The Empress of the USA : Part V

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

Elizabeth, by the Grace of God...Queene

According to Carroll,* many of the conquistadors were from the Estremadura region in Spain. Hernán Cortés himself was born in a village in the region and supported the nearby Gaudalupe shrine generously.

And we discover from Mexico : An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture and History** that -

 "Although a Guadalupe cult apparently flourished at Tepeyac as early as the mid-sixteenth century, it was probably modeled on the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe of Estremadura, Spain's dark-skinned virgin and a favorite of the conquistadors.

"The location of the cult at Teyepac, on an Aztec religious site dedicated to the goddess Tonanztin, was typical of Spanish efforts to turn Indian sacred spaces to Catholic purposes. The earliest sources indicate that a statue rather than the tilma was the central focus of worship and while historical sources mention miracles attached to statue and tilma, there in no mention of miraculous apparitions, even in the writings of Bishop Zumarraga himself."

We are told that millions of indigenous Mexicans converted to Catholicism in the decades following the 1525 miraculous apparitions at Guadalupe.

But a storm was approaching from the east. In 1584 -

"ELIZABETH by the Grace of God of England, Fraunce and Ireland Queene, defender of the faith, &c..." granted to Sir Walter Raleigh the right to discover and colonise any lands of the New World "not actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian People..."***

The first successful English colony in the New World was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.  The Pilgrims, founders of Plymouth, Massachusetts, arrived in 1620.

Vatican dreams of a wholly Catholic New World were thrown into disarray when these groups of non-Catholic Christians began to colonise the eastern seaboard of what is now the continental United States of America.

To counter this influence, many prayers must have been directed to that Lady who claimed spiritual hegemony over the New World.

So in 1648, as if in answer to such prayers, the marvellous stories of Juan Diego, Bishop Zumarraga, and the miraculous apparitions of the Virgin Mary were committed to print in a book entitled Image of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God of Guadalupe, Who Miraculously Appeared in Mexico City, written by a certain Miguel Sanchez.

to be continued...

* The cult of the Virgin Mary: psychological origins, Michael P. Carroll, Princeton University Press, 1992, page 185-186

** Mexico: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture and History, Don M. Coerver, Suzanne B. Pasztor, and Robert M. Buffington, ABC-CLIO, 2004, pp 533-535.

*** Yale University Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy.

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[Jermaine Crowell]

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