History and origin: the apparition of Gil Cordero and the birth of a sanctuary

Around the year 1300, in the southern mountains of the north-east of the present Extremadura, a cowboy named Gil Cordero was looking for one of his derelict reses between the bays and oaks of the mountain that was rising on the banks of the Guadalupe River. He found the dead cow. When he prepared to desolate her to take advantage of the skin, the cow rose before his eyes. The man was then a witness to the apparition of the Virgin Mary, who ordered her to dig in that place: under the earth he would find a picture of her. The Virgin gave her precise instructions: she had to communicate the finding to the clerics of her village and, when the people arrived in procession, the sign that would confirm the authenticity of the apparition would be that one of her children, who had just died, would rise.

Gil Cordero returned to his village - it is discussed whether he was from Cáceres or from somewhere nearby - and found that his son had actually died during his absence. In carrying out the instruction of the Virgin, he communicated what happened to the local priests. The procession was organized; the son was raised according to the promise; and when they dug in the designated place, they found an image of the Virgin buried. The later tradition attributed that image to San Lucas, the evangelist painter, who would have sculpted it or painted it in the life of the Virgin Mary and who, after centuries of transfers, would have reached the Iberian Peninsula of the hands of San Gregorio Magno, who would have sent it to San Leandro de Sevilla. Before the Muslim invasion, the eighth century clerics had buried the image in those saws to protect it, and there he had remained five hundred years until the apparition of Gil Cordero.

The history of the image attributed to Saint Luke and Saint Gregory the Great is a pious legend - the kind of story that the Middle Ages built to provide the greatest possible seniority and authority to a local devotion - and should not be taken as a verifiable historical fact. What is certain is that the image was found in that place around 1300, that the cult immediately flourished and that devotion spread with extraordinary speed. King Alfonso XI of Castile, who defeated the Benimerines in the battle of the Salate (1340), attributed victory to the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe and founded the monastery as an offering of gratitude. That regio gesture was the turning point that made Guadalupe a national sanctuary.

Alfonso XI entrusted the sanctuary and the image to the jeronym friars in 1389, during the reign of his successor John I. The Order of Saint Jeronym, of recent foundation and with a spirituality oriented to contemplation and solemn liturgy, transformed the humble initial priory into a monacal complex of increasing magnificence. The kings of Castile made Guadalupe one of their favorite sanctuaries: John II, Henry IV, the Catholic Kings... All of them pilgrimaged to Guadalupe, donated wealth, ordered new dependencies to be built and entrusted to the Virgin their most important companies.

The name "Guadalupe" is of the etymology discussed. The most widespread interpretations are derived from Arabic (wadi al-lubb, "river of black songs" or "river of the wolf"), which would fit the river geography of the area. However, other linguists propose Latin or preroman etimologies. The truth is that the name of the Spanish sanctuary traveled to America through the extremist conquerors, and the Virgin of Guadalupe of Mexico took its name precisely from this Iberian devotion.

The venerated image: the Brunette of the Villuercas

The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is one of the most enigmatic and venerated of all Christianity. It is a size of cedar wood about 59 centimeters high, representing the Virgin sitting on a throne with the Child Jesus in her arms. It belongs to a late Romanesque iconographic type, and most specialists date it between the 12th and 13th centuries, which denies the legend of St. Luke but confirms its venerable antiquity.

The most striking feature of the image is its color: the wood, darkened by the passing of the centuries and by the vapors of the cirios and incense, has acquired a dark, almost black tone that has given the Virgin the appeal of "La Brunette." This type of image - known in the Marian field as "Black Madonna" - is found in many European shrines and has generated a wealth of literature about its meaning. In Guadalupe, the dark color of the size has been integrated into the spirituality of the sanctuary: "I am but beautiful," says the verse of the Song of the Songs that tradition applies to these images.

The image is permanently dressed in very rich blankets that are changed according to the liturgical time. In the great solemnities it is gilded with the most splendid cloak of the treasure. The Child on the left arm holds a golden orb in his right hand. The Virgin shows a silver scepter in her right hand. The whole, on gala days, is of an overwhelming magnificence.

The treasure of Guadalupe is one of the richest in Spain. It includes jewels offered by the Catholic Kings, by Charles V, by Philip II and by generations of faithful of all conditions. There are blankets embroidered in gold and silver, chalices of precious stones, relicaries of Renaissance and baroque goldsmiths, and the extraordinary set of Zurbaran paintings decorating the sacristy - eight great canvas on the life of San Jerónimo, considered one of the most important Baroque pictorial sets in Spain.

I, Christopher Columbus, before leaving for the Indies, came to bow down before Our Lady of Guadalupe and entrust this company to him. On his return, the first temple he promised to visit was that of Guadalupe.

