UGM · Under the guidance of Mary: “Moriscos” and “Indios” against the expansion of the Spanish Empire and the politics of Marian devotion.

Under the guidance of Mary: “Moriscos” and “Indios” against the expansion of the Spanish Empire and the politics of Marian devotion.

This research project enquires into the political implications of Marian devotion in the Early Modern Iberian World and its role in the colonial management of “native” communities of “Moriscos” and “Indios,” subdued since the end of the 15th century by the expansion of the Spanish Empire. This study proposes a “political” reading of the development of Marian devotion in the Iberian Peninsula and its American colonies, exploring its role in local politics, native strategies, and colonial dynamics across the Atlantic. With this aim, the project analyzes how the particular characteristics and evolution of Marian devotion reflected the progressive transformation of the Spanish imperial project and encoded diverse and changing conceptions of the role of these “native” communities in the imperial fabric. Through the comparative study of the representation of “Indios” and “Moriscos” in the collective imagery, imperial documentation and religious literature, my research tries to question the role of the Virgin and her imagined relationship with these communities in the debate over the ability of “native” populations to integrate themselves into the colonial regime as “faithful subjects” and “good Christians”, and the place of their culture and religious sensibility in the configuration of the emerging colonial culture. The project centers not only on the politics of Marian devotion in the Spanish Empire and its relationship with imperial policies towards “Moriscos” and “Indios”, but fundamentally on the “native” response to its transformation. In this way, through the analysis of the intellectual and artistic products commissioned by “Christianized” Morisco and Mesoamerican elites, the project tries to elucidate how “native” communities and especially subaltern elites, facing the progressive erosion of their rights and privileges, used Marian devotion to prove the value of their cultural heritage, lineage and memory and to reclaim their place in the colonial society. In this sense, the research project seeks to understand how “native” communities transformed the Virgin into a “political” symbol, through which they could legitimize their understanding of Christianity and promote an alternative and more “inclusive” conception of the Spanish Empire against the growing acculturating and homogenizing pressure of the Empire and the Reformed Church. To analyze these questions, the project focuses on studying the parallel stories of two regions with unique political statuses, cultural characteristics, and a prominent native elite and intellectual culture: Granada and Tlaxcala. Through the analysis of the “native” fabrication of the Lead Books of Granada and the apparition of the Virgin of Ocotlan, the project aim to explore the role of Marian devotion across the Atlantic in key phenomena: the configuration of local Christianity and Christian native identities, the development of imperial rhetoric and the debates about “Moriscos” and “Indios” assimilability, the changes in imperial policies toward native communities, the erosion of local autonomy and the articulation of similar native elite strategies to resist imperial control and acculturation. Through the analysis of these “native” fabrications, the research explores how Granadan Morisco and Tlaxcalan Indigenous elites, facing increasing imperial pressure that threatened their political power, class privileges, and regional autonomy, reinvented local sacred history and created a unique religious imagery to channel local religious sensibilities and reclaim their lost prestige. The study reveals how these native forgeries rely on a similar narrative of Marian protection and an honorable Christian past to vindicate the exceptional Christian character of their land, blessed with unique celestial gifts. On both sides of the Atlantic, this “Marian strategy” formed part of a broader project to reimagine “native” origins. This shared “native” agenda exploited humanist knowledge to insert local memories into a global biblical antiquity and reaffirm the apostolic roots of local Christianity, native lineages, and cultural expressions. The project will evidence how, through these parallel native inventions, Granadan and Tlaxcalan elites intended to vindicate their place in a Spanish Empire in transformation, ease increasing interethnic and inter-class tension, and control the troubling effects of “popular” religiosity during a critical moment in which the position of their territory within the colonial system was being redefined.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз