Bel canto (Bel-Canto) (Italian, "beautiful singing"), along with a number of similar constructions ("bellezze del canto"/"bell’arte del canto"), is an Italian opera term. It has several different meanings and is subject to a wide array of interpretations.^[1]

The earliest use of the term "bel canto" occurred in late 17th-century Italy, when it was applied to a sophisticated model of singing that was evolving there among practitioners of operatic and sacred music. The term did not become widely used, however, until the middle of the next century, which was the heyday of opera seria, the static but technically challenging da capo aria, and the now-extinct castrato voice.

In the mid-19th century, bel canto gained a more specific meaning when it was employed to distinguish what by now had developed into the traditional Italian vocal model from more forceful, less ingratiating styles of singing. These newer styles of singing had arisen as a result of 19th-century operas growing increasingly dramatic, pitting performers against louder and denser orchestral accompaniments in bigger theatres. Nonetheless, "neither musical nor general dictionaries saw fit to attempt [a] definition [of bel canto] until after 1900". The term remains vague and ambiguous in the 21st century and is often used nostalgically to evoke a lost singing tradition.^[2]

History of the term and its various definitions[link]

The bel canto-era composer Gioachino Rossini: portrait painted circa 1815 by Vincenzo Camuccini.

As generally understood today, the term "bel canto" refers to the Italian-originated vocal style that prevailed throughout most of Europe during the 18th century and lingered in a less elaborate but still dominant form until around 1840. The hallmarks of the bel canto style were:

• an impeccable legato production throughout the singer's (seamless) range
• the use of a light tone in the higher registers,
• an agile, flexible technique capable of dispatching ornate embellishments,
• the ability to execute fast, accurate divisions,
• the avoidance of aspirates and eschewing a loose vibrato,
• a pleasing, well-focused timbre,
• a clean attack,
• limpid diction, and
• graceful phrasing rooted in a complete mastery of breath control.

Operas and oratorios highly conducive to this method of singing were composed by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) and his contemporaries during the Baroque period. They contained da capo arias which were designed to provide solo singers with plentiful opportunities to display their technical skill and demonstrate their ability to improvise on the spot by embellishing the written score in a (hopefully) tasteful and illuminating manner. Da capo arias featured extensive and elaborate ornamentation, demanding much from the vocalist in the way of fluent runs, trills, turns (gruppetti), mordents, morendi, roulades, staccato passages, appoggiaturas, acciaccaturas, marcato notes, messa di voce effects, rapid scales, wide leaps spanning two octaves or more and brilliant cadenzas. In short: what is commonly referred to by opera-goers as coloratura.

Two famous 18th-century teachers of coloratura vocalism were Antonio Bernacchi (1685–1756) and Nicola Porpora (1686–1768), but numerous others existed. A large proportion of these teachers were castrati. Singer/author John Potter declares in his book Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, 2009, p. 31) that: "For much of the 18th century castrati defined the art of singing; it was the loss of their irrecoverable skills that in time created the myth of bel canto, a way of singing and conceptualizing singing that was entirely different from anything that the world had heard before or would hear again."

In a narrower application, the term "bel canto" is sometimes attached exclusively to Italian opera of the time of Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848). These three composers wrote bravura works for the stage during what musicologists call the bel canto era, which lasted approximately from 1805 to 1840. The bel canto era preserved many of the Baroque's musical values, although such characteristic forms as opera seria and the da capo aria did not survive the passing of the 18th century. Changing tastes and social standards also killed off the operatic castrato voice and ensured the concomitant rise to singing supremacy of the prima donna soprano and the virtuoso tenor. (The last important opera role for a castrato was written in 1824 by Giacomo Meyerbeer [1791-1864].)^[3]

The phrase "bel canto" did not enter common usage until the middle of the 19th century, when it was set in opposition to the development of a weightier, more powerful style of speech-inflected singing associated with German opera and, above all, Richard Wagner's revolutionary music dramas. Wagner (1813–1883) decried the Italian singing model, alleging that it was concerned merely with "whether that G or A will come out roundly". He advocated a new, Germanic school of singing which would draw "the spiritually energetic and profoundly passionate into the orbit of its matchless Expression".^[4]

Interestingly enough, French musicians and composers never embraced the more florid extremes of the 18th-century Italian bel canto style. They disliked the castrato voice and because they placed a premium on the clear enunciation of the texts of their vocal music, they objected to the sung word being obscured by excessive fioritura.

