7.

Living with the Virgin in the Colonial Andes

Images and Personal Devotion

Gabriela Ramos

Abstract
Although deeply preoccupied with idolatry, Spanish missionaries saw religious images
as effective tools of conversion in the Andes. This paper studies the dissemination of
the cult of the Virgin Mary in the colonial Andes during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The discussion focuses on a Marian devotion, Our Lady of Copacabana, and
explores its place in the shaping of Andean Catholicism. Studies of this devotion have
centred on contemporary accounts of its origins and propagation, and on the artistic
and technical characteristics of images meant for public worship. Through the study
of personal inventories and dowries found in notary records, this paper focuses on
images for personal devotion. I argue that the cult of the Virgin of Copacabana was at
once profoundly Andean and cosmopolitan.

Keywords: conversion; race relations; body; silver; Peru; Andes;

The story of the first encounter between Europeans and Andeans, which ended with
the capture of the Inca emperor, Atahualpa in 1532 provides us with a wealth of mate-
rial with which to think about the interaction between people, objects and religion.
At their first meeting, a Spanish friar presented Atahualpa with a religious book, an
object that did not capture the Inca’s attention. For Atahualpa the book had no sig-
nificance, since the Inca civilization had no alphabetic writing and therefore had no
familiarity with this type of object. Associating sacredness with text was an opera-
tion entirely alien to the Andeans. Atahualpa, several accounts of this first meeting
assert, was handed the book and, after a brief inspection, seemed to conclude that it
was an inert and speechless and therefore meaningless, object, so he dismissed it and
threw it on the ground. The Spanish, who knew as much about the Inca as the Inca
knew about them, took offence at Atahualpa’s failure to perceive the inherent value
of the book, and responded with a brutal, unexpected attack against Atahualpa and
his retinue. As a result, dozens of soldiers were slain, and Inca Atahualpa was made
captive. Some months later, having paid the Spanish a huge ransom and after accept-
ing baptism, the Inca was garrotted.

Ivanič, S, M. Laven and A. Morrall (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam Univer-
sity Press, 2019
doi: 10.5117/9789462984653/ch07
138 RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Historians have been tempted to interpret Atahualpa’s attitude toward the sacred
book and its disastrous consequences as a signal anticipating the great difficulties the
Spanish faced in spreading Christianity throughout the Andes.1 Observing Andean
religious practices and responses to Christian indoctrination, both Spanish mission-
aries and colonial officers offered disparaging comments about the Andeans’ inclina-
tion for all things tactile and material, and about their incapacity to understand the
idea of a real and unique, though invisible and ubiquitous God. These perceptions,
compounded with the understanding that indigenous Andeans were deserving of a
diminished social status due to their late incorporation into the Christian fold, led
to the impression that the indigenous religious experience was uniquely leaning
toward a fascination with the material and with ritual, and ceremony, rather than
with the spiritual and the invisible, the search for virtue, and the practice of prayer
and self-examination.
Doctrinal calls to emphasize understanding instead of emotion, and to see reli-
gious images only as representations of the sacred instead of actual objects of wor-
ship notwithstanding, early modern Catholicism was committed – in the context of
its confrontation with Protestantism – to the promotion of the cult of the saints and
the Virgin Mary. This commitment implied the use of devotional images, which were
profusely produced and distributed everywhere Catholic missionaries went. Spanish
America in general and the colonial Andes in particular were of course no excep-
tion. In the following decades and centuries debates over how indigenous Andeans
related to the materialization of the sacred proliferated. These debates took different
directions and reached varying degrees of depth and impact: from accusations of
idolatry and the implementation of a series of actions aiming at the suppression
of indigenous religious practices, to significant spending in the building of church-
es, dynamic exchanges with European artists, either through their presence in the
Andes or through the dissemination and acquisition of their works, the establishing
of workshops and the training of indigenous artists in the production of images and
objects of Christian devotion that at their turn were promptly, enthusiastically, and
widely accepted and adapted to Andean religious life.
This essay approaches the theme of the materialization of the sacred in the colonial
Andes by focusing on Our Lady of Copacabana, a Marian devotion closely associat-
ed with indigenous Andeans’ conversion to Christianity. The temporal frame covers
the inception of the cult in the sixteenth century, up to the late seventeenth century,
when it was firmly established across the Andean region. Through the examination of
references to images of this devotion found in personal inventories and related docu-
ments in notary records, I will examine the varied forms in which it was represented
and discuss their possible meaning. This endeavour involves scrutinizing not only the
form, but also the materials such representations were made of. By interrogating the

