -- just one example of this type of syncretic religion.
"Knowledge of Maya writing did not long survive the Spanish Conquest, owing to the diligence of church and government officials who rooted out any manifestations of this visible symbol of "paganism."
Diego de Landa, in a passage that ironically accompanies his invaluable eye witness description of Maya writing, described his own role in its suppression: "We found a large number of these books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there was not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree and which caused them great affliction." 5
Nachi Cocom, head chief of Sotuta, was the last great ruler of the Cocom lineage. He led a determined resistance to the Spaniards through war, and through guile.
Mutual respect probably engendered the unlikely friendship between Diego de Landa and Nachi Cocom. Landa described him in the Relacion as "a man of great reputation, learned in their affairs, and of remarkable discernment and well acquainted with native matters".
This friendship probably led Cocom to show Landa sacred Maya writings preserved on folded deerskin. One of these books had belonged to his grandfather, a son of a Cocom who had been killed by the rival Xiu clan at Mayapan.
Some years after seeing these sacred histories and prophecies, Landa discovered secret Mayan rituals were still being practiced by the "converted" Indians. He felt betrayed, and responded with vengeance by staging an Inquisition at Mani and burning as many books and other sacred object as he could discover.
Mani is best known for this massive Franciscan Monastery of Saint Michael the Archangel built in 1549. Under the direction of Fray Juan de Merida, the major portion of the construction was accomplished in only 6 months through the efforts of some 6000 Maya laborers.
During the previous century the Xiu family had established Mani as the most important Maya center in the northern half of the Yucatan after they had defeated the rival Cocoms at Mayapan in 1441.
The large square in front of the monastery had been the ceremonial plaza of the Xiu capital, and its stones were used to build the church.
On the left of the monastery façade is the great open arch of the capilla de indios, the Indian chapel. Because the Maya were accustomed to worshipping outdoors, almost all Colonial churches had outdoor Indian chapels for the use of the "converts". This large square courtyard or atrio was also the scene of the infamous auto da fe of 1562, when Landa burned the Mayan sacred books.
Robert Sharer writes in The Ancient Maya: "By extraordinary good fortune, however, the early colonists sent a few books to officials and friends in Europe. Three of these pre-Columbian Maya books, dated to the Postclassic, have survived to the present day. They are now known as the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices, named for the cities where they now reside.
...The Dresden Codex can be characterized as a treatise on divination and astronomy. The Madrid Codex, likewise, is devoted to horoscopes and almanacs to assist the Maya priests in their divinations and ceremonies. What we have of the Paris Codex is also ritualistic; it also contains a depiction of the still poorly interpreted Maya zodiac." 6
This unusual stone crucifix, carved out of a single block of stone, originally stood outdoors in the Indian chapel.
It is noteworthy not only as a beautiful work of art, but for its depiction of Christ as a Maya. Notice the muscular, stocky body and the high cheek bones of the face.
Even before the arrival of Christianity, the cross had important religious significance to the Maya. It represented the sacred "First Tree of the World" which linked heaven and earth.
Lush palms help to soften the austere lines of the two storey cloister, situated behind the Indian Chapel and next to the church.
A boarding school was established by the Friars after 1550 to teach Christian doctrine and Latin script to the sons of the Maya elite; a choir school was set up to teach the boys to sing polyphonic masses.
The massive walls are almost like the interior of a cave.
Interestingly, the monastery is built over a cave, a natural entrance to the Underworld for the Maya
A series of caves and cenotes run through Mani and the surrounding area of Yucatan. Any source of water is a sacred space to the Maya, and a home of Chac, the rain deity, whose blessings are crucial in a dry land where no surface rivers flow. The cenote, a Spanish word derived from Mayan "Dzo'not", is a sinkhole formed by collapsing layers of limestone.
Rituals are frequently performed at cenotes, sometimes for rain, sometimes for the general well-being of the earth, and always strive to maintain cosmic balance.
In the 1560's, zealous Franciscan priests would follow the whiff of burning copal incense to discover rituals practiced in secret. The punishment that followed only led the Maya to continue their rituals further underground. Their strong beliefs and comittment to ancient "costumbres" have persevered.
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