Talk:Codex Escalada

message: Bellarmino (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I recently made some suggestions relative to the Codex in Talk under the article Juan Diego; see especially my para [4].  Since I have now undertaken to re-write that article, it looks as if it might be sensible for me to re-write this article too? Ridiculus mus (talk) 18:23, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The alleged tests and reliable sources 

message: Continuing with the proposed re-write, here are my proposed paragraphs describing the parchment and discussing aspects of the iconography:-
:Description
:The document is not a codex as the term is generally understood, but a single sheet (approximately 13.3 by 20 cms or 5¼ x 8 inches) of parchment roughly prepared from what is probably deerskin.  It bears several significant creases both lengthwise and laterally, and the edges are abraded which, together with a yellowish patina, impedes a clear reading of it; however, certain features can be distinguished.  The principal image comprises a rocky landscape dotted with sparse scrub flanked on the left by an Indian kneeling at the foot of a mountain and facing in three-quarter profile across the plain towards the Virgin who, in turn, flanks the landscape on the right; facing the Indian, she is contained within a cloud mandorla, and is possibly standing on a moon in its first quarter. This depicts the apparition which is said to have occurred on 12 December 1531 on the hill of Tepeyac 6 kms north of the main plaza of Mexico City.   The sun is rising over the hills behind the Virgin.  Above the central landscape is the date "154-8" beneath which are four lines of text in Nahuatl which can be translated as: "In this year of 15[0]31 there appeared to Cuauhtlactoatzin our dearly beloved mother Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico". Below the landscape and a little off-centre to the right is the signature of Fray Bernadino Sahagún (ca. 1499-1590), the renowned Franciscan missionary, historian and pioneering ethnologist.  High in the cliffs above the kneeling Indian is a depiction of him on the hill; directly beneath him is more Nahuatl text, the first part of which can be translated as: "Cuauhtlactoatzin died a worthy death"; and the second as: "in 1548 Cuauhtlactoatzin died."  From other indirect sources, this is known to be the native name of Juan Diego, although the normal orthography for such a date is "Quauhtlahtoatzin".<Betancourt; Peralta; Tena>   It is these last details which have led the parchment to be regarded as a type of "death certificate" of Juan Diego.<Brading, p.345>
:The right margin of the parchment constitutes a distinct register of images: the top half is a continuation of the landscape; below that is an indistinct rectilinear image; below that is left-facing picture in the indigenous style of a man holding out before him an upright staff while seated on a ceremonial chair.  Above this image is a glyph depicting the head of a bird from which waters flow and beneath it and to the left are the words "juez anton vareliano [sic]" taken to be a reference to Antonio Valeriano who was juez-gobernador (or judge-governor) of his home town of Azcapotzalco from 1565 to 1573, and of San Juan Tenochtítlan thereafter, and who had been a pupil and later associate of Sahagún in the compilation of an encyclopedic account of Nahua life and culture before the Spanish conquest assembled between approximately 1540 and 1585 and known most famously through the Florentine Codex.<Karttunen>  
:The pictogram of Valeriano is very close to one of him on the Aubin Codex in the British Museum which probably dates from 1576, hence its alternative name of "manuscrito de 1576".  The purpose and function of Sahagún's signature and of the Valeriano pictogram remain uncertain. 
:Iconography
:The disposition of Juan Diego and the Virgin on the parchment and their physical attributes are paralleled to some extent by an engraving by Antonio Castro which ornaments the second (and posthumous) edition of a work by Luis Becerra Tanco first published in Mexico in 1666 as "Origen milagroso del santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe" and republished in Spain in 1675 as "Felicidad de México".<Brading, p.344>  The iconography of the Virgin on the parchment is notable for the absence of three features which have been an enduring part of the image: the rays framing her, the crown on her head, and the angel at her feet (the first and last of which are still currently visible in the image preserved in the Basilica of Guadalupe on what is said to be Juan Diego's tilma or mantle).  All three features can be seen in the first known representation of the tilma, painted in oil on panel dated 1606 and signed Baltasar de Echave Orio.<discussion and illustration in José Guadalupe Victoria's "Un Pintor en su Tiempo: Baltasar de Echave Orio", UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1994, pp.137ff.; and see Brading, illustration 10 at p. 105>  A sequence of marks on the fringe of the Virgin's mantle falling down over her left shoulder have been interpreted as stars but (as with the possible moon) are too vestigial to permit a secure identification.  Following an infrared and ocular study of the tilma in 1979, Philip Callahan  concluded that the angel, crown, rays and stars were later additions to the original image made probably in that order beginning at an indeterminate time in the 16th century and perhaps continuing into the early 17th century.<Callahan, pp.6-13, esp. conclusions at pp. 9, 10, 13; summary conclusions 2 and 3 at p.18; and speculations at p.19>
revised version ends. Ridiculus mus (talk) 10:44, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Description of the parchment and iconography 

