Our Lady of Atocha

Neda Bezerra

On the outskirts of Madrid, on the Camino Real, between the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, there was a shrine of humble construction, the ermita de Atocha, built in the Middle Ages, where rural workers and peasants would stop and pray and venerate three images of the Virgin Mary: Our Lady of Antigua, Our Lady of Pregnancies, and Our Lady of Atocha (Pescador 2009, 7). Legends say that the image of the Virgin of Atocha first came to Madrid from Antioch brought by St. Peter. The story of Our Lady of Atocha mixes fact and fable, history and legend, and has been told so many times in verse and in drama that the characters in it have become real, and the fabulous context in which they took part have been accepted as history (Allardyce 2003).

In July 1523 that small shrine, which had become an important sanctuary in the Castilian countryside, was given to the Dominican Order and the “Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Atocha was officially born, with the blessings of the pope, Adrian VI, and Carlos V’s permission” (Pecador 2009, 5). For at least four hundred years before the Dominicans were given the keys to the shrine, people had venerated the three different images of the Virgin Mary and asked her protection and help and hundreds of miracles had been attributed to the three images of the Virgin Mary in that small chapel in the Castilian countryside. The miracles continued to happen after the shrine became part of the Dominican monastery. By 1562, the Dominicans had removed two of the images and kept Our Lady of Atocha as a single miracle worker in the small chapel. Pescador argues that the reason “why the Dominicans simplified and narrowed those three different local venerations is not entirely clear” (Peascador 2009, 16). The Sapnish imperial family also became devoted to the Virgin of Atocha and soon made her the patroness of the Royal Court of Madrid (Allardyce 2003). Pescador explains that the veneration to the Virgin of Atocha provided a religious practice that seemed to link local pious traditions with “the ruling house and its spiritual needs” (2009, 21). It was a “harmonious link between the monarch and his folk, the court and the city, and Madrid and its countryside” (Pescador 2009, 21).

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the devotion to Our Lady of Atocha had already crossed the Atlantic and come to New Spain. In 1704, in the mining town of Fresnillo, in the state of Zacatecas, the Confraternity of Santo Cristo de Plateros requested permission to build a chapel to honor Santo Cristo de Plateros, a miraculous image of Christ (Pescador 2009). The Spaniard Count of San Mateo Valparaiso provided the chapel with its images, one of which was Our Lady of Atocha, which was place in a secondary altar. It was there that the public devotion to Our Lady of Atocha emerged. Pescador (2009) contends that the devotion to Our Lady of Atocha most likely came to Zacatecas with the Dominicans, who had built a convent there in 1604 (Pescador 2009). The confraternity of the Señor de Plateros helped promote the devotion to Our Lady of Atocha by including it in its regular calendar her feast day (Pescador 2009). By the end of the eighteenth century, social and political changes had taken place in the lives of the local people of Fresnillo. A new shrine to honor the Christ of Plateros was built next to the old one in 1792 and the images of Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Virgin of Purification started being venerated in the new shrine (Pescador 2009). An even more important transformation came about in the area: the emergence of the devotion to the Santo Niño de Atocha, who had by then been separated from the image of Our Lady of Atocha (Pescador 2009). By 1816, this Holy Child had become a very popular and powerful saint. Thus, the devotion to the Santo Niño de Atocha is part of the late colonial period and predates the independence of Mexico (Pescador 2009). Most importantly, the veneration of the Santo Niño de Atocha “had no documented roots in Spain” (Pescador 2009, 71). The popularity of the devotion of the Santo Niño de Atocha grew fast and by the mid-nineteenth century it was the primary religious image in the sanctuary of Plateros. Pescador argues that the Santo Niño de Atocha became “not only an independent entity in the sanctuary of Plateros but also the religious icon that best mirrored the religious and social concerns of people in the region” (Pescado 2009, 75). Thirty years later, the devotion to the Santo Niño de Atocha had spread from Fresnillo to Aguascalientes, León, Guanajuanato in the province of Zacatecas and to the rural areas of Bajío region and Jalisco. By the 1850s and 1860s it had reached Durango, Chihuahua, and New Mexico. For Pescador (2009), the devotion to the Santo Niño de Atocha represents “the struggle by Mexican families in the Camino Real de Tierra Adientro to create new ways in which they could relate to the sacred world,” which were “more in accordance with the challenges of new times, without accepting the subordinate status they inherited from the colonial era” (Pescador 2009, 75).

Bibliography:

Allardyce, Isabel. Historic Shrines of Spain. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2003.

Pescador, Juan Javie. Crossing Borders with the Santo Niño de Atocha. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.