The Empress of the USA : Part II

...continued from The Empress of the USA : Part I

The Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe

According to various Catholic sources, a statue of the Virgin Mary, supposedly carved by Luke the Evangelist,* had been given to Leander, the Archbishop of Seville by Pope Gregory I sometime between 590 AD and 604 AD.

When Seville was captured by the Moors in 711 AD, a group of priests [or knights] fled northward and buried the statue in the hills near the Guadalupe River in the Extremadura region.

Catholic Culture continues the story:

"In 1326, when a humble cowherd named Gil, from Extremadura, reported that Our Lady had manifested herself to him, and that he had found a casket buried in the earth, the announcement evoked great emotion. When ecclesiastical authorities reached the little village of Guadalupe in the neighborhood where the casket had been unearthed, they discovered that it contained a statue, which had been concealed six hundred years before by the Knights of Don Rodrigo during their flight. Pertinent documents vouchsafed for the authenticity of the image. The statue, though buried beneath the earth for six hundred years, was perfectly preserved."

Let us meditate for a few moments on this statement: "Pertinent documents vouchsafed for the authenticity of the image."

During the next 150 years or so, the Marian shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe became the most popular pilgrimage site in fifteenth-century Spain, as is evidenced by the fact that on July 29, 1496, Christopher Columbus visited the shrine to thank the Virgin for her protection on his voyages.**

The small shrine built around the excavation site evolved into today's great monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe.

Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Spain and Portugal signed an agreement at Tordesillas in Spain in 1494. The agreement, known as the "Treaty of Torsedillas" was based on the Papal Bull "Inter Ceatera" issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI. [Rodrigo Borgia, famous as probably the most corrupt pope in history.]

The treaty effectively deeded to Spain and Portugal the entire New World and established "Christian" [Catholic] dominion and subjugation of non-Christian "pagan" peoples and their lands.

to be continued....

* See The King of Jerusalem : Part IV for other images supposedly painted by Luke the Evangelist

** In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars, and Conversos in Guadalupe, Spain, Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau, Princeton University Press, 2003.