Development of devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe and of the sanctuary.

 

By wills of 1327 and 1329 it is stated that a church and hospital already existed -this would be for pilgrims, which indicates that there would be not a few-; —. Probably the priest who ran it would depend on the nearby parish of Alía, diocese of Toledo.

D. Pedro Gómez Barroso, elected bishop of Cartagena in 1326 and later made a Cardinal, was formerly lieutenant of the sanctuary, and did not leave this office until his death in 1342, because, although he could not remain there, he had a procurator or substitute.

Since the beginning of the 14th century, the sanctuary was acquiring and cultivating land. Alfonso XI knew him very well from his youth: In his hunting book he describes the mountains of Trujillo, and of which Guadalupe says: "they are good bear mountains in summer." The king, along with his fondness for hunting, acquired great devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, as he himself affirmed in later letters, and in 1330 he ordered the church to be expanded, already in ruins, so that "the people who they come in pilgrimage».

The arrival of the Marinid Moroccans then took place, who defeated the Castilian squadron and occupied Gibraltar, threatening to invade the Christian kingdoms. Alfonso XI, aided by the Portuguese, presented them with battle on the Salado River (Cádiz province). Distressed, seeing that he only had 14,000 horsemen with 25,000 pawns, and that the enemy was up to ten times greater according to some historians, he "thought he was defeated." So, although his private life left much to be desired, he entrusted himself to the Virgin of Guadalupe, to whom he later attributed the great victory with enormous loot and death inflicted on the enemy, with hardly any casualties of his own, on October 29, 1340.

Fulfilling his promise, he made important donations to the sanctuary and managed to establish it as a priory of royal patronage. It was governed by secular priors from 1341 to 1389 when, renouncing royal patronage, the church became a monastery and the order of S. Jerome was urged to accept it, despite his resistance. These monks, founded shortly before, had their mother house in Lupiana (Guadalajara) and were highly esteemed for their virtue, which is why Felipe II also entrusted his monastery of El Escorial to them.

Universal devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe

Especially Isabel la Católica, following the tradition of her ancestors, liked to go to Guadalupe —she called it her paradise. At 13 years old she was the first time of her, and no less than 20 of her in the 28 years of Queen of her.

The monks helped her enormously in the war in Granada. In Guadalupe, the Catholic Monarchs signed the definitive letter so that Columbus would be given facilities on his projected trip. There he also wanted Mrs. Isabel to keep her will (despite which she took and remains in the Simancas Archive).

Returning from the first voyage, the "Santa María" having been wrecked and the "Pinta" lost sight of, the third caravel, the "Niña", was about to perish in the raging ocean on February 14, 1493. Christopher Columbus offered the Virgin of Guadalupe a candle weighing five pounds of wax, which would be carried by the lucky winner. Each one vowed to fulfill the promise if she touched him, and it was Columbus himself, who went barefoot and in a penitent suit to the sanctuary. On his second trip, he called the first large island he found Guadalupe, and to this day its patron saint is the Virgin of Guadalupe, although in 1635 it fell into the hands of France (it has 1,780 km2 and about 300,000 inhabitants). After this second trip he returned to the monastery of Guadalupe in 1496, and there two Indians he brought were baptized: they are the first known converts.

Rigging the first three caravels cost 1,140,000 maravedises, which were not obtained by selling the queen's jewels, but rather lent by the Valencian Luis de Santángelo, D. Fernando's treasurer, but which were paid to him on May 5, 1492 by the Bishop of Badajoz. Later it would also be Extremadura that produced the majority of the great conquerors of America and its settlers. Of the 8 great conquerors, 7 were from Extremadura: Hernán Cortés (Medellín, Badajoz), Francisco Pizarra (Trujillo, Cáceres), Núñez de Balboa (Jerez de los Caballeros, Badajoz). Pedro de Alvarado (Badajoz). Hernando de Soto (Jerez de los Caballeros), Sebastián de Belalcázar (then belonging to Extremadura, today Córdoba). Pedro de Valdivia (Campanile, Badajoz). González de Quesada (Córdoba, the only non-Extremaduran). In second line figures, although there are already Castilians, Basques, Andalusians; They are from Extremadura: Gonzalo and Hernando Pizarra, Francisco Alvarado, Diego García de Paredes, Francisco de Orellana, Nuflo de Chaves, Nicolás de Ovando, the first colonizer of America, on whose expedition 1,200 Extremadurans already embarked. This may explain why the Virgin of Extremadura is the one from America. (Aragonese hardly went to America, not so much because it was forbidden to them, but because the Mediterranean was the area of ​​their influence and expansion). Above all, it is that this Extremaduran invocation of the Virgin was the most popular in the kingdoms of Castile, the national one, so to speak. In whose expedition 1,200 Extremadurans already embarked. This may explain why the Virgin of Extremadura is the one from America. (Aragonese hardly went to America, not so much because it was forbidden to them, but because the Mediterranean was the area of ​​their influence and expansion). Above all, it is that this Extremaduran invocation of the Virgin was the most popular in the kingdoms of Castile, the national one, so to speak. In whose expedition 1,200 Extremadurans already embarked. This may explain why the Virgin of Extremadura is the one from America. (Aragonese hardly went to America, not so much because it was forbidden to them, but because the Mediterranean was the area of ​​their influence and expansion). Above all, it is that this Extremaduran invocation of the Virgin was the most popular in the kingdoms of Castile, the national one, so to speak.

