Ethnohistory

The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael

Mural at Tabí: The Inmaculada, Eschatology,
and Christian Orthodoxy in Seventeenth-­Century
Yucatán

Linda K. Williams, University of Puget Sound

Abstract. Late seventeenth-­century murals in the camarín of the colonial Church of

the Conception in Tabí, Yucatán, include an unusual image of Saint Michael and a
dragon in the birth chamber of the Virgin Mary. The murals of the camarín served as
a backdrop for the miracle-­working statue of the Virgin, which had emerged from
the nearby cenote in the early seventeenth century. This study argues that the mural
imagery and statue responded to the use of the cenote before and after the arrival
of the Europeans: the Virgin as Inmaculada addressed local concerns of orthodoxy
and also connected this remote town to broader post-­Tridentine doctrines in New
Spain. The visual material offers a means of analyzing strategies of evangelization
and the complexities of reception within the community of Tabí and more broadly
in colonial Yucatán.

Introduction

The bodies of the youths, which were attached to crosses, they threw into the
cenote of Tabí.
[“Los cuerpos de los muchachos, así como estaban atados en las cruces, los
echaron en el cenote de Tabí.”].
—­Testimonies recorded by Don Diego Quijada, Alcalde Mayor de Yucatán, 1562

[Tabí] enjoys an image of fine sculpture of the Immaculate Conception of our

Lady, admirable as much in its appearance as in devotion. It is usually fre-
quented by many people who visit her from diverse parts, for the well-­known
reasons and benefits that they have experienced and received from her hands
and intercession.
[“[Tabí], que goza de una imagen de buena escultura de la Limpia Concepción
de Nuestra Señora, admirable así en su aspecto como en la devoción. Es fre-

Ethnohistory 61:4 (Fall 2014) DOI 10.1215/00141801-2717840

Copyright 2014 by American Society for Ethnohistory

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 Ethnohistory

716 Linda K. Williams

Figure 1. Map of Yucatán. Drawing by author

cuentada ordinariamente de muchas personas que la visitan de diversas partes,

por los factores y beneficios que conocidamente se han experimentado y reci-
bido de sus manos e intersección.”]
—­Bachiller Francisco de Cárdenas Valencia, 1639

In the early years of the seventeenth century, a statue of the Virgin of the
Immaculate Conception (now lost)1 emerged one night from the depths of
Tabí’s double cenote, a natural well that tapped into the clear, life-­giving
aquifer beneath the limestone shelf of the Yucatán peninsula (fig. 1). This
event was announced by the spontaneous ringing of the church bell, after
which a Maya resident directed the local Spanish encomendero (tribute and
landholder), Rodrigo Alonso García, and his companions to the twenty-­
seven-­inch-­
high, light-­skinned, carved and painted sculpture that had
appeared from the cenote.2 The statue’s extraordinary emergence from
Tabí’s natural well continued the long-standing sacred relationship of the
indigenous community to the cenote, although it reversed the usual pro-
cess.3 For centuries, inhabitants of Yucatán had deposited sacrificial items
into cenotes, loci of communication with the gods; in return, they received
natural forms of sustenance.4 The miraculous event, therefore, refashioned
Tabí as a Christian pilgrimage center.
Through the middle decades of the seventeenth century, the exist-

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 717

Figure 2. Church of Concepción, Tabí, Yucatán, seventeenth century. Photo by

author

ing Church of the Concepción of Tabí was enlarged and a camarín added
(figs. 2 and 3).5 The latter, an elevated, private dressing room for the statue
of the Inmaculada, communicated with the large retablo in the apse of the
church via a small door in the west wall, facilitating the Virgin’s appear-
ance to the congregation. A suite of murals exceptional for their compre-
hensive imagery and survival, dating to the last quarter of the seventeenth
century—­that is, some seventy years after the arrival of the statue—­covers
the camarín’s interior.6 Three large panels depict stories from the life of
the Virgin Mary: the meeting of her parents, Joachim and Anna; her birth,
accompanied by Saint Michael, in which the newly washed infant is held
by a midwife near a large basin (the image referred to as Birth of the Vir-
gin with Saint Michael); and Mary’s presentation in the temple (figs. 4 and
5).7 An exuberant floral bower covers the vault, and music-­making angels
fill the lower walls. This mural decoration along with a small retablo on the
west wall of the camarín provided an appropriate setting for the miracle-­
working statue. The camarín’s imagery and statue engaged in a recipro-
cal relationship: while the statue was the focus of the room, the surface
imagery provided essential information about the Virgin’s role in religious
instruction in colonial Yucatán.

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Figure 3. Ground plan of the Church of Concepción, Tabí, Yucatán. Drawing by

Marcus Legros after Justino Fernandez, ed., Catalago Construcciones Religiosas
del Estado de Yucatan, vol. 2 (Mexico City, 1945). Camarín marked “C.”

The unusual iconographic combination of the birth of the Virgin and

Saint Michael spearing a dragon in the mural of the east wall is the focus of
this study; I examine the imagery as it relates to the function of the space
and its role in the evangelical program of the Franciscan regulars and priests
(after the church was secularized in 1581) in this remote area of the prov-
ince.8 For the religious, both figures represent purity of faith in the con-
tinuing fight against idolatry, a particular local issue in seventeenth-­century
Yucatán. Saint Michael’s militant stance against heresy represents proscrip-
tive behavior intended to address some members of the Maya community
as a deterrent to continued traditional religious practices. The panel also
reflects the current discourse regarding the Virgin’s Immaculate Concep-
tion, which addressed both Spanish and Maya constituencies. This theo-
logical dogma9 connects the imagery to the statue’s arrival and to penin-
sular and broader post-­Tridentine questions about the nature and meaning

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 719

Figure 4. Interior of Camarin, east and south walls. Photo by author

of the Virgin Mary’s purity in the Church’s efforts to promote right belief.
By combining the immaculate birth of the Virgin and Saint Michael’s final
victory over evil, the imagery emphasizes beginnings and endings, making
clear the eschatological purpose of Christian conversion—­salvation and a
focus on eternal life. According to Francisco de Cárdenas Valencia, by 1639
the Virgin had come to define the town, as related in his quotation above. In
1754, Fray Ignacio de Padilla y Estrada similarly described Tabí as an estab-
lished pilgrimage site, with “an exquisite vaulted church where a miracu-
lous image is venerated.”10 These sources suggest a successful campaign of
Christian integration in the community, though these voices clearly have a
stake in an orthodox version of this success.11
In this article, I argue that the statue of the Virgin and the murals in
the camarín worked in concert to convey various aspects of Mary’s role
in the New World: she was a persuasive advocate for conversion and an
equally persuasive voice against heresy, equated with idolatry. The statue’s
unconventional genesis via the cenote sent a powerful message to Chris-
tian neophytes in Tabí, one that made the miracle of her appearance tan-
gible and, in the view of the religious, strengthened her role in conversion;
the Virgin Mary’s purity and ability to triumph over idolatry, emphasized
by the method and site of her arrival, were reiterated in the panel depict-