A hand-written note by the celebrated contralto Marietta Alboni about the decay of bel canto in the late 19th century.
The French text reads:
"The art of singing is going, and it will revert only with the sole real music of the future: that of Rossini.
Paris, 8 February 1881."
(signature)

The popularity of the bel canto style as espoused by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini faded in Italy during the mid-19th century. It was overtaken by a heavier, more ardent, less embroidered approach to singing that was necessary in order to perform the innovative works of Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) with maximum dramatic impact. Tenors, for instance, began to inflate their tone and deliver the high C (and even the high D) directly from the chest rather than resorting to a suave head voice/falsetto as they had done previously—sacrificing vocal agility in the process. Sopranos and baritones reacted in a similar fashion to their tenor colleagues when confronted with Verdi's drama-filled compositions. They subjected the mechanics of their voice production to greater pressures and cultivated the exciting upper part of their respective ranges at the expense of their mellow but less penetrant lower notes. Initially at least, the singing techniques of 19th-century contraltos and basses were less affected by the musical innovations of Verdi, which were built upon by his successors Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–1886) and Arrigo Boito (1842–1918).

One reason for the eclipse of the old Italian singing model was the growing influence within the music world of bel canto's detractors, who considered it to be outmoded and condemned it as vocalization devoid of content. To others, however, bel canto became the vanished art of elegant, refined, sweet-toned musical utterance. Rossini lamented in a conversation that took place in Paris in 1858 that: "Alas for us, we have lost our bel canto".^[5] Similarly, the so-called German style was as derided as much as it was heralded. In the introduction to a collection of songs by Italian masters published in 1887 in Berlin under the title Il bel canto, Franz Sieber wrote: "In our time, when the most offensive shrieking under the extenuating device of 'dramatic singing' has spread everywhere, when the ignorant masses appear much more interested in how loud rather than how beautiful the singing is, a collection of songs will perhaps be welcome which – as the title purports – may assist in restoring bel canto to its rightful place."^[3]

In the late-19th century and early-20th century, the term "bel canto" was resurrected by Italy's singing teachers, among whom the retired Verdi baritone Antonio Cotogni (1831–1918) was perhaps the pre-eminent figure. Cotogni and his ilk invoked it against an unprecedentedly vehement, unsubtle and vibrato-laden style of vocalism which was being adopted by more and more post-1890 singers in order to cope with:

• the impassioned demands of the stream of verismo operas that were flowing from the pens of Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857–1919), Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) and Umberto Giordano (1867–1948); and
• the auditory challenges posed by the non-Italianate stage works of Richard Strauss (1864–1949) and other late-romantic/early modern era composers, with their strenuous and angular vocal lines and often thick orchestral textures.

To make the situation worse, during the 1890s, the directors of the Bayreuth Festival began propagating a particularly forceful style of Wagnerian singing that placed such an undue emphasis on the articulation of the individual words of the composer's libretti, the all-important musical component of his operas was compromised. Called "Sprechgesang" by its proponents and the "Bayreuth bark" by its opponents, this hectoring, text-based, anti-legato approach to vocalism spread across the German-speaking parts of Europe prior to World War I. It was totally at odds with the Italian ideals of "beautiful singing".

As a result of these many factors, the concept of bel canto became shrouded in mystique and confused by a plethora of individual notions and interpretations. To complicate matters further, German musicology in the early 20th century invented its own historical application for "bel canto", using the term to denote the simple lyricism that came to the fore in Venetian opera and the Roman cantata during the 1630s and '40s (the era of composers Antonio Cesti, Giacomo Carissimi and Luigi Rossi) as a reaction against the earlier, text-dominated "stilo rappresentativo".^[1] Unfortunately, this anachronistic use of the term bel canto was given wide circulation in Robert Haas's Die Musik des Barocks (Potsdam, 1928) and, later, in Manfred Bukofzer's Music in the Baroque Era (New York, 1947). Since the singing style of later 17th-century Italy did not differ in any marked way from that of the 18th century and early 19th century, a connection can be drawn; but, according to Jander, most musicologists agree that the term is best limited to its mid-19th-century use, designating a style of singing that emphasized beauty of tone and technical expertise in the delivery of music that was either highly florid or featured long, flowing and difficult-to-sustain passages of cantilena.^[3]