Colón, the Catholic Kings and the link with America

Guadalupe's connection with the discovery of America is one of the most fascinating chapters of the history of the sanctuary and, in the broad sense, of universal history. Christopher Columbus visited the shrine of Guadalupe several times during the years before and after his first trip. The Catholic Kings used the monastery as a kind of residence and itinerant office; there they signed in January 1492 - a few months before Columbus left Palos - several important documents. The company of discovery was negotiated in part in the cloisters of Guadalupe and was entrusted to the Virgin before leaving.

On his return from the first trip, in 1493, Columbus fulfilled the promise he had made during the terrible storm that was about to sink the Girl on his return journey: visit the shrine of Guadalupe in thanksgiving. He brought with him several Tai Indians who had embarked on the discovered islands - the first Americans who stepped on Europe - and made them baptize at the fountain of the monastery. Two of them received the names "Cristobal" and "Pedro de Guadalupe," in honor of the discoverer and the Virgin. This episode, which links the beginning of the encounter between two worlds with the extreme sanctuary, explains why the Virgin of Guadalupe is considered Patroness of Hispanity.

The extension of the Guadalupana devotion to America was instantaneous: the extremist conquerors - and the extremist conquerors were Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Núñez de Balboa, Vasco de Quiroga - carried with them the devotion to the Brunette of the Villuercas and founded hermites and parishes under their advocation in all the territories they conquered. When in 1531 the Virgin appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in the Tepeyac of Mexico, Bishop Zumárraga - who was an extremist - immediately associated that image with the Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura, and thus the name of the Spanish sanctuary was definitively transplanted to the American continent.

Architecture: an eight-century palimpsest

The Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe is one of the most complex and fascinating monastic assemblies in Spain precisely because it overcomes eight centuries of continuous construction, and each time left its mark on it without completely erasing the previous one. The result is not the confusing eclecticism that could be expected, but a harmonious synthesis that speaks of the long and full life of this place.

The exterior is dominated by the torre-facade of the main church, in the Gothic-Mudejar style, which rises on the square with an austere majesty. The Mudejar - a result of the collaboration between Muslim artisans and Christian promoters in medieval Spain - is the stylistic soul of the whole: the bricks in combination with the stone, the mixtilian arches, the tiles and the wooden artisans give the monastery a personality that does not have a parallel in the Western European religious architecture.

The Gothic cloister, built in the 15th century, is one of the jewels of the monastery: its galleries of pointed arches surround a garden with a central fountain and a mudejar kiosk which is, on its own, a masterpiece of medieval carpentry. The Mudejar cloister, adjacent to the Gothic, is even older and shows the square plant characteristic of the Islamic cloister adapted to the liturgical needs of a Christian monastery.

The sacristy, built in the 17th century under the direction of the Jerome friar Francisco de Mora, is one of the most beautiful spaces in the Spanish baroque. Here are preserved the eight great canvases of Zurbarán on the life of San Jerónimo, painted between 1638 and 1640 on request of the monastery. The layout of the paintings, the light that enters through the side windows and the architecture of space form a set that many critics consider unsuperable in the Spanish baroque painting.

The Virgin's shrimp, the most intimate space of the sanctuary where the image is kept on its silver throne, was built in the 18th century in Churrigueresco style. Its decoration is profuse to the excess - salomonic columns, yeseries, mirrors, paintings in the vaults - but the excess is appropriate: it is the baroque exaltation of the Queen's glory to which that shrimp serves as an bedroom.

Tradition of pilgrimage

The pilgrimage to Guadalupe has for centuries been one of the three great pilgrimage destinations of the Iberian Peninsula, along with Santiago de Compostela and the tomb of San Vicente Ferrer in Valencia. In the 15th and 16th centuries, when the monastery was at the peak of its influence, pilgrims arrived from all over the Peninsula, from other European countries and even from America.

The most traditional route is the one that goes up from Trujillo or from Cáceres through the Villuercas, a medium mountain massif covered with alcornoques, oak and jars, with very small villages that once had sales and hospitals to serve the pilgrims. Today this road can be walked on foot in three or four days and is an experience of authentic and unmassified pilgrimage.

The holiday of September 8 concentrates the greatest influx: the pontifical mass in the courtyard of the host, the procession with the image through the streets of the village, the cantics and the popular Romeria. On October 12, the Day of Hispanity, Guadalupe welcomes pilgrimages of Ibero-American communities living in Spain and diplomatic representations of American countries, in an act that has both devotion and reaffirmation of shared cultural identity.