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720 Linda K. Williams

Figure 5. Interior of Camarin, east wall with the Birth of Virgin mural, last third
of the seventeenth century. Photo by author

ing her birth. My goal is to suggest ways in which the imagery and statue
of the Virgin worked as proscriptive and unifying elements for the differ-
ent constituencies in the colonial town. In general, the flexibility of tradi-
tional Maya religion allowed for the incorporation of new ideas in ritual
practice and thus acknowledged multiple ways of understanding imagery.
Some elements of doctrine and representation at Tabí likely dovetailed with
Maya belief, resulting in a Christianity more or less orthodox. Other ele-
ments may have caused conflicting messages. Studies of Christianity in
rural parts of Europe in the early modern period reveal that religious prac-
tice took myriad forms and interpretations, many that countered church
teaching. Likewise, documented accounts make clear the selective adapta-
tion of some tenets of Christian belief at Tabí; therefore, the camarín offers
a productive case study for analyzing local strategies of evangelization and
reception in colonial Yucatán.
While the arrival of the statue of the Virgin from the pure water physi-
cally demonstrated her immaculate state, it also cleansed the cenote of the
idolatrous acts supposedly committed decades earlier.12 In fact, the 1562
testimonies can account, at least in part, for the selection of Tabí as a new
Marian cult center. Tabí is located in proximity to Sotuta, one of the towns

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 721

where rebellious Maya leaders had been tortured and interrogated by Frey
Diego del Landa (1524–79), head of the convent of Izamal, in June through
August of 1562.13 Accounts also noted animal sacrifices “in the ancient man-
ner” and offerings of food within the church of Tabí.14 The idolatry trials
and autos-­da-­fé in Mani that summer shifted the friars’ initial focus from
indoctrination to one that recognized the continuity of traditional Maya
belief and practice, which necessitated new means of religious control.15
Discoveries of such idolatries made clear that the process of conversion was
not working as had been expected, as the Maya priesthood (ah kinob) would
survive well into the last decades of the eighteenth century.16 The resilience
of Maya political and religious systems confounded the Europeans, espe-
cially the clergy, whose optimism in the initial decades of the contact transi-
tioned, after 1636, to renewed persecution and then to “clerical disillusion-
ment” in the following century.17
This political and religious context of the seventeenth century was
understandably rooted in the events of 1562 and their aftermath. From
the Franciscans’ perspective, the congregated town was a candidate for
renewed efforts of conversion. Notwithstanding the friars’ consternation
and whether these specific “idolatrous” actions were actually carried out,
they formed part of a cycle of offerings that had traditionally assured conti-
nuity of the growing cycle and harvest—­sufficient rain to nourish the corn
crops through the winter.18 While the double-­cenote could not be removed,
it could be purified through miraculous means.19 The town in the seven-
teenth century, therefore, included Maya who retained traditional religious
practice alongside Catholic belief as well as clergy and elite Maya motivated
to end this practice. The varied assimilation of Christian ideas indicates a
range of responses to the new faith; the iconographic program of the Tabí
camarín acknowledges this condition and addresses the purity of faith and
eschatological questions in the imagery of the Virgin’s birth.20

The Immaculate Conception in

Seventeenth-­Century Yucatán

As champions of the Immaculate cause and Counter-­Reformation ortho-

doxy, the Spanish monarchs and regular orders in Spain and the viceroyal-
ties used art to make their case for the doctrine of the Virgin’s unblem-
ished state.21 While Spanish representations of the Inmaculada maintained
the blue and white garments, the crown of stars, and the crescent moon,
those painted in Mexico amplified the image, representing her more fre-
quently as the woman of the Apocalypse described by the Evangelist John:
the winged woman in the raiment of the sun, crushing a serpent at her feet.22

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Clara Bargellini notes Saint Michael’s importance in relation to the Virgin

of the Apocalypse in New Spain: he protects the Virgin and also leads the
army against the devil, a militant force in the continuing battle to convert
the indigenous well after the arrival of the Europeans.23 Therefore, in New
World imagery, Mary became a powerful instrument in the battle against
idolatry, a counterpart of Michael, the warrior saint who fought for souls,24
both figures being important given the local political and religious circum-
stances in colonial Yucatán. Beyond the extirpation of idolatry, the ritual
function of the Immaculate Virgin and her camarín also served to unify
the elite Maya of the community and connect them with religious concerns
beyond the local proximity of Tabí, suggesting expanded methods of evan-
gelization in the region.
Tabí’s statue represented the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, an
issue of importance in Europe and New Spain. Seville, the point of depar-
ture for most travelers to New Spain, was the home of fervent adherence to
belief in the Virgin’s purity from inception and the campaign to have this
doctrine accepted by the papacy.25 Conveyed through Franciscan and later
Jesuit missions, ideas about the Immaculate Conception were carried west
and found physical expression in rituals, paintings, and texts dedicated to
the Inmaculada. New Spain, Yucatán, and even Tabí participated in the
defense of this doctrine, undoubtedly fueled by the large number of Francis-
cans working on the peninsula. Adherence to the dogma was formalized
by means of confraternities and ritual processions, linking the region to
Counter-­Reformation questions of orthodoxy of faith. In 1596, Meridanos
founded the Religiosas de la Inmaculada Concepción, a confraternity dedi-
cated to the “beautiful title of her original purity.”26 After a solemn delib-
eration on 8 December 1618 in the Mérida Cathedral, a civil and religious
conclave, which included the governor, archbishop, and cabildos (local
administrative councils), voted to “uphold and defend the purity of the
Conception of Mary.” Fray Diego López de Cogolludo (1610–­86) related,
“At this same time the Franciscan monasteries established in nearly all of the
cities and towns of our peninsula, made for their part the same solemn and
public vote of the Immaculate Conception.”27 The celebration of the vote
in Mérida was an inclusive event, the plaza in front of the cathedral filled
with Spaniards on horseback and Maya holding lighted candles. The pro-
cession was led by “a cart of brilliant textiles and architecture, crowned by
a small image with a very beautiful aspect which represented the Queen of
Angels, and at her feet a terrible dragon which entering into the plaza gave
off from its mouth many fireworks . . . without hurting any of the people
on the cart . . . and when the discourses finished, there was music of various
instruments and beautiful voices.”28

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The exploding dragon in the celebration certainly relates iconographi-

cally to the woman of the Apocalypse; it would also have been recognized
as the dragon of idolatry with which Daniel explodes (literally) the fallacy
of false gods worshipped by the Persians in the Apocryphal book of Bel and
the Dragon.29 The dragon also resembles the tarasca, a terrifying mythical
monster ridden by a young woman in the Corpus Christi celebrations in
many Spanish towns from the Middle Ages to the present day.30 We have
few documents or sermons in Spanish or Maya from seventeenth-­century
Yucatán that might directly connect image and text; however, Gretchen
Whalen and Mark Christensen, respectively, have analyzed sermons and
Maya religious texts that suggest a wide range of sources with references to
the Old Testament and Apocrypha.31 Stories of Daniel, with broad popular
appeal, would likely have been related in sermons and known to the Span-
ish and Maya audience.
Efforts to reaffirm orthodoxy in Tabí were confirmed first by a Maya
resident finding the statue of the Virgin during the years of documented
Immaculist activities and then the construction of a precious, lavishly deco-
rated room to house her. This suggests, on the one hand, the continuing
need for powerful tools of conversion and on the other that both Spanish
and Maya citizens aligned themselves with the Immaculists, unifying the
Spanish and Maya elite as well as converts into an ideologically connected
pan-­peninsular group that traversed social differences. The vow and rededi-
cation to the Immaculate Conception linked the Maya elite of Tabí to cen-
tral Mexico and to the wider world of Europe. As the primary caretakers of
the statue of the Virgin and adherents to her purity, this part of the Maya
community promoted the message of purity and orthodoxy.

