San Sebastain del Oeste Part 3 of 6: Templo San Sebastian Martir

The entrance of Templo San Sebastian Martir. This is the parroquia (parish church) of San Sebastian del Oeste. The church stands just behind El Portal Morelos which forms the north side of Plaza Publica. Because the steeple is the tallest structure in town, the church is easy to find. To locate it on a Google map, click here.

When I do a blog series on a colonial pueblo, I nearly always include a posting on the churches. From the earliest colonial times, Catholicism has been central to Mexico's social, economic, and architectural development. The first twelve Franciscan friars arrived in 1524, only two years after the fall of the Aztecs. They were followed by the Dominicans in 1526 and the Augustinians in 1533.

 

View of the Templo from a hill on the west side of town. The church was built by the Augustinian Order in 1608. The construction was supervised by the Augustinian priest Fray Sevando Alonso Poco Sangre, but the actual work was done by indigenous Teco laborers conscripted from the nearby village of Hostotipac.  The church was founded only three years after the area around Hostotipac was re-named Real de San Sebastian to designate it as a mining district.

The work of the Tecos (also known as the Cuyuteco) may have been a donation by a local Spaniard to whom they owed free labor under the encomienda system. Alternatively, the Augustinians may have made an arrangement with royal officials for native labor under the repartimiento system. Whichever method was used, it is almost certain that none of the physical work would have been done by a colonial Spaniard. For a description of the ecomienda and repartimiento forced labor systems, see Part 2 of this series.

The rear of the Templo and the gate to the churchyard. This is one of the oldest sections of a structure that was remodeled numerous times and substantially rebuilt at least once, after an earthquake. While exploring the town, my friend Jim B and I accessed the church through this gate, located just behind the east end of El Portal Morelos. 

Following the military conquest of the area, the Tecos of Hostotipac were forced to give up their native religion and convert to Catholicism. This was known as the Spiritual Conquest. Those who "backslid" and covertly continued to practice their ancient religion were severely punished. The Tecos responded by hiding images of their ancestral gods within the walls of the Templo they were building. This enabled them to silently pray to their old gods while outwardly following the rituals of the Spanish priests. According to one legend, this led to dire consequences.

Apparently one of the priests discovered this "devil worship" and followed the offending Tecos to where they worked. At the mouth of the mine, he took off his sandals and clapped them together, while pronouncing a curse on the workers. The mine's roof immediately collapsed, killing some and permanently trapping the rest. As the story goes, on stormy nights their screams can still be heard. In addition, the spirits of the Teco miners haunt the church each year on Holy Friday.

A statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe stands in the church atrium. The propagation of the legend of the Virgen de Guadalupe was one of the great breakthroughs in Spanish colonial evangelism. This was the first apparition of the Virgin Mary in the New World. The event was especially important to indigenous people because she was dark-skinned and spoke Nahuatl, the language shared by many different native groups, including the Tecos. Further, the person who encountered her was a recently-converted Aztec who participated in several miracles attributed to her. 

Because of these unusual circumstances, and because she was encountered at the ruined temple of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, the Virgin of Guadalupe became the subject of a rather bitter debate within the early colonial Church. The Augustinian and Dominican friars wanted to accept her as legitimate. On the other hand, the Franciscans denounced her as a fraud and a covert way to worship Tonantzin. In the end, the Augustinians and Dominicans prevailed because voluntary native conversions skyrocketed after word of her miraculous appearance spread rapidly through the native population. Practicality triumphed over purity.

The nave of the Templo. This area of a church is called a nave ("ship" in Spanish) because the arched ceiling resembles the interior of the upturned hull of a ship. At the far end of the nave is the main altar, while the walls on either side contain religious statues and paintings. The person approaching the altar is Jim B. While parts of the exterior of the church still retain the original 17th century Baroque style, the interior displays the Neo-Classical style that became popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

In 1810, after the church had been in use for more than 200 years, a local priest named Remigio Sánchez Porres, complained that its condition was "not only indecent, but useless." Eight years later, in 1818, he directed the Templo's first modifications. By then, Baroque had long gone out of style, so the remodeling was done in Neo-Classic. Fifty years later, in 1868, a strong earthquake nearly destroyed the structure, so even more of the old Baroque features were replaced by Neo-Classic.

View toward the rear of the church showing the ceiling and choir loft. While Neo-Classic architecture can sometimes be ornate, Baroque tends toward over-the-top extravagance, with every square inch of available space covered with decorative elements.