In the 1950s, the phrase bel canto revival was coined to refer to a renewed interest in the operas of Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini. These composers had begun to go out of fashion during the latter years of the 19th century and their works, while never completely disappearing from the performance repertoire, were staged infrequently during the first half of the 20th century, when the operas of Wagner, Verdi and Puccini held sway. That situation changed significantly after World War II with the advent of a group of enterprising orchestral conductors and the emergence of a fresh generation of singers such as Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills, who had acquired bel canto techniques. These artists breathed new life into Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini's stage compositions, treating them seriously as music and re-popularizing them throughout Europe and America.^[6] Today, some of the world's most frequently performed operas, such as Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, are from the bel canto era.^[7]

Not coincidentally, the 18th-century operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), which require adroit bel canto skills if they are to be performed well, also experienced a post-war revival that shows no sign of abating, while the florid operas composed by Mozart's predecessor Handel have undergone a similar surge in popularity during recent decades. "I should think that performances of Handel operas now outnumber all others," avers classical music commentator Simon Callow in the April 2010 issue of Gramophone magazine (p. 26).

The bel canto teaching legacy[link]

Mathilde Marchesi (1821–1913), a leading Paris-based teacher of bel canto sopranos.

Musicologists occasionally apply the label bel canto technique to the arsenal of virtuosic vocal accomplishments and concepts imparted by singing teachers to their students during the late 18th century and the early 19th century. Many of these teachers were castrati.

"All [their] pedagogical works follow the same structure, beginning with exercises on single notes and eventually progressing to scales and improvised embellishments," writes Potter on p. 47 of his Tenor: History of a Voice. "The really creative ornamentation required for cadenzas, involving models and formulae that could generate newly improvised material, came towards the end of the process." (Today's pervasive idea that singers should refrain from improvising and always adhere strictly to the letter of a composer's published score is a comparatively recent phenomenon, promulgated during the first decades of the 20th century by dictatorial conductors such as Arturo Toscanini [1867-1957], who championed the dramatic operas of Verdi and Wagner and believed in keeping performers on a tight interpretive leash. See, for instance, Volume 1 of Michael Scott's survey The Record of Singing [Duckworth, London, 1977], pp. 135–136; also Potter, p. 77.)

Potter notes, however, that as the 19th century unfurled, "The general tendency ... was for singers not to have been taught by castrati (there were few of them left) and for serious study to start later, often at one of the new conservatories rather than with a private teacher. The traditional techniques and pedagogy were still acknowledged, but the teaching was generally in the hands of tenors and baritones who were by then at least once removed from the tradition itself."

Early 19th-century teachers described the voice as being made up of three registers. The chest register was the lowest of the three and the head register the highest, with the passaggio in between. These registers needed to be smoothly blended and fully equalized before a trainee singer could acquire total command of his or her natural instrument, and the surest way to achieve this outcome was for the trainee to practise vocal exercises assiduously. Bel canto-era teachers were great believers in the benefits of vocalise and solfeggio. They strove to strengthen the respiratory muscles of their pupils and equip them with such time-honoured vocal attributes as "purity of tone, perfection of legato, phrasing informed by eloquent portamento, and exquisitely turned ornaments", to quote from the introduction to Volume 2 of Scott's The Record of Singing (Duckworth, London, 1979).

Major refinements occurred to the existing system of voice classification during the 19th century as the international operatic repertoire diversified, split into distinctive nationalist schools and expanded in size. Whole new categories of singers such as mezzo-soprano and Wagnerian bass-baritone arose towards the end of the 19th century, as did such new sub-categories as lyric coloratura soprano, dramatic soprano and spinto soprano, and various grades of tenor, stretching from lyric through spinto to heroic. These classificatory changes have had a lasting effect on the way singing teachers designate voices and the way in which opera house managements cast their productions.