1 MacCormack, ‘Atahualpa and the Book’; Seed, ‘Failing to Marvel’.

LIVING WITH THE VIRGIN IN THE COLONIAL ANDES 139

materiality of the image, I intend to understand whether a given type of image or devo-
tional object was linked to a form of experiencing, or the expectation of experiencing,
the sacred. To achieve a certain degree of understanding of the significance of these
material representations of the religious devotion, the examination of images would
not be enough. This is why I also explore the related phenomenon of ownership: what
did it mean for an individual or, occasionally, a group, to own a religious image? What
was involved in having among one’s belongings a particular type of representation or
a devotional object that evoked the image? These questions account for the emphasis
this study places on personal inventories. Wherever possible, I also use sources and
bits of information that tell us about how owners of images and devotional objects
acquired them, how they made agreements with others or held disputes with others
over their use and ownership. Therefore, I intend to understand how men and women
lived with the representations of Our Lady of Copacabana and, by their contact with
those representations, how they might have experienced the sacred in their lives. The
varied instances in which men and women lived with the material representations of
the religious – and vice versa – lead us to consider the relations between various kinds
of people and various kinds of representations of Our Lady of Copacabana, and allow
us to challenge the widely accepted view that Copacabana was an indigenous cult. I
suggest that the devotion to the Virgin of Copacabana was in fact both Andean and cos-
mopolitan: it appealed to a wide range of groups and individuals that were convinced
of its efficacy, power and prestige, and it was also a symbol of Spanish imperial success.
This twofold achievement was possible through the production and circulation of a
range of material representations of the devotion.
Although it is likely that the devotion to Our Lady of Copacabana was introduced
in the Andes through missionary initiative, stories surrounding its origins say little
about Spanish missionary agency, thus helping to support the view that the cult
emerged spontaneously among recent indigenous converts. This perspective appears
to run parallel to two interrelated ideas that gained acceptance among two signifi-
cant sectors of colonial society, mestizos and creoles. The first was the proposition
that before the arrival of the Spanish the gospel had been preached in the New World
by either the apostle Saint Thomas or Saint Bartholomew.2 Apparent vestiges of this
ancient presence existed in the southern Andes, in the form of a temple and what
was believed were his footprints and a cross – known as the Cross of Carabuco for the
place it was found – that with time became an object of veneration. The second was
the assertion that there had been at least in Inca religion some predisposition toward
Christianity among Andeans. Garcilaso de la Vega, the first mestizo writer to write a
history of the Inca in the late sixteenth century, was its most eloquent proponent.3

2 Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, I, bk. 5, ch. 22, 271–73; Gisbert, Iconografía.
3 Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, I, bk. 2, ch. 2, 66–70, wherein the author argues that the Inca
searched for the true god. In chapter 3, Garcilaso further argues that the Inca venerated a cross in pre-
Columbian times.
140 RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

These religious interpretations of the past must be seen within the broader con-
text of the debates over the capacity of the indigenous peoples of the New World to
convert to Christianity and the shaping and circulation of theories that posited the
inferior status of all those who had been born in the Indies. Ideas that some schol-
ars have described as creole ‘patriotism’ – aimed at contesting Spanish prejudices
– were behind accounts that assured their readers that Christianity had been ‘in
the air’ before the arrival of the Europeans and that those who had the Americas as
their motherland were not barbaric.4 These views seem to have found fertile ground
among Spanish American creoles and also carried contradictions and limitations, all
of which were manifested at the religious level.
As with many accounts of medieval and early modern Catholic devotions, the sto-
ry of Our Lady of Copacabana started with an image. However, in this case, it was
not an apparition later materialized in an image,5 nor was it a sculpture that had
been waiting to be found by a devotee,6 but a representation of the Virgin of Can-
dlemas that an Andean man of Inca descent, Francisco Titu Yupanqui, had carved
with the purpose of gracing the altar of a religious confraternity dedicated to its cult.
Since Yupanqui was not familiar with European art and was unaware of the canons
of religious image making, the Spanish judged his work defective. Thus Yupanqui was
subject to mockery, something that caused him great suffering. However, the Virgin
took pity on him, and performed her first miracle on herself by making the image
beautiful. This display of efficacy was interpreted as a powerful sign of the Virgin’s
willingness to embrace the Indians as her children.
The story, narrated by Augustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán, a creole, tells in
detail the difficulties the indigenous Andean would-be artist went through to learn
the craft of sculptor and endure the distrust of all those who thought he was not
capable enough to be a good Christian or artist.7
After the miracle was performed, Yupanqui triumphantly took the image from La
Paz to its temple at Copacabana. The journey itself – which counts as one of the first
Christian pilgrimages in the history of the Andes – was an occasion to spread the
story of the devotion and summon wide support for it among a recently or scarcely
converted population.8
The site of Copacabana had held deep sacred significance since pre-Columbian
times. The place where a sanctuary was erected, and where the miraculous image can
be seen today, was built on top of an Inca shrine situated on the shores of Lake Titi-
caca. Since the sixteenth century, the shrine has itself become a place of pilgrimage,