But the Sanctuary of Guadalupe also had a, today unknown, universal projection. It can be said, without exaggeration, that from the 14th to the 18th century, Guadalupe was what Lourdes is today. Fernando the Catholic himself was more closely linked with Guadalupe than with El Pilar. He was leaving the monastery in January 1470, when emissaries from Aragon reached him, notifying him that he was already king due to the death of his father Juan II. And he was going to the monastery in January 1516, when he overtook his death in Madrigalejo (Cáceres), in a house belonging to the Jerónimos, a branch of Guadalupe. (At that time the most revered Virgin in the kingdom of Aragon was Montserrat, who was spread throughout their possessions, and in Rome the church of Montserrat, which was the national temple of Aragon, still exists as a Spanish church).

Portugal rivaled Castile in devotion and donations to Guadalupe, and her images are still venerated in Evora, Braga, Vila do Bispo, Zamora Correia, and even in Goa and Cochin (India).

In many other places, even in Poland, images dedicated to Guadalupe are venerated, which proves the extensiveness of her devotion. And this was because the monks did not allow it to be copied, and they were opposed to its being worshiped outside its sanctuary, so as not to diminish devotion to it, and to avoid taking advantage of the name from obtaining alms to the detriment of those destined to sustain the notable cult and charity of the monastery, whose "demands", people of recognized honesty, traveled through Spain and America collecting alms.

It was also ordered in Castile from the 15th century, and from the 16th century in America, a mandatory mandate in all wills of a certain amount, in favor of the sanctuary of Guadalupe, a privilege that it shared with Santiago de Compostela and Rome, and lasted until the century XVIII.

The devotion of the Basques to the sanctuary of Guadalupe was equally remarkable, and more than fifty miracles to them are collected in their codices, only in the fifteenth century. The majority made by men from the sea of ​​Zumaya, Lequeitio, Deva, Bermeo, Fuenterrabía. Oyarzum, Rentería, Orduña... Already in the fourteenth century, a famous poet from Alava, the chancellor Pedro López de Ayala, invoked her from his prison in Portugal: «Lady, since I heard your acorros [relief] I hope in you; At your house in Guadalupe I promise to be a pilgrim». It would be for something that when, at the end of the 15th century, two shepherd boys from Mount Jaizquíbel (Fuenterrabía) found an image of the Virgin more or less miraculously (tradition says that the image gave off a light that attracted them), they named it Guadalupe. And Guadalupe Fort is also called today the one that there, undermined in the mountain,

In Madrid, in 1603, after many difficulties, the Jerónimos of S. Jerónimo el Real obtained a copy of the image of Guadalupe. Before her the beginning of the reign of all the kings from Felipe III to Alfonso XIII was celebrated. (The religious solemnity of the beginning of the reign of Juan Carlos I also took place there, but now the image is on another side altar).

Some exceptional witnesses attest to Guadalupe as "the medieval Lourdes". Sharchek, a German chronicler of Bohemia, wrote in 1467: "It is famous that in no corner of Christendom is there usually such a great gathering of people for devotion and piety, as here." The Italian ambassador Andrés Navagiero in 1526: "This site is close to the border of Portugal, and a large number of people moved by their devotion to this Virgin come from this kingdom and from all of Spain." Paul III, in a brief from 1535 granting a jubilee, affirms: "Great concourses of people from all over the world come to Guadalupe." The historian friar José de Sigüenza assured in 1600: «People from all over Spain attend; of various towns in Portugal and other more distant kingdoms and lordships. It is the group of the most numerous that come together in Europe by title of devotion.

And so we could continue highlighting the great devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe that all of Mexico professes to her. For there is no city or town where a sanctuary or a chapel or an oratory is dedicated to her name. Finally, she has been given the title of QUEEN OF MEXICO AND EMPERATRIS OF AMERICA.

With this last article we end with the writings about Our Lady of Guadalupe. I admit that our contribution was poor, but made with all our hearts, may Our Lady of Guadalupe bless you dear readers.