It would be wrong, however, to think that there was across-the-board uniformity among 19th-century bel canto adherents when it came to passing on their knowledge and instructing students. Each of them had their own training regimes and pet notions; but, fundamentally, they all subscribed to the same set of bel canto precepts, and the exercises that they devised in order to enhance their students' breath support, dexterity, range and technical control remain valuable and, indeed, are still employed by some teachers.^[1]

Manuel García (1805–1906), author of the influential treatise L'Art du Chant, was the most prominent of the group of pedagogues that perpetuated bel-canto principles in their teachings and writings during the second half of the 19th century. His like-minded younger sister, Pauline Viardot (1821–1910), was also an important teacher of voice, as were Viardot's contemporaries Mathilde Marchesi, Camille Everardi, Julius Stockhausen, Carlo Pedrotti, Venceslao Persichini, Giovanni Sbriglia, Melchiorre Vidal and Francesco Lamperti (together with Francesco's son Giovanni Battista Lamperti). The voices of a number of their former students can be heard on acoustic recordings made in the first two decades of the 20th century and re-issued since on LP and CD. Some examples on disc of historically and artistically significant 19th-century singers whose bel canto-infused vocal styles and techniques pre-date the "Bayreuth bark" and the dramatic excesses of verismo opera are:

Sir Charles Santley (born 1834), Gustav Walter (born 1834), Adelina Patti (born 1843), Marianne Brandt (born 1842), Lilli Lehmann (born 1848), Jean Lassalle (born 1847), Victor Maurel (born 1848), Marcella Sembrich (born 1858), Lillian Nordica (born 1857), Emma Calvé (born 1858), Nellie Melba (born 1861), Francesco Tamagno (born 1850), Francesco Marconi (born 1853), Léon Escalais (born 1859), Mattia Battistini (born 1856), Mario Ancona (born 1860), Pol Plançon (born 1851), and Antonio Magini-Coletti and Francesco Navarini (both born 1855).

Quotations[link]

• Bel-canto not a school of sensuously pretty voice-production.^[8]
  [...]
  It has come to be a generally recognised thing that voice, pure and simple, by its very composition, or "placing", interferes with the organs of speech; making it impossible for a vocalist to preserve absolute purity of pronunciation in song as well as in speech. It is because of this view that the principle of "vocalising" words, instead of musically saying them, crept in, to the detriment of vocal art. This false position is due to the idea that the "Arte del bel-canto" encouraged mere sensuous beauty of voice, rather than truth of expression.^[9]
  – David Ffrangcon Davies: The singing of the future (1907, c1905)

• "Bel-canto" (of which we read so much) meant, and means, versatility of tone; if a man wish to be called an artist, his voice must become the instrument of intelligent imagination. Perhaps there would be fewer cases of vocal-specialising if the modern craze for "voice-production" (apart from linguistic truth) could be reduced. This wondrous pursuit is, as things stand, a notable instance of putting the cart before the horse. Voices are "produced" and "placed" in such wise that pupils are trained to "vocalise" (to use technical jargon) the words; i.e., they are taught to make a sound which is indeed something like but is not the word in its purity. "Tone" or sound is what the average student seeks, ab initio and not verbal purity. Hence the monotony of modern singing. When one hears an average singer in one role, one hears him in all.^[10]
  – David Ffrangcon Davies: The singing of the future (1907, c1905)

• Those who regard the art of singing as anything more than a means to an end, do not comprehend the true purpose of that art, much less can they hope ever to fulfil that purpose. The true purpose of singing is to give utterance to certain hidden depths in our nature which can be adequately expressed in no other way. The voice is the only vehicle perfectly adapted to this purpose; it alone can reveal to us our inmost feelings, because it is our only direct means of expression. If the voice, more than any language, more than any other instrument of expression, can reveal to us our own hidden depths, and convey those depths to other souls of men, it is because voice vibrates directly to the feeling itself, when it fulfils its natural mission. By fulfilling its natural mission, I mean, when voice is not hindered from vibrating to the feeling by artificial methods of tone -production, which methods include certain mental processes which are fatal to spontaneity. To sing should always mean to have some definite feeling to express.^[11]
  – Clara Kathleen Rogers: The Philosophy Of Singing (1893)

• The decline of Bel Canto may be attributed in part to Ferrein and Garcia who, with a dangerously small and historically premature knowledge of laryngeal function, abandoned the intuitive and emotional insight of the anatomically blind singers.^[12]
  – Paul Newham: Using voice and song in therapy