4 Cañizares Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation; Brading, First America.

5 As was the case of the Mexican Guadalupe. Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe; Brading, Mexican Phoenix.
6 Christian, Apparitions.
7 Ramos Gavilán, Historia, 210–40.
8 On pilgrimage in the southern Andes and the merging of religious traditions, see Sallnow, Pilgrims of the
Andes.
LIVING WITH THE VIRGIN IN THE COLONIAL ANDES 141

a ritual activity influential throughout an area of great cultural and economic signif-
icance. Situated at a busy crossroads, the sanctuary was on the route that connected
Lima, Cuzco, Potosí, Tucumán and Buenos Aires. The site was also linked to a presti-
gious Inca lineage whose members remained influential after the Spanish conquest.
Promoted by friars of the order of Saint Augustine, the cult of Our Lady of Copaca-
bana extended rapidly throughout the southern Andes and beyond. In the late six-
teenth century, a miraculous manifestation in Lima – the capital of the viceroyalty of
Peru – led to the establishment of an Indians-only religious confraternity dedicated
to its cult, to the construction of a sanctuary sponsored by the Archbishop and, a few
decades later, to the founding of a convent exclusively for Indian noble women. This
reputed ethnic exclusiveness contributed to the shaping of a ‘community’ or ‘nation’
of Indians, a typical colonial phenomenon.9
Copacabana became a symbol of conversion and its significance was described in
at least two ways: as the triumph of Christianity over idolatry, and as the true force
behind Spanish imperial success. Images of Copacabana of various sizes, makes, and
value reached Europe, especially Spain and Italy, in the seventeenth century, and
were displayed in altars in convents and monasteries and as objects of devotion in
private homes (Plate 7.1). Writers of fame and prestige like don Pedro Calderón de la
Barca, a leading figure of the Spanish Golden Age, and other enthusiastic, less well
known clergymen, wrote plays and histories of the image for European audiences,
while pious poetic works dedicated to this Marian devotion were composed in South
America (Fig. 7.1).
As several studies of the history of Catholicism and popular religion attest, the Vir-
gin Mary is a compelling figure with the power to engage with varied understandings
of the sacred and the human condition, and to elicit a range of loyalties and emo-
tions among diverse groups and people.10 It is thus not surprising that the figure of
the Virgin Mary was introduced quite early in the Andes and found a positive recep-
tion among indigenous Andeans. Evocations of Mother Earth and more routinely
and personally, a maternal figure, made the Virgin a character easy to identify with
and to rely on.11

9 In the late fifteenth century, assuming he had arrived in India, Christopher Columbus dubbed the people
he found in his voyages ‘Indians’. The term ‘Indian’ was used consequently by the Spaniards and actually
everyone else to refer to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, thus conflating a wide range of peoples
into one ‘type’. The emergence of ‘Indians’ as a sociocultural type was an effect of European conquest and
colonialism.
10 Rubin, Mother of God.
11 MacCormack, ‘From the Sun’; Salles-Reese, From Viracocha; Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition. For a
different approach to the history and significance of the devotion of Copacabana, MacCormack, ‘Urban and
Divine Love’. MacCormack argues against the concept of hybridity and maintains that the cult of Copacabana
was essentially indigenous. Although I do not use the concept of hybridity in the present work, I highlight the
role of the devotion as a ‘cultural mediator’. Our viewpoints and more importantly, our sources are different.
The research presented here as well as a previous piece published a few years ago are mainly supported by
archival work. Ramos, ‘Nuestra Señora de Copacabana’.
142 RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Fig 7.1. Frontispiece. From Fernando de Valverde, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana del Perú: poema
sacro (Lima: Luis de Lyra, 1641) © Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library
LIVING WITH THE VIRGIN IN THE COLONIAL ANDES 143