Setting and Iconography of the Camarín and Murals

The function and meaning of the Tabí murals are connected to their loca-
tion within the church complex. The camarín is accessed by covered stairs
via the sacristy on the north side of the apse, suggesting restricted access
to the room and the statue. The chamber measures approximately eight
by four meters and is illuminated by two large windows on the east wall
(see fig. 4).32 At the center of the vault, a sun and crescent moon allude to
passages in Solomon’s Song of Songs (6:10) that describe the Virgin of the
Immaculate Conception as “clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with
banners.” Her beauty is explicitly stated in the phrase “toda pulchra es,”
each word placed individually in a cartouche above the three panels.33 Small
representations of the Inmaculada, a floral aureole, a tower, and baskets of
fruit augment the message of the Virgin’s purity. The bower of stylized floral

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motifs recalls repoussé silverwork as much as decorative marginalia from

prints or illuminated manuscripts, adding to the preciousness of the deco-
rated space. Music-­making angels on the lower walls—­three singing and
three playing horns and a woodwind instrument—­present the image of a
room filled with sound. They may derive from Alfonso de Villegas’s widely
distributed Lives of Saints of 1623, which relates that the Celebration of the
Nativity of Our Lady (8 September) should be accompanied by angels who
made “melody and triumph,” as Mary was the Queen of Angels.34 Music
was fundamental to Maya ceremonial practice from the pre-­Columbian
through the colonial period, so this imagery would have resonated fully
with the Maya who participated in the ritual events involving the statue.
Heavy fictive frames set off the three narrative panels representing
scenes from the story of the Virgin. By placing the large birth panel on the
east wall with two windows, associations of beginnings and birth were
embedded in the structural meaning of the work. Both the natural light and
the symbolic message of dawn would frame the painting, an association
understood by the Maya as imbricated within the renewal of life through
the daily return of the sun. It relates to Christian practice as well, since in
Yucatán the sacrament of baptism took place in the morning.
Illusionistic perspective dramatically separates foreground and back-
ground in the birth scene, accelerating to the diminutively scaled parents in
the background (fig. 5).35 Events at the front of the picture plane clearly take
precedence. Cleanliness, both physical and religious, is emphasized by the
figures and objects across the front: at the center, Saint Michael spears the
dragon of heresy; on the right, a midwife and a large-­scale angel flank an
ornately decorated basin and ewer.36 In Renaissance art, angels sometimes
replaced midwives in saints’ birth scenes,37 as is the case at Tabí where an
angel washes the towel that has cleaned the newborn held by the midwife
at the far right. In keeping with the Immaculist position, this representa-
tion emphasizes the role of nonhuman forces in the cleanliness and purity
of Mary. The physical presence of the Inmaculada statue would recall her
origin in the cenote, underlined by the basin and washing in the mural.
The other protagonists in the foreground of the image are Saint Michael
and the dragon. Michael, the highest archangel, differs from other saints in
his supernatural rather than human origin; like the Roman deity Mercury,
he is a winged, youthful messenger who communicates between the mortal
and celestial worlds. Biblical and apocryphal sources outline Michael’s key
roles in cosmic events: he weighs souls at the final judgment; as the prince of
angels, he defends and guards the Christian flock; he battles and casts Satan
and the rebel angels from heaven.38 Depending on his duty, he holds scales,
a sword, a spear, or an arquebus.

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 725

If European artists working in central Mexico had a limited number

of European painted models to work from in the sixteenth century,39 the
situation in the provincial region of Yucatán was not much different in the
seventeenth. Rather than presenting an obstacle, this may have allowed
artists greater freedom to invent, combine sources, and experiment with
imagery in a way that might not have been used closer to Mexico City. This
is borne out in some early colonial murals in Yucatán—­for example, those
at Izamal.40 Though prints were presumably more abundant and served as
portable models, some paintings were available to artists in larger churches
in Mérida and Valladolid.41 Few records discuss artists in seventeenth-­
century Yucatán, and it is no surprise that we lack sources for Tabí. Because
of the overwhelming need for images and scarcity of trained European art-
ists in New Spain, the majority of painters and sculptors were indigenous
or mestizo,42 almost assuredly the case at Tabí. We do know that schools
for sons of the indigenous elite were established at Maní, Mérida, and Iza-
mal in the middle of the sixteenth century. And more pertinent to this study,
Bernardo Lizana confirms the presence of an artist, Julian de Cuartas (1554–­
1610), at Izamal after 1572, training indigenous artists to paint and carve.43
Most likely the artists working in rural regions in the following century
were natives of the peninsula.
The mural program, therefore, was likely proposed by a priest or friar
but worked out in conjunction with the artist. Rather than a misguided
application of sources by an artist unfamiliar with the usual portrayals of
the birth scene, the imagery of the Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael
suggests the agency and ingenuity of the artist, who combined sources that
not only met the needs of the local circumstances but also alluded to the
power of the Virgin’s appearance from the cenote. Visual references suggest
that Maya who had access to the images understood the complexities of
Christian dogma, but such references also indicate the long-standing con-
nection of the Maya community to the power of this place through imagery
of purity and water.

The Virgin Mary, Saint Michael, and the Dragon:

Eschatological Concerns

Messages of Christian spiritual rebirth and an emphasis on the afterlife

make clear the broader point of this combined imagery of the Virgin and
Michael and why the message was essential in Yucatán at this time. While
this focus on the afterlife was a significant conceptual shift for Maya cate-
chists, it was likely a strong incentive in harsh colonial conditions. Imagery
in the camarín addresses the ultimate point of the evangelical activity:

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Christianity’s promise was not about this world, but the world of the soul
after death. The eschatological message is underlined by placing Michael
in the birth scene where chronological time collapses with the juxtaposi-
tion of the infant Mary and the saint Michael. Conflating the Virgin’s birth
narrative and the prophesy of the end of time with Michael—­as well as the
different readings of the images in nonlinear time—­would have appealed
to the Maya practitioners and been an effective means of reaching the pri-
mary audience.
An examination of the visual contexts in which the two saints appear
separately and together suggests the meaning of the combined imagery at
Tabí. Saint Michael is present at the beginning and end of time and embodies
an impressive array of roles in Christian belief, from judge, prince, and ruler
to warrior, general, guide of the souls of the dead, and intercessor. Repre-
sented as a warrior at Tabí, he protects the infant Mary and intercepts evil.
While all of the orders in New Spain revered Saint Michael, the Francis-
cans held a special place for the archangel. The order led the evangelization
of Yucatán, and it is unsurprising that Michael would emerge as a promi-
nent force in the process. Early followers of Saint Francis (1181/2–­1226)
compared their leader to the archangel as a protector.44 Writings of both
Francis and Saint Clare (1193–­1253) invoke his protection and power: the
final line in a Franciscan exhortation, based on the Liturgy of the Arch-
angel, calls on Saint Michael to “defend us in battle.”45 A number of early
colonial churches in Yucatán were dedicated to the militant saint, includ-
ing San Miguel of Cozumel and San Miguel at Maní, a propensity likely
related to military necessity and the tenuous nature of control in the Yuca-
tán. Michael provided for the early Spanish and Nahua soldiers a saintly
model of a warrior with supernatural powers, known to be a militant anni-
hilator of evil, based in Old and New Testament writings.46
In his role as a benevolent intercessor, Michael was connected not just
with death but also with rebirth in the form of baptism. A baptismal font
in Zinacantepec sports a sculpted medallion with Michael holding a bal-
ance, the font itself a mnemonic shorthand for beginnings (baptism) and
the balance of endings (the weighing of souls). Certainly in this context,
Michael symbolizes less a warning than the triumph over death through
the rebirth in baptism, one of the primary means of initiating conversion
in colonial New Spain. Birth and rebirth through water, emphasized by the
double cenote at Tabí and in the birth panel through the large basin in the
foreground, connect Saint Michael, intercession, and baptism at the site.
Landa relates that all Maya children underwent baptism, called sihil, “to be
born anew or again.”47 This water ritual associates a positive valence with
the cenote through the metaphorical “birth” of the Virgin from this source.

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At death, God’s agent Michael weighs the merit of souls, and both he
and the Virgin Mary intercede for them, a role invoked by Franciscan Saint
Clare in the thirteenth century.48 Just as the Virgin was called the gateway
to heaven, so Michael appeared at this critical juncture of physical death,
directing souls. According to medieval legend, Michael was the angel who
informed the Virgin of the end of her life and carried her soul to heaven.49
Mass for the Dead exhorts him to lead souls “into the holy light.” The pas-
sage from his feast day in Villegas’s Lives of the Saints asks angels to “keep
them [souls] companie, and comfort them with their often visitations: if
they go unto heaven, they go before them, making triumph and joy.”50
The counterbalance of Michael’s scales at the Last Judgment sends
sinners to the inferno. After Michael expelled Satan and his cohort from
heaven, they entered Hell through the maw of a monster.51 The mock battles
fought at medieval European fairs on Saint Michael’s feast day, 29 Septem-
ber, were meant to dramatize the conflagration at the end of time, a practice
continued in religious theater in New Spain and made permanent in imagery
of the Last Judgment—­for example, in murals at Actopan and Ixmiquil-
pan.52 Michael’s presence at Tabí would inevitably raise this specter.
For the Spanish and some Maya catechists, then, Michael played an
essential role in the continuing need to eradicate idolatry in New Spain
throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.53 His ability to discern
pagan practice made him an outstanding patron and model for the religious
in the New World. Landa’s infamous auto-­da-­fé in 1562 took place at the
Church of Saint Michael in Maní, a fitting site for the burning of hundreds
of sacred objects and books, which were, according to Landa, dedicated to
the devil.54 Devotion to Saint Michael was emphasized after the edicts of the
Council of Trent crystallized the goals of the Roman Catholic Church in the
fight against heresy in Europe and in the New World.55 This association
was not new: Michael’s appearance and intervention in Calabria (on the
southern Italian Peninsula) in the fifth century relates not only to conquest
of the Goths but to the eradication of pagan practice. In Sebastián López
de Arteaga’s mid-­seventeenth-­century painting of the apparition of Saint
Michael on Mount Gargano (fig. 6), Michael explains to the bishop that
the residue of pagan rites in the cave could be eradicated if the site was con-
verted into a church.56 In Yucatán, the religious built churches near or over
cenotes in an effort to neutralize the traditional power of these cave-­like
sites. The Maya’s understanding of the power of cenotes and caves, where
gods resided and linked to the otherworld, would likely have enhanced the
meaning of the Virgin and the camarín, suggesting a complex intertwining
of belief within the Maya community.
Saint Michael’s symbolic counterpart of evil and heresy in Counter-­

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Figure 6. Sebastián López de Arteaga, Saint Michael and the Bull, ca. 1650. Den-
ver Art Museum Collection: Gift of Frank Barrous Fryer Collection by exchange
and gift of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 1999.27. Photograph courtesy of the Denver
Art Museum

Reformation art was the dragon or snake.57 The round-­bellied dragon in

the center foreground of the birth scene in the camarín indicates the cen-
trality of this threat and offers a proscriptive message of the triumph of
Christianity. Emblem books explicitly connect snakes and dragons with
heresy and sin, featured in imagery of conversion. In the 1551 Lyon edition
of Andrea Alciati’s Emblemata, snakes, dragons, and other reptilian beings
appear with images of the vices. Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia represents Sin as a
blindfolded dark-­skinned youth holding a serpent that bites his chest. The
seminude ugly old woman who personifies Heresy holds a wiggling group
of snakes that represent that sin’s “abominable doctrines.” The enlightened
figure of Conversion is illuminated by the sun’s rays, hands crossed over
her chest in acceptance, while menaced by a multiheaded winged hydra

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 729

with a curling pointed tail.58 Snakes were clearly powerful symbols, though
this negative conception of snakes in Christian belief countered the Maya
understanding of snakes as powerful, essential conduits to the otherworld.
Snakes lived in caves and cenotes; although the slaying of the beast by Saint
Michael presents a clear Christian symbolic meaning, its significance is
made more complex given this association and the Virgin’s emergence from
the cenote.
Meaning becomes more powerful when imagery of Mary and Saint
Michael converge in Apocalyptic iconography: the appearance of Saint
Michael and the dragon on the wall of the camarín visually connects the
statue of the Immaculate Virgin to the Woman of the Apocalypse. In a small
oil painting by Peter Paul Rubens, a winged Virgin of the Apocalypse, hold-
ing the Christ child, works with Saint Michael in dynamic action to kill a
roiling tangle of snakes (ca. 1623–­24; see fig. 7).59 The Virgin Mary, particu-
larly as the Inmaculada, represented a typological counterpart and purified
version of the Old Testament figure of Eve. She also interceded for souls
at the right hand of Christ and, in the guise of the woman of the Apoca-
lypse, was a harbinger of the end of things as recorded by Saint John in the
Book of Revelation 12:1–­9, where she and her child are protected by an
angel (Michael). This woman at the end of time becomes conflated with
the woman in Genesis at the beginning of time, who represents spiritual
cleanliness. Her ability to overcome the devil (in the Counter-­Reformation,
heresy) is made clear: God says, “I will put enmities between thee [the devil]
and the woman [Mary], and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head,
and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Genesis 3:15). Imagery begins to
include the snake beneath the Virgin’s foot, as in Caravaggio’s Madonna of
the Palafrenieri.60 The associations of the two saints with beginnings, bap-
tism, and finally eschatology come together in the theological imperative
of the imagery at Tabí. Conversion was just the first step and salvation the
goal of Christian activity, a point made visible by the Virgin in infancy and
adulthood accompanied by Michael in the nativity scene.