• Voice Culture has not progressed [...]. Exactly the contrary has taken place. Before the introduction of mechanical methods every earnest vocal student was sure of learning to use his voice properly, and of developing the full measure of his natural endowments. Mechanical instruction has upset all this. Nowadays the successful vocal student is the exception.^[13]
  David C. Taylor – The psychology of singing (1917)

Notes[link]

References & bibliography[link]

• Brown, M. Augusta "Extracts From Vocal Art" in The Congress of Women, Mary Kavanaugh Oldham (ed.), Chicago: Monarch Book Company (1894), p.  477. Available online from the University of Pennsylvania Digital Library. Accessed April 26, 2007.
• Coffin, Berton, Sounds of Singing, Second Edition, Littlefield (2002).
• Christiansen, Rupert, "A tenor for the 21st century", The Daily Telegraph (15 March 2002; accessed 3 November 2008)
• Marchesi, Mathilde, Bel Canto: A Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method, Dover (1970) ISBN 0-486-22315-9
• Osborne, Charles, The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, Hal Leonard Corporation (1994) ISBN 0-931340-84-5
• Pleasants, Henry, The Great Singers from the Dawn of Opera to Our Own Time, Macmillan Publishers, London (1983) ISBN 0-333-34854-0
• Potter, John, Tenor: History of a Voice, Yale University Press, New Haven & London (2009) ISBN 978-0-300-11873-5
• Roselli, John, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1995) ISBN 0-521-42697-9
• Rushmore, Robert, The Singing Voice, Hamish Hamilton, London (1971) SBN 241019478
• Scott, Michael, The Record of Singing, volumes 1 & 2, Duckworth, London (1977, 1979) ISBN 0-7156-1030-9 & ISBN 1-55553-163-6
• Somerset-Ward, Richard, Angels and Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera, Yale University Press, New Haven & London (2004) ISBN 03000099681
• Reid, Cornelius L., Bel Canto: Principles and Practices, Joseph Patelson Music House (1950) ISBN 0-915282-01-1
• Rosenthal, Harold and Warrack, John (editors), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, second edition, Oxford University Press, London (1980) ISBN 0-19-311321-X
• Scalisi, Cecilia, "Raúl Giménez, el maestro del bel canto", La Nación (November 10, 2003). Accessed November 3, 2008.
• Traité complet de chant et de déclamation lyrique Enrico Delle Sedie (Paris, 1847) fragment

Other sources[link]

Articles[link]

• Section on Bel Canto from The Singer's Handbook (1942) by Lazar S. Samoiloff
• Nigro, Antonella. Observations on the Technique of Italian Singing from the 16th Century to the Present Day from the book "Celebri Arie Antiche: le piu' note arie del primo Barocco italiano trascritte e realizzate secondo lo stile dell'epoca" by Claudio Dall'Albero and Marcello Candela. (ref)

Digitized, scanned material[link]

• "Bel Canto" Titles from the Internet Archive (e.g. Lamperti, Giovanni Battista: The Technics of Bel Canto)
• Harry Plunket Greene: Interpretation in Song (1912). New York: The Macmillan Company. Downloadable versions at the Internet Archive: [1]
• Lehmann, Lilli; Aldrich, Richard, translator (1902): How to sing. New York: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. Downloadable versions at the Internet Archive: [2]
• Garcia, Manuel; Garcia, Beata, translator (1894). Hints on singing, new and revised edition. London: E. Ascherberg. Downloadable versions at the Internet Archive: [3].

Saint Juan Diego
Juan Diego by Miguel Cabrera
Born	c. (1474-07-12)July 12, 1474[1] Calpulli of Tlayacac, Cuauhtitlan, Mexico
Died	May 30, 1548(1548-05-30) (aged 73) Tenochtitlan, Mexico City, Mexico
Honored in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	April 9, 1990, Vatican City, Rome by Pope John Paul II
Canonized	July 31, 2002, Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico by Pope John Paul II
Major shrine	Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City, Mexico
Feast	December 9
Attributes	tilma

Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin or Juan Diego (1474–May 30, 1548) was, according to Mexican Catholic tradition, an indigenous Mexican who reported a Marian apparition, Our Lady of Guadalupe, in 1531. The apparition has had a significant impact on the spread of the Catholic faith within Mexico. The Roman Catholic Church canonized him in 2002, as its first indigenous American saint.