Seen from the Andes, the Virgin of Copacabana has often been interpreted as an
indigenous devotion: an image made by an Indian, with its main sanctuary built on
top of the ruins of a pre-Columbian shrine, a cult sponsored by a branch of the Inca
nobility, and a confraternity set up exclusively for Indians in the capital of the Peru-
vian viceroyalty.
Against this background dominated by an ideological atmosphere that could be
described as an ‘official discourse’ tinged with racial stereotyping, I have searched
for the material traces left by the Virgin of Copacabana in Andean colonial society. I
aimed to learn how Peruvians lived with the Virgin under Spanish colonial rule.
I have retrieved Copacabana’s presence in a range of documents found in nota-
ry records such as wills, dowries, personal inventories, receipts and contracts. I also
found other evidence about this devotion in the records of a dispute between the
leaders of the Indian confraternity of Our Lady of Copacabana in Lima and their
chaplain. The subject of the dispute was the administration of the Virgin’s material
patrimony. Confraternity leaders accused their chaplain, a clergyman named Diego
Fernández Dávila, of mismanaging confraternity property and funds. Besides pocket-
ing the alms collected for the cult, confraternity leaders said, Fernández Dávila often
leased the Virgin’s mantles and jewels to different people, and used the ornaments
from the Virgin’s chapel to decorate his own home.
In his reply to the confraternity leaders’ accusations, Fernández Dávila put their
credibility into question by calling them ‘drunkards’, ‘wretched dogs’, and describ-
ing them as ‘his enemies’. For Fernández Dávila, the members of the confraternity
board were ‘useless and unsuitable to look after the adornment of the chapel’ as their
faith was weak and their bad behaviour beyond repair. In other words, the miracu-
lous devotion had failed to perform the wonder of true conversion over this group
of faithful.12 These ideas, which unfortunately were quite common in colonial Peru,
were far from the enthusiasm Copacabana elicited in Spain. Given the close ties
between indigenous Andeans and the devotion, one wonders about the extent to
which opinions like those voiced by Fernández Dávila had an effect on the ‘public
image’ of the devotion.
The documentary evidence dating from the seventeenth century about devotion-
al objects in private spaces offers a view that differs from the clear-cut ethnic and
social cleavages many think characterized Andean colonial society. Archival sources
suggest that men and women of varied social conditions and ethnic backgrounds
appear to have been unified by their trust in the Virgin. We also learn that the rep-
resentations of the Virgin of Copacabana were multiple, as if to accommodate the
means, expectations and lifestyle, or personal circumstances of the devout.