Conclusions

Images of Saint Michael and the Virgin Mary at Tabí were didactic tools,
mnemonic images in the battle for Christian orthodoxy that emphasized
the ultimate purpose of conversion. Given the critical position of evangeli-
zation in Yucatán as well as the reminder of the power of the cenote in Tabí,
a combination of Saint Michael and Mary’s birth make clear the immanent
concerns of the clergy. The Franciscans’ belief in the possibility of a mil-
lennial paradise in the sixteenth century had given way to the more tem-

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730 Linda K. Williams

Figure 7. Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–­1640). The Virgin as the Woman of
the Apocalypse, oil on panel, ca. 1623–­24, unframed 253/8 × 195/8 in. Framed 30 ×
25 × 17/8 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Digital image courtesy of the
Getty’s Open Content Program

pered pragmatism of seventeenth-­century Church mandates. Michael’s

presence in the birth room acknowledges this circumstance. This exami-
nation of the imagery of the birth scene in the camarín of Tabí suggests
why the priests were unable to use only one valence of Marian exempla
in seventeenth-­century Yucatán. Contemporary religious and political cir-
cumstances underline the challenge of the clergy to maintain orthodoxy in
this rural zone in the seventeenth century. Like the Virgin of Guadalupe,
who appeared in the New World to eradicate traditional religion,61 so the
Virgin of Tabí appeared for a similar reason.62 Rather than simply reflect-
ing an abstract Counter-­Reformation concept, the image of the Birth of the
Virgin with Saint Michael, in conjunction with the miracle-­working statue,

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 731

worked to attract converts and to proscribe behavior. In a sense, the dragon

and Michael complete the statue.
At the same time, the imagery also points to the complex relation-
ship between representation and interpretation; these works likely spoke
to the Spanish and differentiated groups of Yucatec Maya in different ways.
Like other towns on the peninsula, Tabí was made up of varied social strata
within the indigenous population. Maya living closer to towns would have
had greater access to Christian instruction: social level and proximity
would have conditioned responses to new ideas. Therefore, the seemingly
straightforward Catholic view of the message in the camarín would have
been more nuanced for the Maya, whose long-­held views of cenotes and
snakes differed considerably from those of the criollos (creoles, residents of
European descent), even a century after the peninsula had been subdued.
Spanish residents of Tabí first reported the Virgin’s miraculous appearance;
however, the sculpture was discovered by a resident Maya. This dual col-
laboration at her arrival in the town suggests that her role would speak
to both the minority Spanish community and the vastly greater number of
Maya inhabitants, much like the Virgin of Guadalupe’s appearance to Juan
Diego.63 We may assume that her image was initially orchestrated by the
Spanish and itinerant priests, which indicated a need for a symbol of ortho-
doxy in the region.64 At the same time, we need to take into account the
Maya’s flexible understanding of Christianity as well as a stratified audi-
ence. For some, the dragon’s demise most likely did represent the death
of idolatry, though not the extinction of their embedded and continuing
worldviews. Above all, the unusual choice of combined imagery addresses
the propensity of Maya catechists to comply with Christian tenets while
assimilating these new ideas with traditions that had formed their belief
system for two millennia.

Notes

I would like to thank the editors of this journal and the anonymous reviewers for
their perceptive comments and suggestions. Likewise, I am grateful to the South
Sound Medieval Group for commenting on an earlier version of this article. My
special thanks to Cuauhtemoc Fernando Garcés Fierros for his encouragement and
assistance, and to Amara Solari and Kriszta Kotsis for their valuable suggestions
for this article.
1 Father Manuel Martinez took the statue to Sotuta for safekeeping around 1915;
it was later taken to Mérida by Beatriz Arjona and thereafter lost. Judith Han-
cock Sandoval, “The Virgin of Tabí,” Américas 32, no. 4 (1980): 50–­56.
2 The prelate Bachiller Francisco de Cárdenas Valencia (1602/4–­1639) heard
this information from his predecessor, Diego Velázquez de Arceo, the priest in

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732 Linda K. Williams

nearby Sotuta. Francisco de Cárdenas Valencia, Relación Historial Ecclesiastica

de la Provinica de Yucatán de la Nueva España, escrita el año de 1639 (Mexico City,
1937), 100.
3 Emergence of a sacred image from water was not wholly unprecedented. The
image of Santa Maria del Pozzo (of the well) was found by Cardinal Pietro
Capocci in his well in Rome on 26 September 1256 and subsequently enshrined
in the Church of S. Maria in Via. Marice De Jonghe, Roma Santuario Mariano
(Bologna, 1969), 245.
4 Water is supplied to the northern Yucatán Peninsula not by rivers or surface
water but by cenotes, sinkholes in the limestone shelf, which provide access to
the freshwater aquifer below. Tabí’s cenote is located west of the church façade.
Conceptually, cenotes connected the surface to the underworld, which, in oppo-
sition to the Christian concept of Hell, encompassed a place of riches as well
as a place of death. On water, cenotes, and Classic-­period kingship, see Lisa J.
Lucero, Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers (Austin, 2006).
See Doris Heyden, “Rites of Passage and Other Ceremonies in Caves,” in In the
Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, ed. James E. Brady
and Keith M. Prufer (Austin, 2005), 21–­34. Before the statue’s appearance, the
cenote was mentioned by Antonio de Ciudad Real in his account of 1588: “Hay
en aquel pueblo junto a la iglesia otro zonote mayor y de mejor agua que el de
Iaxcaba” (“There is in that village next to the church another cenote, larger
and with better water than that of Yaxcabá”). Antonio de Ciudad Real, Tratado
curioso y docto de las grandezas de la Nueva España: Relación breve y verdadera de
algunas cosas de las muchas que sucedieron al padre fray Alonso Ponce en las provin-
cias de la Nueva España, vol. 2 (1588–­89; Mexico, 1976), 330. Ciudad Real does
not point out that Tabí’s cenote has the unusual characteristic of two openings,
which accounts for the town’s original Maya name, tchut’zonot—­cenote of two
mouths—­though it is possible that only one was open in the sixteenth century.
Michel Boccara, “Mythe et pratique sociale: Le cheval qui sauta le cenote,” Jour-
nal de la Société des Américanistes 69 (1983): 29–­43.
5 Accounts of the church, as with most colonial art and architecture of Yucatán,
are few, and while information on the church and murals of Tabí has been pub-
lished, neither has been extensively investigated. See Justino Fernandez, ed.,
Catalogo de construcciones religiosas del estado de Yucatan, vol. 2 (Mexico City,
1945), 555–­58; Hancock de Sandoval, “The Virgin of Tabí”; Miguel Bretos,
Arquitectura y arte sacro en Yucatán (Mérida, Mexico, 1987), 154–­62; Miguel
Bretos, Iglesias de Yucatán (Mérida, Mexico, 1992), 111–­17; Richard Perry and
Rosalind Perry, Maya Missions: Exploring Colonial Yucatan (Santa Barbara, CA,
2002), 192–­94; and Samuel Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Archi-
tecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque, NM, 2001), 91–­92.
For an overview of the early churches in Yucatán, see Ana Raquel Vanoye Carlo,
“Sobre la historia de la arquitectura de los conventos del norte de la península
de Yucatán: Desde la llegada de los Franciscanos a Campeche en 1544 hasta la
construcción del convento de Santa Clara de Asís en 1567,” Fronteras de la His-
toria 18, no. 2 (2013): 213–­46.
6 Cuauhtemoc Fernando Garcés Fierros of Instituto Nacional de Anthropología
e Historia in Mérida led the restoration of the church and retablos; he dates the
murals to the end of the seventeenth century. Fernando Garcés, “Proyecto para