The reality of Juan Diego's existence has been questioned by a number of experts on the early religious history of New Spain including Bernardino de Sahagun, Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Stafford Poole, Louise Burkhart and David Brading, who argue that there is a complete lack of sources about Juan Diego's existence prior to the publication of the Nican Mopohua a century later, in 1649 (they do not accept the validity of the Codex Escalada as historical evidence).^[2] Notwithstanding these doubts, the findings of an interdisciplinary study, by nearly two dozen experts involving a prominent Mexican university and a noted American scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican linguistics and anthropology, all indicated authenticity of the document and 16th century origin.^[3][4]

Sources[link]

This section cites its sources but does not provide page references. You can help to improve it by introducing citations that are more precise.

The two primary sources to the life of Juan Diego are from 1648 and 1649. The first account, Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe, Milagrosamente aparecida en la Ciudad de México, was written in Spanish by the priest Miguel Sánchez. It relates how Juan Diego witnessed the apparitions, how he informed Bishop Zumárraga, the miracles of the tilmahtli and the roses, the apparition to Juan Bernardino (Juan Diego's uncle), and how the shrine to Guadalupe was instated. According to contemporary sources this was the first time the apparition story was told to a wide audience.^[5] Some historians have suggested that Sánchez built his account on an indigenous oral tradition local to the area, a variant of the earlier legend of the appearance of the Virgin of Los Remedios.^[6] The Virgin of Remedios was a popular saint to whom several miraculous curings were attributed, among them the curing of an indigenous herdsman near Tepeyac and of a construction worker in Tacuba. The stories of the Virgen de Guadalupe and Virgen de Los Remedios have several similarities, and have often been confused. Historians have suggested that the Nican Mopohua can be understood as a variation of the legend of the miracle of the Virgin de los Remedios.^[7]

The second source which is more famous than Sánchez' and goes into more detail about Juan Diego is the Huei tlamahuiçoltica (which include "Nican Mopohua") written in Classical Nahuatl by Mexican priest and lawyer Luis Laso de la Vega and published in 1649.

The historic veracity of both sources are considered questionable by many historians.^[8] The primary doubts arise in the dearth of sources about the apparition and consequently about Juan Diego in the 117 years between the time given for the apparition and the first publication of the story. Also the fact that the story was described as being previously unknown by those who read its first publication. Furthermore the fact that Bishop Zúmarraga who figures as a prominent character in the account has not left any mention of either Juan Diego or the apparition in his otherwise ample correspondence is a problem for the credibility of the accounts.^[9] The problems with the historicity of Juan Diego was recognized as early as 1883 by Joaquín García Icazbalceta historian and the biographer of Archbishop Juan de Zumárraga, in private letter to the Mexican Bishop Icazbalceta concluded that there was no historical basis for the character of Juan Diego.

In 1995 a deer skin codex pictorially demonstrating the apparition and the life of Juan Diego appeared in the possession of Xavier Escalada, a Jesuit writing an encyclopedia of the Guadalupan tradition. This unprovenanced document, previously unknown to historians and archivists, became referred to as the Codex Escalada. This was at a time when the process of canonization was at a halt and historians and theologians were beginning to voice doubts about the veracity of the legend. The Codex seemed to provide ineffable proof of the historicity of the accounts of Sánchez and Laso de la Vega. To further strengthen its force of proof it bore the signatures of the important historical figures Antonio Valeriano and Bernardino de Sahagún which seemed to date it unequivocally to the mid 16th century around the time of the apparition. The sheer timing of the Codex' appearance was seen by some historians as suspicious, and the source is not regarded by them as an historical document but rather a fabrication.^{[page needed][10]} The Codex, however, was studied by approximately twenty experts in various specialties, including the Physics Institute of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and anthropologist, linguist, and scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, Charles E. Dibble of the University of Utah, as well by experts in graphology from the Bank of Mexico; the findings all indicate authenticity of the document and 16th century origin.^[3][4]

Life[link]

According to the Nican Mopohua, Juan Diego was born in 1474 in the calpulli of Tlayacac in Cuautitlán, a small Indian village some 20 km (12mi) to the north of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Another source indicated that Juan Diego was born on July 12, 1474.^[11]

His original or birth name was Cuauhtlatoatzin^[12] (alternately rendered as Quauhtatoatzin, Guauhtlatoatzin, or Cuatliztactzin), which has been translated as "Talking Eagle" in the Nahuatl language.