12 Archivo Arzobispal de Lima, Cofradías, leg. 11, exp. 11.2, 1605.

144 RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Before moving onto the examination of personal objects of devotion, I would like
to return to Fernández Dávila and his dispute with the Indian confraternity leaders,
since the records inform us about how the Virgin’s belongings were used. The cler-
gyman was accused of leasing the mantle of Our Lady for profit. Fernández Dávila
denied the charge, arguing that since the Virgin was a reputed healer, in addition to
being especially effective at attending difficult births, he regularly lent her mantle to
different individuals and confraternities that requested it. The practice, that was not
unique to the Andes for it was widely popular in Spain and possibly other parts of
Europe, was used rather early in colonial Peru, and was adopted by members of the
indigenous elite shortly after the Spanish conquest.13 In 1617 for example, the widow-
er of doña Mariana Quispe Asarpay, an Inca noble lady, listed in a post-scriptum to
her will the amount he had paid for leasing the mantle of the Virgin of Copacabana
that belonged to the parish of Saint Christopher in Cuzco. Doña Mariana had worn
the Virgin’s mantle throughout her illness but sadly, did not recover her health and
died.14
The clothes of the Virgin were not originally objects of personal devotion, but they
became so as the images of the Virgin were usually dressed and displayed. Writing
about the images of the virgin that lacked a complete body because they were meant
to be dressed, Caroline Walker Bynum has observed about Spanish images, ‘The
emphasis is on the glory and complexity of her attire.’15 This principle also applied to
Andean images that boasted a complete body, as was the case of Copacabana. The
image and her wardrobe belonged to the confraternity that looked after the image
and its chapel. For a limited period of time and for a certain sum of money both
clothing and associated adornments could be turned into objects through which the
devout sufferer expected to be healed by way of a personal contact with the divine.
This type of use must have elicited or strengthened the demand for a variety of devo-
tional objects that provided the owner with emotional and even material support in
trying times, as the examples I discuss below suggest.
Devotional images could be very similar to jewels. As such, their presence was
quite extensive in southern Peru where gold and silver and skilled indigenous crafts-
men were available since pre-Conquest times. The inventory that appears in the
will of Beatriz Holgado, an indigenous woman from Cuzco, included ‘two small gold
images’ of the Virgin of Copacabana.16 These images were to an extent similar to
those missionaries used to give away like medals, Agnus Dei, rosaries, and a number
of small devotional objects among the people they intended to convert. It could also
be argued that these small devotional objects also held some resemblance to the
amulets Andean people used to carry for personal protection. As ‘generic’ devotional

13 Musacchio, Art and Ritual of Childbirth.

14 Testament of doña Mariana Quispi Asarpay, Cuzco, 4 April 1617, AHC, PN, Cristóbal de Luzero 159, fol. 163.
15 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 53.
16 Testament of Beatriz Holgado, Cuzco, 5 July 1628, AHC, PN, Cristóbal de Luzero 163, fol. 289.
LIVING WITH THE VIRGIN IN THE COLONIAL ANDES 145

objects they were not that exceptional since at least in Spain amulets were widely
used and are documented as late as the mid-twentieth century. However, what made
these small images of Copacabana special is that they were identified with a devotion
whose existence was known by most. It is also likely that although they were popular,
the small images were not produced on such a large scale as rosaries. Gold, and espe-
cially silver, the most common material in which these small images were made, also
provided a local referent to Andean wealth and the Virgin’s place of origin.
The size and material of these devotional images of the Virgin allowed their own-
ers to live with them in multiple ways. From a will issued in Lima in 1647, we know of
a Domingo Fernández, a Spanish man from Galicia, who was taken to hospital suffer-
ing from fevers. It appears that Domingo was poor in the two senses of the term: he
had no relatives, and had very few possessions. However, he owned an image of Our
Lady of Copacabana, which he described as ‘of small make, a silver figurine stored in
a tiny silver box, which I carry with me’.17 Domingo possibly found comfort and com-
pany in the image, which he could hold while he was in his hospital bed. In case of
extreme need, he could consider pawning or trading it if necessary. A range of indi-
viduals, Spanish and Indians, poor and rich, normally traded and pawned all sorts of
objects, in a context where banks did not exist and, had they existed, would not have
catered to people dealing with very small sums of money. There is enough archival
evidence to affirm that devotional objects were often traded. In 1648, before entering
a convent in Lima as a nun of black veil, doña María de la Carrera, a Spanish widow,
issued a document that contained an inventory of her possessions. The inventory
listed two silver images of the Virgin of Copacabana. One had belonged to an Indian
man who had pawned it for only 1 peso, while the other, which also held a relief of the
Blessed Sacrament, had belonged to the sacristan of the convent of Saint Augustine.18
The exact form of these silver images is not described in this example. Other contem-
porary references to images made of silver speak of láminas, perhaps silver plates,
and of images, possibly painted and mounted on silver.19 Images of Copacabana
placed in silver boxes were especially appreciated. The representation of the Virgin
found in the inside was sometimes also made of silver or another material like wood
or a paste made of agave, a material that because of its malleability allowed artists
to produce carefully crafted sculptures that resembled wood and were much lighter.
These boxes were very small, like the example discussed above. Juana Rodríguez de
Arce’s inventory, written in 1653, listed three ‘tiny images of Copacabana and a big
one in a silver box’. The description further added that the ‘tiny ones did not have