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 733

la restauración de la iglesia y convento de Tabí, Yucatán,” 28 June 2000. Res-

toration report provided by Fernando Garcés.
7 The abraded image on the north wall likely represents the Meeting of Anna
and Joachim at the Golden Gate rather than the Visitation. The subject initiates
the conception/birth/youth sequence, and the mural shows a city and city gate
where the older couple was made aware that Anna would bear a child. For the
textual sources, see the second-­century Protevangelium of James, in J. K. Elliott,
ed., The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Litera-
ture in an English Translation based on M. R. James (Oxford, 1993), 48–­67; and
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, vol. 2, trans.
William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 150–­52.
8 Both Sotuta and Tabí originally housed Franciscan churches. The convent in
Sotuta was secularized in 1581, by which point Tabí’s church had been described
as well established in the relación of 1579. While the law of 1583 decreed stone
construction for all churches in New Spain, by 1588, only six of the dozens of
churches in Yucatán met this criterion. Anthony Andrews, “The Rural Chapels
and Churches of Early Colonial Yucatán and Belize: An Archaeological Per-
spective,” in Columbian Consequences: The Spanish Borderlands in Pan-­American
Perspective, vol. 3, ed. David Hurst Thomas (Washington, DC, 1991), 355–­74.
In 1588, Ciudad Real observed that all visita churches utilized pole and thatch
ramadas that extended from the stone apse. See Ralph L. Roys, Conquest Sites
and the Subsequent Destruction of Maya Architecture in the Interior of Northern
Yucatan (Washington, DC, 1952), 170. In 1581, Pedro Garcia described the reli-
gious infrastructure of his encomienda: “The mentioned towns have churches
and bells and areas to celebrate, especially that of Tabí” (Los dichos pueblos
tienen yglesias y campanas y recaudos para celebrar, especial el de tabi). Colle-
ción de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista, y organización
de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, tomo 11, Relaciones de Yucatán
(Madrid, 1898), 147. Garca uses the word yglesia to describe the structures, as
does Ciudad Real in 1588. Andrews (“Rural Chapels and Churches,” 366) notes
that this was a term used to describe rural churches and chapels; the probability
of a fully enclosed stone church at Tabí at this point is slim. Since construction
proceeded from the eastern apse toward the façade (inscribed with the comple-
tion date in 1700), the camarín can be dated to the second half of the seventeenth
century.
9 Immaculists held that God created Mary pure and without original sin from
the point of conception, while the Maculists believed that she was created with
original sin, but cleansed by God in Saint Anne’s womb. Her purity at birth
was not debated; the sticking point was the presence or absence of sin at con-
ception. The Dominicans, following Saint Thomas Aquinas, disagreed with the
(primarily Franciscan) Immaculists.
10 “Una primorosa iglesia de bóveda donde se venera una imagen milagrosa.” Fray
Ignacio de Padilla y Estrada, quoted in Bretos, Iglesias, 113.
11 The largest convents maintained only one to three friars in residence. Around
1600, Bishop Fray Juan Izquierdo reported to the Viceroy that Sotuta housed
two clerics, so it is likely that the nearby visitá of Tabí was largely staffed by
Maya converts. France V. Scholes et al., Documentos para la historia de Yucatán,
tomo 2: La iglesia en Yucatán, 1560–­1610 (Mérida, Mexico, 1938), 134.

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734 Linda K. Williams

12 While scholars have contested the veracity of these repeated testimonies and
confessions as too neatly conforming and likely planted and coerced from the
tortured speakers, the reports nevertheless created a record of unorthodox
behaviors associated with the town of Tabí and the cenote in particular. See
Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–­
1570 (Cambridge, 1987), 182; and Matthew Restall, Maya Conquistador (Bos-
ton, 1998), 15.
13 See John F. Chuchiak IV, “Pre-­Conquest Ah Kinob in a Colonial World: The
Extirpation of Idolatry and the Survival of the Maya Priesthood in Colonial
Yucatán, 1563–­1697,” in Maya Survivalism (2001): 135–­57; Clendinnen, Ambiva-
lent Conquests, 88–­92; Nancy M. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The
Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton, NJ, 1984), 290–­92; and Victoria
Reifler Bricker, The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substrate of
Maya Myth and Ritual (Austin, TX, 1981), 20.
14 France V. Scholes and Eleanor B. Adams, Don Diego Quijada Alcalde Mayor de
Yucatan 1561–­1565, 2 vols. (Mexico City, 1936), 1:117–­18.
15 John F. Chuchiak IV, “In Servitio Dei: Fray Diego de Landa, the Franciscan
Order, and the Return of the Extirpation of Idolatry in the Colonial Diocese of
Yucatán, 1573–­1579,” The Americas 61, no. 4 (2005): 611–­46.
16 Chuchiak, “Pre-­Conquest Ah Kinob,” 136. Traditional practice did not fade.
After conducting fieldwork in the interior village of Chan Kom in the 1930s,
anthropologist Robert Redfield concluded that Maya civilization and traditions
continued strongly in language, behavior, and belief. At a point in time much
closer to the European invasion than the 1930s, continuity marked the belief and
visual manifestations of culture in Tabí. Robert Redfield, “The Second Epilogue
to Maya History,” Carnegie Institution of Washington Supplementary Publica-
tions no. 26 (Washington, DC, 1936), 11. Redfield continues: “In the peasant
village, there are two cults, one carried on by the shaman-­priest and directed to
the pagan gods, and the other by a reciter of Catholic prayer and addressed to
the saints. The two cults are parallel, complementary, and non-­competing” (19).
In the 1960s, Father Robert Lee recounted that his Christian burials were com-
plemented by indigenous rituals outside the church at Tabí. Sandoval, “Virgin
of Tabí,” 30.
17 Chuchiak, “Pre-­Conquest Ah Kinob.”
18 Scholes and Roys found evidence of a traditional connection between cruci-
fixion, rain gods, and cenote cults. France V. Scholes and Ralph L. Roys, Fray
Diego de Landa and the Problem of Idolatry in Yucatan (Washington, DC, 1938):
617. Perhaps the reenactment of crucifixions suggests why the Virgin Mary
rather than the crucified Christ served as the primary focus of devotion in early
colonial Yucatán.
19 Amara Solari has explored this strategy of “transfiguration” of natural spaces
employed by Franciscans in early colonial Yucatán, particularly at the nearby
convent of Izamal. See Amara Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred: The Trans-
figuration of Space in Colonial Yucatan (Austin, TX, 2013).
20 See Chuchiak, “Pre-­Conquest Ah Kinob.”
21 See Rosemary Mulcahy, “Images of Power and Salvation,” in El Greco to Veláz-
quez: Art during the Reign of Philip III, ed. Sarah Schroth and Ronni Baer (Bos-
ton, 2008), 122–­45.
22 Marcus Burke, “The Parallel Course of Latin American and European Art,” in