Conversion to Catholicism[link]

A farmer, landowner and weaver of mats, he witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés in 1521, when he was 47 years old. Following the invasion, in 1524, the first 12 Franciscan missionaries arrived in what is now Mexico City.

Cuauhtlatoatzin and his wife welcomed the Franciscans in 1524 or 1525 and were among the first to be baptized — he taking the Christian name of Juan Diego; she, Maria Lucia. Later, they moved to Tolpetlac to be closer to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and the Catholic mission that had been set up by the Franciscan friars.

According to his legend, after hearing a sermon on the virtue of chastity, they reportedly decided to live chaste lives^{[citation needed]} . This decision was later cited as a possible reason for which the Virgin Mary chose to appear to Juan Diego^{[citation needed]} . In 1529, a few years after her baptism, Maria Lucia became sick and died. According to Sánchez' account Juan Diego and his wife had lived in celibacy for their entire lives; this would be extraordinary since he lived the first 47 years of his life according to pre-Columbian indigenous customs that only prescribed celibacy for the highest priesthood. The Nican Mopohua adds the detail about his celibacy beginning after his first sermon. Juan Diego found the Virgin Mary when he was 57.^[9]

Apparition on Tepeyac Hill[link]

As a widower, Juan Diego walked every Saturday and Sunday to church, and on cold mornings, wore a woven cloth called a tilma, or ayate made with coarse fibers from the maguey cactus for cotton was only used by the upper class Aztec.

On Saturday morning, December 9, 1531, he reported the following: As he was walking to church, he heard the sound of birds singing on Tepeyac hill and someone calling his name. He ran up the hill, and there saw a Lady, about fourteen years of age, resembling an Aztec princess in appearance, and surrounded by light. The Lady spoke to him in Nahuatl, his native tongue. She called him “Xocoyte,” her little son. He responded by calling her “Xocoyote,” his youngest child. The Lady asked Juan Diego to tell the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumárraga, that she wanted a “teocalli,” a shrine, to be built on the spot where she stood, in her honor, where:

"I will demonstrate, I will exhibit, I will give all my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful mother, the merciful mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind, of all those who love me , of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow and will remedy and alleviate all their multiple sufferings, necessities and misfortunes."

Recognizing the Lady as the Virgin Mary, Juan Diego went to the bishop as instructed, but the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga was doubtful and told Juan Diego he needed a sign. Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac hill and explained to the Lady that the bishop did not believe him. He implored the Lady to use another messenger, insisting he was not worthy. The Lady however insisted that it was of the utmost importance that it be Diego speaking to the bishop on her behalf. On Sunday, Juan Diego did as the Lady directed, but again the bishop asked for a sign. Later that day, the Lady promised Juan Diego she would give him a sign the following day.

According to the Nican Mopohua, he returned home that night to his uncle Juan Bernardino’s house, and discovered him seriously ill. The next morning, December 12, Juan Diego decided not to meet with the Lady, but to find a priest who could administer the last rites to his dying uncle. When he tried to skirt around Tepeyac hill, the Lady intercepted him, assured him his uncle would not die, and asked him to climb the hill and gather the flowers he found there. It was December, when normally nothing blooms in the cold. There, Diego's miracle of the roses occurred: he found roses from the region of Castille in Spain, former home of bishop Zumárraga. The Lady re-arranged the roses carefully inside the folded tilma that Juan Diego wore and told him not to open it before anyone but the bishop. When Juan Diego unfolded his tilma before the Bishop roses cascaded from his tilma, and an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed on the cloth, bringing the bishop to his knees.

According to the Nican Mopohua Zumárraga acknowledged the miracle and within two weeks, ordered a shrine to be built where the Virgin Mary had appeared. The bishop then entrusted the image to Juan Diego, who chose to live, until his death at about the age of 73 — on May 30, 1548 — as a hermit near the spot where the Virgin Mary had appeared. From his hermitage he cared for the chapel and the first pilgrims who came to pray there, propagating the account of the apparitions in Mexico.

