Great ladies walked barefoot, and a friar wanted it stopped

Barefoot, with sticks in their hands

MEXICO CITY, New Spain, September 1556 AD — Great ladies of Mexico City were walking out to a chapel barefoot. They carried staves — walking sticks — in their hands.

The chapel stands on flat ground at the foot of a hill called Tepeyac. It is up the raised road that runs north out of the city.

Twenty-five years ago the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on that hill. She asked for a church on the plain beside it. The chapel was built in 1532 AD. St. Juan Diego looked after it until he died in 1548 AD. He was buried inside it.

Ever since the year the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared, people have walked out to Tepeyac almost without a break.

The friar who wanted the walking to stop

The second Archbishop of Mexico is Fray Alonso de Montúfar, a Dominican. He took the chapel out of Franciscan hands. That set him against Fray Francisco de Bustamante, the Franciscan provincial, who governs the whole order in New Spain.

Bustamante called the devotion idolatry. He wanted the walking stopped. Montúfar wanted it defended.

Earlier this month Montúfar preached in the city in support of the devotion. He took as his text “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see”.

Two days later Bustamante answered him from the pulpit of San José de los Naturales (Saint Joseph of the native people), in the Franciscan convent. The viceroy, Don Luis de Velasco, and other important men of the city sat in front of him. He said the archbishop was helping idolatry. He said the image at Tepeyac had been painted by a native painter named Marcos. And he let the people listening understand that the money left at the chapel was not being properly used.

Fourteen questions, nine men, one oath

The next day the archbishop ordered an Información (an inquiry) drawn up. It was to find out from witnesses what the friar had actually said.

An inquiry like that has a fixed shape. The questions are written down first, so that every man is asked the same thing in the same words. The oath comes before the answers, not after. Each man answers one question at a time, and puts his mark on each answer.

Fourteen questions were prepared. Nine men answered them, and every one of the nine signed his name.

One of the nine was Juan de Salazar. He swore to what the walking looked like from the streets of the city: “great ladies, delicately raised, go barefoot and on foot with their staves in their hands to visit Our Lady and commend themselves to her”.

What the sermon actually did

That walking was what Bustamante had preached against.

Another of the nine, Francisco de Salazar, swore that the sermon had not slowed it down at all. It had done the opposite.

Here is what he swore, and signed: “From now on, if we used to go once, we will go four times.”