message: :The parchment first came to public notice in August 1995 when Father Xavier Escalada – a Spanish Jesuit and long-time resident of Mexico who was at that time preparing for the press his Enciclopedia Guadalupana – announced that the owners of the parchment had brought it to his attention while at the same time requesting that their identity remain confidential.<Peralta> The original announcement came almost mid-way between the beatification and the canonization of Juan Diego in 1990 and 2002 respectively, and the parchment helped to allay doubts in some quarters about the historicity both of Juan Diego himself, and of the antiquity of the tradition as to the apparitions. Before the discovery of the parchment, the earliest documented reference to Juan Diego which has survived had been Miguel Sanchez's "Imagen de la Virgen Maria", published in Mexico in 1648.<Poole (2002)>  Although Echave Orio's painting of 1606 is itself a document referring to the apparition, Juan Diego is neither shown nor named on it. Nevertheless, the parchment contributes no previously unknown facts relative to Juan Diego or the apparitions, for his native name and the year of his death were already known from other sources, as was the role of Valeriano in promoting the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe (if, indeed, the Nican Mopohua is to be attributed to him, as it traditionally has been, recent challenges notwithstanding).<Poole (2002); Peralta; Traslosheros> 
Version ends. Ridiculus mus (talk) 19:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circumstances of its publication, ownership and location 

message: :One José Antonio Vera Olvera found the parchment, by chance, enclosed in a manila envelope and lodged between the pages of a 19th century devotional work on sale in a second-hand book market, and from him it passed to the Guerra Vera family of Querétaro who revealed its existence to Fr. Escalada in 1995.  On the occasion of the formal donation of the parchment to the Archbishop of México on 14 April 2002, the former owners requested that it be known as the Codex Escalada in honour of Fr. Escalada's life-work researching the apparitions. <Betancourt; articles in El Observador (2005)  and El Méxicano (April 15, 2002) >  Fr. Escalada died in October 2006.
Version ends Ridiculus mus (talk) 19:59, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Provenance 