17 Testament of Domingo Fernández, Lima, 15 November 1647, AGN, PN, Antonio Tamayo 1863, fol. 772v.
18 Receipt issued by Diego Sánchez de Rivas to her mother, doña María de la Carrera, Lima, 2 October 1648,
AGN, PN, Nicolás García 689, fol. 289.
19 The inventory of Ana María Millán, a wealthy widow residing in Lima, listed ‘una imaxen de Nuestra
Señora de Copacabana pequeña de una ochava guarnecida de plata’ (‘a small image […] of an eighth mounted
on silver’). Lima, 8 July 1652, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 478, fol. 2588.
146 RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

covers’, which suggests that usually these boxes were meant to be closed.20 Larger
boxes could be made entirely of silver, like the one owned by Josef de la Vega Alvara-
do, a resident of Lima: it had a ‘grille (verja) and doors made of silver’.21 The image
enclosed in a box allows for security and portability. It also seems that in some or all
cases, these pieces followed the design of, or actually served as portable altars. As
such, the divine could be moved around along with its owner, providing him or her
with protection and company. There was also an element of mystery, so important to
reinforce the power of the divine, a mystery that was revealed only when the owner
agreed to show the interior of the box, which, as in the example of the piece found
today in the collection of the Museum of Art in Lima, was richly decorated and is in
itself a delight to see (Plate 7.2).22
An additional and perhaps more conventional role of the images of Our Lady of
Copacabana was to strengthen its owner’s devotion as well as his social standing.
Indigenous chiefs and noblemen and women of Inca descent owned paintings and
sculptures, which they held in high esteem and passed on to their heirs as tokens of
their position as loyal Christian subjects and as symbols of their indigenous identity.
Doña Isabel Chimbo Quipe, a wealthy indigenous lady of Inca descent, had among
several religious images and many other valuable possessions, a sculpture of Our
Lady of Copacabana which was displayed in an altar in her home in Cuzco. According
to the description provided in her will, the statue was adorned with a silver crown,
which added to the material value of the image and attested to the owner’s wealth.23
In 1646, don Fernando Ynga, the paramount Inca authority in the city of Cuzco, listed
in his last will and testament a sculpture of Our Lady of Copacabana, which he gave
to his daughter, with the request that she ‘should pray for her father’s soul and have
Our Lady of Copacabana as her advocate’.24 Twenty years later, in the port of Callao,
don Pedro Manchipula, an indigenous chief, bequeathed a large canvas of Copaca-
bana to his daughter, with the request that she should look after her duties as head of
the confraternity dedicated to her cult.25 Spaniards of high standing also owned and
traded images of Copacabana among family members on the understanding that
they were both symbols of prestige and economic assets. Some of these images seem
to have been made according to a narrative that highlighted the role of the religious
order of Saint Augustine in the care and expansion of the devotion. Doña María de
Contreras, a Spanish lady living in Lima in the mid-seventeenth century, owned an

20 ‘Tres imágenes de Copacabana chiquitas y otra grande con la caxa de plata y las chiquitas sin tapaderas’.
Inventory of the belongings of Juana Rodríguez de Arce, Lima, 31 October 1653, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández
de la Cruz 481, fols. 2212–2214.
21 Lima, 1 June 1651, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 474, fol. 1151.
22 On the significance of images placed in divine interiors, Gell, Art and Agency.
23 Testament of doña Isabel Chimbo Quipe, Cuzco, 27 March 1633, AHC, PN, Luis Diez de Morales 75, fol.
897.
24 Testament of don Fernando Ynga, Cuzco, 11 July 1646, AHC, PN, Juan Flores de Bastidas 91, fol. 908.
25 Testament of don Pedro Manchipula, Lima, 2 November 1662, AGN, PN, Gaspar de Monzón 1153, fol. 1039v.
LIVING WITH THE VIRGIN IN THE COLONIAL ANDES 147