Miracles and graces documented

The book of miracles of Guadalupe is one of the oldest and most extensive in Spain. The monastery retains received documents of graces dating back to the 14th century, and the oral tradition contains many more that were never written. The most significant are:

The resurrection of the son of Gil Cordero (c. 1300): The miracle of the apparition itself includes the resurrection of a dead child, which is the sign promised by the Virgin to confirm the authenticity of the finding of the image. This foundational miracle establishes the tone of all Guadalupan devotion: the Virgin who gives life where there is death.

The liberated slaves (XV-XVII centuries): Guadalupe was also a sanctuary for the slaves - both those of Muslim and African origin who began to reach the Peninsula in the 15th century - to ask the Virgin for freedom. The records of the monastery record hundreds of cases in which slaves who had promised a pilgrimage to Guadalupe if they obtained freedom came to the sanctuary by serving their vote.

The captive of the Turks (16th century): One of the most reproduced stories in the literature of the time recounts the case of a Spanish merchant arrested by Turkish pirates and held in captivity in North Africa for years. After invoking the Virgin of Guadalupe, she managed to escape miraculously and traveled to the sanctuary by carrying her chains as an offering. The chains were hung in the temple. This account - of which there are variants with different protagonists and dates - is reflected in the Book of miracles that the monastery began to write in the 14th century.

The Battle of the Salate (1340): Alfonso XI, who defeated in this battle a great Moroccan Benimerin coalition that threatened to redominate the Peninsula, attributed the victory to the Virgin of Guadalupe, to which it had been entrusted before the battle. The foundation of the Jerome monastery was the fulfillment of that vow of thanksgiving.

"Our Lord showed us in that battle so much mercy that we will always give thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe."

The Catholic and Guadalupe Kings: the cradle of the History of Spain

The link of the Catholic Kings - Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragon - to the shrine of Guadalupe is so deep that some historians describe it as one of the most determining relationships in all Spanish history. Isabel, in particular, had a personal devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe who went back to her childhood and kept her until the end of her life.

The monastery of Guadalupe was for the Catholic Kings more than a place of pilgrimage: it was a kind of spiritual headquarters where they made some of the most important decisions of their reign. In 1476, after the battle of Toro, which consolidated the throne of Elizabeth in front of her rivals, the queen traveled to Guadalupe to give thanks for the victory. In 1479, the signing of the Treaty of Alcáçovas - which regulated the spheres of influence between Castile and Portugal in the Atlantic - took place in the monastery. In January 1492, the Catholic Kings signed in Guadalupe the Capitulations of Santa Fe, the contract with Cristóbal Colón, which authorized the first trip to the west. And in the same year of 1492, they also signed in Guadalupe the decree on the expulsion of Jews - a decision whose historical and moral burden is the cause of permanent debate.

Elizabeth's devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe was also expressed in her gifts to the sanctuary throughout her life. Among them are the green velvet mantle embroidered in gold that the queen donated in 1496 - and which is still preserved in the treasure of the monastery -, and the jewel known as "the pectoral of the queen," a pendant of rubies and emeralds that Elizabeth ordered to put in specifically to deposit it at the feet of the image.

Fernando de Aragón, for his part, adopted the Virgin of Guadalupe as patron of the military companies of the Crown. Before the battle of Granada (1492), which represented the surrender of the last Muslim kingdom of the Peninsula and the formal culmination of the Reconquist, Fernando traveled to Guadalupe to entrust himself to the Virgin. The king promised that if he had overcome, he would donate to the sanctuary the pendon he had waved over the major mosque of Granada turned into a cathedral. He fulfilled the promise: that pendon, with the half moon inverted, is kept in the treasure of the monastery.

The Jericho Order and the splendor of the 15th century

The friars who ruled the monastery of Guadalupe from 1389 until the decriminalization of 1835 made the sanctuary one of the most important cultural and spiritual centers on the Peninsula. The monastery's scriptorium was one of the most active of the Crown of Castile in the 15th century: the friars copied manuscripts, illuminated time books and produced documents of all kinds for the administration of the monastery and its properties.

The monastery library, which in the 15th century had several thousand volumes - an extraordinary collection for the time - was one of the richest in Spain. The jeronyms, whose spirituality combined contemplative life with intellectual and manual work, were voracious readers and applied copists. Several of the most valuable inunables in the library of Extremadura come from the original background of the monastery of Guadalupe.

The pharmacy and the monastery hospital were also pioneering institutions in their time. The fraternal jeronyms attended to the sick who came to the sanctuary in search of healing - medicine and faith were intimately intertwined in the medieval world - and developed knowledge of botany and practical medicine that were translated into treaties copied and disseminated by other monasteries. The medical tradition of the monastery of Guadalupe, which dates back to the 14th century, has been studied in recent years by medical historians who consider it an important chapter in the history of science in Spain.