message: As with all sections of my projected re-write, references are mostly attenuated, but for this section 3 somewhat long footnotes have been included:-
:The parchment and Sahagún's signature were subjected to technical and critical analysis the results of which were all favourable to the document's authenticity (see below under "Investigation as to authenticity").  Nevertheless, the owners' stipulation for anonymity added an air of mystery to what was already a highly fortuitous discovery both as to its timing and as to the nature and number of the historical data to which it attests, although it was not the only such discovery in this period which aided the case for the historicity of Juan Diego.  Baltasar de Echave Orio's painting of 1606 has already been mentioned in this regard.Located by the historian Manuel Ortiz, it was brought to public attention in November 1987 as part of the exhibition "Imágenes guadalupanas /Cuatro siglos", held at the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; see Ortiz Vaquero, M.: Pintura guadalupana: Tres ejemplos in the exhibition catalogue.  Cf. Juárez, José ed. : José Juárez: recursos y discursos del arte de pintar, El Colegio de Michoacán A.C., (2002) p. 212; and Patricia Barrea Azcon: "La Iconografía de la Virgen de Guadalupe de México en España", Archivo Español de Arte LXXX, 318, April-June 2007, 177-206 at p. 189.  To this can be added the discovery by Chávez Sánchez in July 2001 of a copy (dated 14 April 1666) of the original translation of the Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666, formerly known only from a copy dated 1737 first published by Hipólito Vera Fortino in 1889.Chávez Sánchez, Eduardo, La Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego en las Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666, (con facsímil del original), Edición del Instituto de Estudios Teológicos e Históricos Guadalupanos, 2002  In April 2002, on the eve of the canonization of Juan Diego, the owners waived their right to anonymity and, in a public ceremony, donated the parchment to the Archbishop of Mexico, since when it has been kept in the Historical Archives of the Basilica of Guadalupe. <http://www.virgendeguadalupe.org.mx/academicos/Archi_Historico/a_historico.htm>  
:Some scholars found the mode and timing of the discovery suspicious and the convergence of data on it little short of miraculous.  The puzzling features which require elucidation and explanation were conveniently gathered by Rafael Tena under six headings as follows:- provenance (his comments predated the release of new information in 2002 as to which see under "Provenance" below); materials analysis (where Tena urged destructive investigatory techniques); art-historical criticism (including orthography); graphology (where Tena expressed the view that access to the original is indispensable for a conclusive attribution of Sahagún's signature); historiography (where Tena made one error in assuming that Valeriano was not a judge-governor before 1573,<Karttunen> and another in contending that Sahagún's signature on the codex is irreconcilable with his known opposition to the cult – as to which, see below); and finally linguistic analysis (Nahuatl is Tena's main area of expertise).  While many of the puzzling features have still not been fully explained or accounted for (including alleged anachronisms which presume that the date 1548 is the date of composition as opposed to the date of record), and while further tests can be devised, no critics have impugned (i) the integrity and expertise of those who have subjected the document to investigation, or (ii) (subject to the query over Dibble's non-access to the original) the reliability and coherence of such tests as were actually performed, or (iii) the conclusions drawn from the results of those tests.Tena; Brading, p.344; Peralta; cf. Poole (2000) for a brief list of his objections, (2002) where, en passant, he conjectures it to be "most probably a crude nineteenth century forgery", and (2006) pp.132f. 
:Tena, among others, contended that even if Sahagún's signature is authentic, its presence on a document such as this constitutes a serious internal inconsistency arising from Sahagún's known hostility to the cult.<e.g., Peralta, quoting from Book 11 of Sahagün's Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España>  While Sahagún did indeed express reservations as to the cult in his historical works, that comparatively late criticism was based on what he considered to be a syncretistic application to the Virgin Mary of the Nahuatl epithet "Tonantzin" ("our dear mother") which, however, he himself had freely used with the same application in his own sermons as late as the 1560's. <Burkhart, p.11> 
Version ends Ridiculus mus (talk) 20:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: <footnote 1> Located by the historian Manuel Ortiz, it was brought to public attention in November 1987 as part of the exhibition "Imágenes guadalupanas /Cuatro siglos", held at the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; see Ortiz Vaquero, M.: Pintura guadalupana: Tres ejemplos in the exhibition catalogue.  Cf. Juárez, José ed. : José Juárez: recursos y discursos del arte de pintar, El Colegio de Michoacán A.C., (2002) p. 212; and Patricia Barrea Azcon: "La Iconografía de la Virgen de Guadalupe de México en España", Archivo Español de Arte LXXX, 318, April-June 2007, 177-206 at p. 189. <footnote 2> Chávez Sánchez, Eduardo, La Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego en las Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666, (con facsímil del original), Edición del Instituto de Estudios Teológicos e Históricos Guadalupanos, 2002. <footnote 3> Tena; Brading, p.344; Peralta; cf. Poole (2000) for a brief list of his objections, (2002) where, en passant, he conjectures it to be "most probably a crude nineteenth century forgery", and (2006) pp.132f.
footnotes end Ridiculus mus (talk) 16:27, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doubts and suspicions 