image that depicted Copacabana flanked by Saint Augustine and Saint Nicholas
of Tolentino.26 Richly adorned sculptures of the Virgin owned by Spanish men and
women appear in notary records in dowries, and as guarantee to secure loans.
Finally, strips of fabric, called cintas and medidas, literally ‘tapes’ and ‘measures’,
were perhaps available for the devout who could not afford costly images and to any-
one who wanted to have access to a material representation of the image that was
easy to carry at all times in close contact with the body. Although these objects did
not always have figurative representations of the Virgin’s image, their verisimilitude
and power rested on the fact that they were of the same size as the original. Thus
these objects held at once an immediate relation to the original but were also to an
extent abstracted from it: they were reminders of the devotion. The owner and user
had to have a previous understanding of the original sacred source, its context and
history to grasp its significance and be attracted and moved by its power.27 The book
the Augustinian friar Alonso Ramos Gavilán wrote in the early seventeenth century,
which tells the story of the Virgin of Copacabana, describes the miracles the Virgin
performed through these objects on Indians, Spaniards and mestizos that were saved
from robberies, assaults, accidents and idolatry because they happened to have a
measure of the Virgin with them. Measures were perhaps distributed in the shrine,
but devotees could also buy them elsewhere if they could not themselves travel so
far. I have found archival evidence of them being on sale at a pulpería – a sort of ‘con-
venience store’ – in Cuzco in 1651.28 I have not seen one of these measures myself in
Peru, but according to a study published in a Spanish journal of ethnography, exam-
ples exist in the collections of the Museum of Anthropology in Madrid.29
The history of early modern Catholicism shows that Christianity was more suc-
cessfully and easily understood and accepted across diverse populations through
devotional objects, ritual and corporal practices than through abstract ideas and

26 The document states that the image was ‘in a wooden box’, so it is not clear if it was a painting or a
sculpture. However, because the description says that the two saints are represented, it may have been a
painting. The cult of Nicholas of Tolentino was widely spread in the Andes: there were confraternities
dedicated to this saint in cities and towns across the region, and his image was often reproduced in churches
and paintings listed in individual inventories. ‘Inventory of doña María de Contreras, deceased’, Lima, 7 June
1651, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 474, fol. 1160.
27 Some of these tapes and measures could have also exhibited the image of the devotion they stood for.
Although I know of no example of one of these objects related to Copacabana, a Lima inventory made in 1653
lists a medida with the images of Saints Justa and Rufina, whose devotions were widespread in Spain, and
another that apparently showed the images of Saints Barbara and Agnes. Inventory of doña Mariana Torrero,
Lima, 18 August 1653, AGN, PN, Antonio Fernández de la Cruz 481, fol. 2314v. It seems that these tapes always
represented female saints, as ultimately they appear to have acted as mediators between the faithful and the
Virgin Mary, perhaps because usually they were used to protect women during and after childbirth. These
observations notwithstanding, the miracles Alonso Ramos Gavilán attributed to Copacabana also involved
men. On medieval measures, their provenance and use, Bynum, Christian Materiality, 98–99, 109–10, 153.
28 Testament of Francisca de las Casas, Cuzco, 25 October 1651, AHC, PN, Lorenzo de Messa Andueza 177, fol.
1778.
Herradón Figueroa, María Antonia. “Cintas, medidas y estadales de la
29 Revista de Tradiciones Populares, details TBC. Virgen (Colección Museo Nacional de Antropología)”. Disparidades.
Revista de Antropología, (Madrid), vol. 56, n.2 (2001).
148 RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

preaching. The colonial Andes were no exception. Although the cult of Our Lady of
Copacabana is often associated with indigenous conversion and therefore confined
exclusively to Indians, the study of its material representations demonstrates that it
was spread throughout the Andes and beyond by means of objects in various forms
and materials. Devotional objects made of wood, agave, gold, silver and cloth were
employed to represent and transmit the powers of the Virgin Mary to Old Christians,
recently converted indigenous Andeans and many others in between. While the dis-
play of the image in church altars, confraternity chapels and, in its main sanctuary,
built atop the ruins of an old pre-Columbian ceremonial centre was key for the con-
solidation of Copacabana as a public devotion, no less important were the multi-
ple forms in which the image was represented, for they allowed the faithful and the
recently converted to take Our Lady of Copacabana to their homes with the hope of
experiencing the sacred in their daily lives.

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Ramos Gavilán, Alonso, Historia del Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, ed. I. Prado Pastor (Lima:
Ignacio Prado Pastor, 1988).

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LIVING WITH THE VIRGIN IN THE COLONIAL ANDES 149

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About the author

Gabriela Ramos is University Senior Lecturer in Latin American History at the

University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. Her research focuses on
aspects of the social and cultural history of Latin America, particularly the Ande-
an region. Publications include Death and Conversion in the Andes: Lima and Cuzco
1532–1670.