No records prior to 1648 exist showing that Bishop Zumárraga acknowledged the miracle or that he even knew of it.^[13]

Impact on Mexico and the Catholic Church[link]

This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Please help to ensure that disputed facts are reliably sourced. See the relevant discussion on the talk page. (September 2007)

According to the traditional account, the original image of Our lady of Guadalupe miraculously appeared on the cloak of Juan Diego, on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City on December 12, 1531.

News of the apparition on Tepayac Hill spread quickly through Mexico; and in the seven years that followed, 1532 through 1538, the Indian people accepted the Spaniards and 8 million people were converted to the Catholic faith.

According to Daniel Lynch, director of the Apostolate of the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, “An amazing thing happened. Indians became reconciled to Spaniards. And we had a new race of people. Mixed blood. We called them "Mestizos". Our Lady of Guadalupe had appeared as a Mestiza. They call her the dark virgin, the little brown one.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe, as the Virgin Mary came to be known in this context, still underpins the faith of many Catholics in Mexico and the rest of Latin America, and she is recognized as patron saint of all the Americas.

Interestingly, the years 1532 to 1538 which saw a large number of people join the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico based on Juan Diego's vision, were right in the midst of the period of Protestant Reformation in Europe. Hence as a large number of people left the Catholic Church in Europe, a large number of new Catholics appeared in Mexico, maintaining the overall strength of the Catholic Church. To this day, Latin America remains a major pillar of the Catholic Church.

Investigations, canonization and symbolism[link]

Juan Diego was recognized by the Church soon after the apparition. He expressed a deep love for the Holy Eucharist, and by special permission of the Bishop he received Holy Communion three times a week, a highly unusual occurrence in those times.

In 1667, a Church investigation into the establishment of a feast day produced a document known as the Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666, purporting to gather information from informants whom had had some connection with Juan Diego. In 1723 a formal investigation into his life was ordered by Archbishop Lanziego y Equilaz.

Veneration[link]

On January 9, 1987, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declared Juan Diego venerable. Pope John Paul II beatified him on May 6, 1990, during a Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, declaring December 9 Juan Diego's feast day, one day after Immaculate Conception and invoking him as “protector and advocate of the indigenous peoples.”

Controversy over the historical authenticity of Juan Diego was stirred in 1996 by Father Guillermo Schulenburg, a longtime abbot of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who called Juan Diego a mythical character.

The Vatican subsequently established a commission of 30 researchers from various countries to investigate the question. The commission's view was that Juan Diego had indeed existed, and the results of their research were presented to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints on October 28, 1998. Among research documents submitted at that time were 27 Guadalupe Indian documents.

Canonization[link]

Juan Diego was canonized by Pope John Paul II on July 31, 2002.^[14] Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him (who said to the Blessed Virgin Mary: "I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf") as a model of humility.

Symbolism[link]

By 1820, when the Mexican War of Independence from Spanish colonial rule ended, Our Lady of Guadalupe had come to symbolize the Mexican nation. The armies of both Miguel Hidalgo in 1810 and Emiliano Zapata in 1914 flew Guadalupan flags. The first president of Mexico adopted the name "Guadalupe Victoria" during the fight for independence from Spain. Today, the Virgin of Guadalupe remains a strong national and religious symbol in Mexico.

Many Mexicans also see the canonization of Juan Diego as a symbolic victory in the movement for greater recognition of their heritage reflected in the Catholic religion; Pope John Paul II held a Mass in Mexico that borrowed from Aztec traditions, including a reading from the Bible in Nahuatl. The Pope urged the Catholic Church in Mexico to be respectful of indigenous traditions and to incorporate them into religious ceremonies when appropriate.

Controversy over official depiction[link]

There was controversy over the official image of Juan Diego selected by the Archdiocese of Mexico City in 2002. Critics feel that it depicts Juan Diego as having European features rather than the features of a Mexican Indian. Church officials responded that the depiction reflected the current ethnic make-up of Mexico.^[15]

See also[link]

• Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Miracle of the roses

Notes[link]

References[link]