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 735

The Arts in Latin America 1492–­1820, ed. Joseph J. Rishel and Suzanne Stratton-­
Pruitt (New Haven, CT, 2006), 71–­85; Suzanne L. Stratton, “The Immaculate
Conception in Spanish Renaissance and Baroque Art,” PhD diss., New York
University, 1983, 111–­12.
23 Clara Bargellini, “Sebastián López de Arteaga’s Apparition of Saint Michael on
Mount Gargano, 1648–­52,” in Rishel and Stratton-­Pruitt, Arts in Latin America,
361.
24 Luisa Elena Alcalá, “Imagen e historia: La representación del milagro en la pin-
tura colonial,” in Los siglos de oro en los virreinatos de América 1550–­1700 (Madrid,
1999), 107–­25. Amy G. Remensnyder makes clear the Spanish reconquista ori-
gins of the Virgin’s association with military success. See Amy G. Remensnyder,
“The Colonization of Sacred Architecture: The Virgin Mary, Mosques, and
Temples in Medieval Spain and Early Sixteenth-­Century Mexico,” in Monks
and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, ed. Sharon Farmer and Barbara H. Rosenwien
(Ithaca, NY, 2000), 189–­219. The tradition continued, as Crescencio Carrillo y
Ancona described a statue of the Virgin carved in Mérida in 1875 as conquista-
dora. Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona, La civilización Yucateca: El culto de la Virgen
Maria en Yucatán (1878; Mérida, Mexico, 1949), 88.
25 With the Spanish monarchy’s support, the Virgin Immaculate became an agent
in the Counter-­Reformation battle against heresy with increasing visibility in
New Spain. Pope Paul V’s decree in 1617 banned public opposition to the dogma
of the Inmaculada, which was finally confirmed as doctrine in 1854. See Sarah
Schroth and Ronni Baer, “The Immaculate Conception,” in El Greco to Veláz-
quez, 260.
26 Carrillo y Ancona, Civilización Yucateca, 41–­42.
27 “Por quel mismo tiempo los monasterios de Franciscanos establecidos en casi
todas las ciudades y pueblos de nuestra Península, hicieron por su parte el
mismo voto solemne y público de la Inmaculada Concepcion.” Ibid., 46.
28 “Un carro de vistosa fábrica y arquitectura, en cuyo remate estaba un imágen
pequeña de aspecto muy hermoso que representaba á la Reina de los Angeles,
y á sus piés un dragon espantoso que entrando en la plaza despidió por la boca
muchas bombas de fuego, y de lo restante otras invenciones, sin que dañaran á
persona alguna de las que iban en el carro . . . y acabado el discuros, hubo una
música de varios instrumentos y buenas voces.” Ibid., 45.
29 The words serpent and dragon are used interchangeably. Edgar J. Goodspeed,
The Apocrypha, an American Translation (New York, 1959), 367.
30 See David D. Gilmore, “Tarasca: Ritual Monster of Spain,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 152, no. 3 (2008): 362–­82.
31 See Gretchen Whalen, An Annotated Translation of a Colonial Yucatec Manuscript:
On Religious and Cosmological Topics by a Native Author (2003); and Mark Z.
Christensen, Nahua and Maya Catholicisms: Texts and Religion in Colonial Cen-
tral Mexico and Yucatan (Palo Alto, CA, 2013). See also William F. Hanks, Con-
verting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross (Berkeley, CA, 2010), on the structure
of discourse and Maya translations.
32 Camarines are connected with Marian cult statues. The camarín at nearby Iza-
mal was built in 1648–­56 after the statue of the Virgin halted a plague. It followed
the nearly contemporaneous structure in Valencia, Spain, built in response to the
plague of 1647. See George Kubler, “Camarines in the Golden Age,” in Studies
in Ancient American and European Art: The Collected Essays of George Kubler,

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736 Linda K. Williams

ed. Thomas F. Reese (New Haven, CT, 1985), 136–­39. On Izamal’s camarín, see
Bretos, Arquitectura, 126. The large number of camarines in Yucatán created a
network of Marian shrines useful in conversion. They may also have marked the
political and religious divisions that characterized sixteenth- and seventeenth-­
century Yucatán. Religious competition existed on several fronts, between
regular and secular orders and Franciscans and Dominicans. Landa’s succes-
sor, Bishop Fray Gregorio de Montalvo (ca. 1533–­92) of the Dominican order,
secularized numerous convents and visitas (a church without a resident priest or
friar). Contentious fighting between patrilineal groups continued, making for a
fractured political landscape. Matthew Restall has found that Maya communi-
ties considered themselves discrete political entities based on membership in a
cah, or lineage group. See Matthew Restall, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture
and Society 1550–­1850 (Palo Alto, CA, 1997), 13–­40.
33 Stratton, “Immaculate Conception,” 98–­100. These phrases, from Solomon’s
Song of Songs, 4:7: “Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te” (Thou
art all beautiful, my love, and there is no spot in thee), were read for the Feast of
the Immaculate Conception.
34 Pope Innocent IV decreed the celebration in 1243. Vincent of Beauvais recorded
in his Speculum majus (l.7, c. 119) that on 8 September, a religious man heard:
“The angels [to] make melody and triumph; and demanding of one of them,
what was the cause of such joy in heaven, he was answered; that on that day, was
celebrated the Nativity of the mother of God.” See Alfonso de Villegas, Lives of
the Saints, vol. 2 (1623; London, 1977), 16–­17.
35 Flemish prints likely provided the source for the setting of the scene. See
Martin S. Soria, “Some Flemish Sources of Baroque Painting in Spain,” Art
Bulletin 30 (1948): 249–­59. Bretos (Arquitectura, 158) connects the murals to
prints in general on the basis of the limited color palette. If the composition
and style appear sixteenth century in origin, clothing of the attendants indi-
cate seventeenth-­century models. In Bartolomé Murillo’s Death of Saint Clare
(Seville, ca. 1646), two of the elegant Virgin martyrs wear garments similar in
style to those at Tabí. Chiffon-­like fabric attached with a brooch wraps the bod-
ice of one figure. In Tabí, that section is omitted (or is missing), presenting more
décolletage than one might think appropriate in a holy scene.
36 The assistant on the far left carries the traditional birth tray for the mother, hold-
ing sweets and drinks to celebrate the successful birth.
37 M. Jennifer Wilkin, “Midwives at the Nativity: Origins and Survival of Ital-
ian Renaissance Birth Iconography,” Master’s thesis, University of Washington,
2002, 226. For imagery based on the visions of Saint Bridget, ibid., 85–­93.
38 New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 9 (Detroit, MI, 2003), 595. See Daniel
10: 13, 21; and Revelation 12: 7–­9.
39 Burke, “Parallel Course,” 74.
40 On Izamal murals, see Solari, Maya Ideologies, 135–­38; and Linda K. Wil-
liams, “Modalities of Representation: Symbol and Contemporary Narrative in
Sixteenth-­Century Murals at the Convent of Izamal, Yucatán,” Colonial Latin
American Review 22, no. 1 (2013): 98–­125.
41 My search for an exact visual source for the panel at Tabí that combines the
two components has thus far been unsuccessful. The corpus of prints in Wal-
ter L. Strauss and Adam von Bartsch, The Illustrated Bartsch (New York, 1978)