In 1871, further deterioration resulted in still another remodel. The erection of the steeple in 1884 added an entirely new feature. This was followed, in 1886, with the  completion of the frontispiece (entrance facade). A final touch was added in 1897, when the ribbed vaults over the nave were constructed. That all these changes could be afforded in the 19th century is a testament to the wealth pouring out of the mines.

The central figure of the main altar is a statue of San Sebastian. Usually, the person to whom a Mexican church is dedicated will occupy the central place on its main altar. Most often, this will be the Virgin Mary or one of the saints. Here, San Sebastian appears both as a statue in a glass case, as well as in the mural above the altar. The Neo-Classic features of the altar include tall corinthian columns, topped by ornate capitals, supporting a triangular pediment. On either side of the altar are pilasters (false columns) which are decorative and not meant to carry any weight. 

If this were a Baroque altar, there would be many more niches filled with statues and paintings and the columns would be in the spiraling Solomonic style. Every square inch of wall space would be filled with floral carvings with the faces of numerous cherubs peeking out. It is probably that just such a highly decorated altar occupied this space before Remigio Sánchez Porres ordered the 1818 remodel. 

The mural above the main altar shows the martyrdom of San Sebastian. Although I am not Catholic and not even religious, I have always been fascinated by the stories associated with the Church's almost innumerable saints. San Sebastian is one of the more unusual saints because he was martyred twice. It seems the first one didn't take. Sebastian lived from 256-288 AD, during the late Roman Empire. This was a period when Christians endured severe repression by the Roman authorities. 

Sebastian was a captain in the Emperor Diocletian's Praetorian Guard when he secretly converted to Christianity. His religious activity was discovered however, and Diocletian ordered him tied to a tree and shot full of arrows. The result of his first martyrdom can be seen in the mural above. However, his executioners left before he was dead and a woman living nearby rescued him and nursed him back to health. Once he had recovered, Sebastian decided to give martyrdom another try. He waited in the street until the Emperor came by in a procession and publicly denounced the repression of Christians. 

Diocletion was, no doubt, surprised at this sudden resurrection of an executed man. At his order, Sebastian was seized, beaten to death, and his body thrown in a sewer. This time the Emperor's effort was successful. In the Middle Ages, people began to believe that San Sebastian could offer protection against plagues. The history of such beliefs dates back to the ancient Greco-Roman tradition that the god Apollo could halt plagues. This belief in this miraculous ability was later transferred by Medieval Europeans to San Sebastian. Spanish Catholics then carried the stories with them to plague-ridden colonial Mexico, where San Sebastian became very popular.

A pulpit stands on one side of the nave. This position is typical in Catholic churches. Protestant churches, in contrast, have the pulpit at the front of the nave. The term "pulpit" comes from the Latin pulpitum, meaning platform or staging. It is a raised platform, reached by a set of stairs, from which sermons or other important liturgical statements are made. 

Often the pulpit will be hexagonal, as is the one above, with each panel highly decorated. Catholic pulpits tend to have small, separate roofs above them, often in the same hexagonal shape. The little roofs are not just decorative, but help amplify the voice of the speaker. Pulpits are believed to have their origins in ancient Jewish synagogues, where they were called bemahs. 

A statue of San José holding Jesus stands in one of the side panels of the nave. Very little is said about José in the Bible, so most of his legend comes from later writings. José, a humble carpenter, married the already-pregnant Mary so save her life. At the time, the punishment for pregnancy outside of marriage was to be stoned to death. José planned to quietly divorce her after she gave birth. However, he changed his mind after an angel tipped him off as to the real nature of the infant she was carrying. 

José is mentioned in the Bible only a few other times and then only in two of the four Gospels. All the rest of the many stories about him were invented centuries later. San José is the Patron of Mexico and some other countries. In 1870, he was declared Patron of the whole Catholic Church. During the 20th century San José became entangled in international politics. This occurred in 1955 when Pope Pius XII declared May 1 as the Feast Day of San José. The Pope's aim was to create a counter-celebration to oppose the traditional May 1 International Workers' Day.

This completes Part 3 of my San Sebastian del Oeste series. I hope you have enjoyed it. If you would like to leave any thoughts or comments, please do so in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments box, PLEASE leave your email address so that I can respond.

Hasta luego, Jim