message: :Materials and inks
:The parchment was consigned by Escalada to a team of 18 experts of various disciplines assembled at the Centro de Física Aplicada y Tecnología Avanzada UNAM and coordinated by Professor Victor Manuel Castaño, who subjected it to a range of non-destructive tests to determine the age, authenticity and integrity of the materials.  In their report issued on 30 January 1997 they concluded that the parchment and inks were consistent with an origin in the 16th and that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the document itself was of 16th century origin.  
:Sahagún's signature 
:A copy of the signature as it appears on the parchment was sent to Dr. Charles E. Dibble a former distinguished professor of anthropology of the University of Utah and one of the leading scholars in Sahagún studies.  In a letter in a letter of 12 June 1996 he wrote:- "l have received a copy of codice 1548. I have studied the signature, and I believe it to be the signature of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. I base my conclusions on the indications of three crosses; the form of the 'Fray', the 'd'and the 'b'. In my opinion the signature is not the same as, that is not contemporaneous with the 1548 date of the codice. I would assign the signature to the 50's or the 60's' ".  In his report of 18 September 1996, Don Alfonso M. Santillana Rentería, head of the Office of Documentoscopy and Photography of the Bank of Mexico in Mexico City, verified Sahagún's signature in these terms: " . . la firma cuestionada, atribuida a Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, que aparece en el Códice 1548, fue hecha por su puño y letra; por lo tanto es auténtica." (the signature in question, attributed to Fray Bernadino de Sahagún, which appears on codex 1548, was made by his own hand; therefore it is authentic)<Escalada; Moreno>  Professor Castaño's' team identified the ink used for Sahagún's signature (as also they did with the ink used for the date "15-48") as not identical with that used on the rest of the parchment.  
:Publication of the results
:The results of all these analyses and investigations were published by Escalada in July 1997 as an 80 page fifth volume or appendix to his Enciclopedia Guadalupana complete with photographs and technical data. <Escalada; Castaño; Moreno; Betancourt; Poole (2006) pp. 132f.> 
Version ends. Ridiculus mus (talk) 20:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Investigations as to authenticity 

message: Here follows the text of the article as it currently stands:-
:The Codex Escalada, also called the Codex 1548, is a Nahuatl-language document which pictographically relates the story of the 1531 apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the Mexican hill of Tepeyac, an apparition which is credited with converting the indigenous peoples of Mexico to Roman Catholicism. The manuscript's authenticity has been disputed by a number of researchers.[1]
:The document, which is painted on deerskin, depicts the Virgin of Guadalupe and mentions the death of Juan Diego, the Aztec man credited with witnessing the apparition. It also mentions Antonio Valeriano, the 16th-century governor of San Juan Tenochtitlan[2]. Finally, it is signed by Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan historian who once complained that Guadalupan devotees were syncretically venerating the indigenous goddess Tonantzin.
:In 1995, Xavier Escalada, a Spanish Jesuit who was editing an encyclopedia about the Guadalupan apparition, claimed to have discovered the codex. The discovery came at a moment when the Catholic hierarchy was deliberating the canonization of Juan Diego, and the codex allayed many doubts about the historicity of the apparition. These doubts had arisen due to arguments that there was very little documentation of the apparition between 1531 and the 1640s, when the Nican mopohua and Miguel Sanchez's Imagen de la Virgen Maria were published. However, some scholars, such as the priest-historian Stafford Poole and University of Cambridge professor Emeritus D. A. Brading, found the timing of the discovery suspicious. Brading commented on the convergence of Guadalupan personalities in the codex:
:"Within the context of the Christian tradition, it was rather like finding a picture of St. Paul's vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, drawn by St. Luke and signed by St. Peter". —D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix[2]
:In an article published in L'Osservatore Romano in 2002, it was reported that that the "Codex has been studied by about 20 specialists in various subjects, coordinated by the Physics Institute of the UNAM and also by Dr Ch. E. Dibble Charles E. Dibble of the University of Utah, USA, and by experts in graphology of the Bank of Mexico. The results, all favourable, can be found in the Appendix to the Enciclopedia Guadalupana."[3]
:Notes 1. ^ See Brading (2001), Peralta (2003), Poole (2005). 2. ^ a b Brading (2001). 3. ^ L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 23 January 2002, page 8.
Archived version ends. Ridiculus mus (talk) 15:34, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  2010 version archived 

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thread_title:  External links modified