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The Birth of the Virgin with Saint Michael Mural at Tabí 737

revealed no matches; Wierix family engravings of Saint Michael or birth scenes

differed from Tabí in style and subject. See Marie Mauquoy-­Hendrickx, Les
estampes des Wierix conservees au cabinet des estampes de la Bibliotheque Royale
Albert 1er, vol. 2 (Brussels, 1979), images 1260–­66. For engravings of the life of
the Virgin, see images 610–­88.
42 See Jorge Alberto Manriq, “La estampa como fuente del arte en Neuva España,”
Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 50, no. 1 (1982): 55–­60.
43 Bernardo Lizana, cited in Carrillo y Ancona, Civilización Yucateca, 38. De Cuar-
tas came to Yucatán with Diego de Landa on his return from Spain in 1572.
44 Joaquín Montes Bardo, Arte y espiritualidad Franciscana en la Nueva España,
siglo XVI: Iconología en la Provincia del Santo Evangelio (Jaén, Spain, 1998), 155.
45 Regis J. Armstrong and Ignatius Brady, eds., Francis and Clare: The Complete
Works (New York, 1982), 43.
46 Jude 1:9 describes him arguing with the devil.
47 Alfred M. Tozzer, Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatan: A Translation (Cam-
bridge, MA, 1941), 102.
48 Armstrong and Brady, Francis and Clare, 233. Saint Michael was the only angel
with his own liturgy prior to the ninth century.
49 Anna Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 5th ed., vol. 1 (London, 1866), 116.
50 Villegas, Lives, 143.
51 See, for instance, an image from Winchester, England, 1220s, Cotton MS
Nero C, IV, fol. 39r. Alixe Bovey, Monsters and Grotesques in Medieval Manu-
scripts (Toronto, 2002).
52 Jaime Lara, City Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theat-
rics in New Spain (Notre Dame, 2004), 89.
53 Bernardino de Sahagún (ca. 1499–­1590) celebrated Saint Michael’s Feast Day as
a triumph over sin, correlating it with preconquest celebration of Tezcatlipoca,
the Aztec patron of warriors and princes associated with Satan. See Montes
Bardo, Arte y espiritualidad, 140.
54 The Inquisition resulted in 4,549 Maya tortured; 170 died (13 by suicide) and 8
disappeared. Scholes and Adams, Diego Quijada 2:209–­21.
55 Elisa Vargaslugo, “Juan Correa’s Saint Michael Archangel,” in Arts in Latin
America, 368. Speared snakes also appear in Counter-­Reformation imagery
of Divine Justice. See Larry L. Ligo, “Two Seventeenth-­Century Poems which
Link Rubens’ Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV to Titian’s Equestrian Portrait of
Charles V,” Gazette des Beaux-­Arts 75 (1970): 345–­54.
56 Glenway Wescott, Calendar of Saints for Unbelievers (New Haven, CT, 1932),
166.
57 In medieval bestiaries, dragons were frequently depicted and described as a type
of serpent. See Pamela Gravestock, “Did Imaginary Animals Exist?,” in The
Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, ed. Debra
Hassig (New York, 1999), 119–­39.
58 See Andreus Alciatus, Index Emlematicus, vols. 1 and 2 ed. Peter M. Daley, with
Virginia W. Callahan (Toronto, 1985) for reproductions of emblems from mul-
tiple editions; for later images of Ripa’s Iconologia based on earlier editions, see
Cesare Ripas, Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery: The 1758–­60 Hertel Edi-
tion of Ripa’s “Iconologia” with 200 Engraved Illustrations, Edward A. Maser,
ed. (New York, 1971). Ripa’s Iconologia was first published in 1593 with verbal

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 Ethnohistory

738 Linda K. Williams

descriptions of abstract qualities. Within a decade, images appeared with the

text, which was amplified and enhanced with more images through the seven-
teenth century.
59 This work, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, served as a model for an altarpiece
in the Freising Cathedral in Germany. Getty Museum 85.PB.146.
60 See Marcello Beltramme, “La Pala dei Palafrenieri: Precisazioni storiche e ipo-
tesi inconografiche su uno degli ultimi ‘rifuti’ romani di Caravaggio,” Studi
Romani 99, no. 1–­2 (2001): 72–­100. Though the Apocalyptic mother and child
were interpreted as the Virgin and Christ, not Anne and the Virgin, the concep-
tual leap is not great to connect the latter with meaning in the unusual birth
panel. As a guardian of the Church (and Mary, seen as the body of the Church),
the Archangel Michael protects her from the moment of her birth. I would like
to thank Florence Sandler for pointing out this connection.
61 Jeanette Favrot Peterson, “The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or
Liberation?,” Art Journal 51, no. 4 (1992): 39–­47.
62 That is not to say that the Christian saints maintained strictly orthodox inter-
pretations. Numerous accounts from the seventeenth to the late twentieth cen-
turies tell of visions of the Virgin and snakes in the cenote of Tabí and others.
See Cárdenas Valencia, Relación Historial, 101; Juan Adolfo Vázquez, “The Vir-
gin of the Cenote: A Yucatec Maya Story,” Latin American Indian Literatures 6,
no. 1 (1982): 15–­21; and Roberto López Méndez, Leyendas de vírgenes y santos
de Yucatán (Mérida, Mexico), n.d.
63 See Jeanette Favrot Peterson, Visualizing Guadalupe: From Black Madonna to
Queen of the Americas (Austin, TX, 2014).
64 Luisa Elena Alcalá has argued that in New Spain, miraculous apparitions of a
saint or the Virgin always related to conversion. See Alcalá, “Imagen e historia,”
108.

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