Papal visits and recognition of the Church

The pontifical recognition of Guadalupe has been constant over the centuries. As early as the 14th century, Pope Clement VI granted indulgences to pilgrims who visited the sanctuary. The Catholic Kings, Alexander VI and successive potatoes maintained close ties with the monastery, which for centuries acted as the spiritual embassy of the Spanish monarchy before the Holy See.

The most important milestone of the 20th century was the 1928 pontifical canonical coronation, celebrated in the presence of the cardinal legacy of Pope Pius XI. The pontifical crown that the image has seen since is a work of goldsmiths of great artistic and symbolic value.

El Pope Juan Pablo II visited Guadalupe on 12 October 1982, during his first pastoral visit to Spain. He deliberately chose the Day of Hispanity to do so: he wanted to emphasize the role of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a spiritual bond between Spain and Latin America. In his homily, he proclaimed the Virgin of Guadalupe "Mother of all Ibero-American peoples" and entrusted to her intercession the unity of the Hispanic family in the world.

• c. 1300 - The apparition of the Virgin to the cowboy Gil Cordero. Find the buried image.
• 1340 - Alfonso XI wins in the battle of the Salado and bases the monastery in fulfilment of his vow to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
• 1389 - John I gives the monastery to the Order of Saint Jerome, which will direct it for four centuries.
• 1492 - The Catholic Kings visit the sanctuary. Colón entrusts to the Virgin the journey of discovery.
• 1493 - Colón is voting back and baptizes the first American Indians to come to Europe in Guadalupe.
• 1638-1640 - Zurbaran paints the eight great canvas of the sacristy.
• 1835 - Mendizábal deamortization: the hieronyms are exclaustrated. The monastery is abandoned.
• 1908 - The Franciscans take possession of the monastery, which returns to religious life.
• 1928 - Ponymic canonical coronation of the image.
• 1982 - Visit of John Paul II on October 12, Hispanic Day.
• 1993 - UNESCO declares the Royal World Heritage Monastery.

The decriminalization of 1835 and the return of the Franciscans

The darkest period in modern history of the monastery of Guadalupe was the one that followed the decriminalization of Mendizábal in 1835. The law forced the friars to leave the monastery they had guarded for four and a half centuries. The monastic set was abandoned for decades, and the deterioration was fast and terrible: the roof of several pavilions sank, the cloisters were invaded by vegetation, frescoes and tiles suffered irreparable damage. The treasure of the monastery was partly confiscated and partly dispersed; some pieces ended up in museums of Madrid and Seville, others disappeared in the antiques market.

In 1879, the Ministry of Development declared the National Monument monastery, which stopped the most serious deterioration and allowed for a first consolidation intervention. In 1908, the Franciscans arrived in Guadalupe and took possession of the monastery. With an admirable energy and determination, the minor friars began the restoration of the whole: they had the cloisters, they had the paintings of Zurbaran, they had the treasure that was left in value, and they had reopened the monastery to the pilgrims. The religious life of Guadalupe, interrupted seventy years earlier, was again beating.

Today the monastery of Guadalupe is at the same time a living Franciscan convent - with its community of friars, its liturgical life and its pastoral mission - and one of the most important monuments of the historical and artistic heritage of Spain. This double condition, which in other places has generated tensions, in Guadalupe is harmonious: the friars are the best guardians of a heritage that is, at the bottom, at its service and at the service of the pilgrims who come to venerate the Virgin.

Prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe

La devoción a la Virgen de Guadalupe de Extremadura ha generado a lo largo de los siglos una rica tradición de oraciones, novenas y cánticos. La más famosa de las oraciones tradicionales es la que comienza: «Señora mía Santísima, Madre de Dios y amparo de los pecadores, que en esta santa imagen te dignaste habitar para amparo y consuelo de tus devotos…». Esta oración, que se recita desde el siglo XV en el monasterio y que los peregrinos han llevado consigo por todos los rincones del mundo hispánico, condensa en pocas líneas la esencia de la devoción guadalupana: la Virgen que habita la imagen, la Virgen que ampara, la Virgen que consuela. El pueblo cristiano que se acerca a la Morena de las Villuercas no trae solo peticiones: trae también la gratitud de siglos, el recuerdo de tantas gracias recibidas, la certeza de que en Guadalupe la Madre escucha.

The patronage of the Virgin of Guadalupe on Hispanity is not an honorary title: it is the expression of a real spiritual bond that unites, through history and devotion, all the Spanish-speaking peoples of the world. When Columbus entrusted his company to the Brunette of the Villuercas before leaving Palos, he was unknowingly establishing a link that would last centuries: the link between the first image of the Virgin who venerated the conquerors on the Peninsula and the countless images that they would lead to the new worlds. The Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura is, in this sense, the mother of all the Guadalupes of the world.

Pray the Holy Rosary