In this posting, we'll look at the Santuario's exterior and interior features and also visit the small but stunning Edificio de la Torre. I'll relate a little of the history of both along with some interesting explanations about the origins of choir lofts, church pews, pulpits, and confessional booths.
View of the facade and its two huge steeples. The main body of the Santuario was begun in 1805 and completed in 1819. The project was initiated by Captain Don Pedro Carlos de Godoy, with the assistance of Don José María Patron, the newly appointed Father Prefect. Most of the construction occurred during Independencia (the Independence War).
The Gothic main gate was added in 1880. The gate was the work of Padre Andrés V. Lopez*, who is also responsible for other changes during that period. Most of the Santuario was built with sandstone, but the gate was carved from cantera, a soft volcanic rock often used for decorative purposes. The ornate decoration and the tall, thin pointed arches are characteristic of the Gothic style.
The south entrance of the Santuario is almost as grand as the front. This side entrance faces onto Calle Aurora. The gate is also Gothic and is more of Padre Lopez' work. The large dome of the church is visible above. Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad's architect was Tomás Villanueva, a very experienced and knowledgable man.
The Gothic-style south gate. Once again, the gate seems a bit "over the top" given the paltry size of the space into which it opens. Still, it certainly draws you in, which is its purpose. The tall, iron-studded, wooden side door of the side entrance is built so that it can either be opened completely or entered by one or another of the two small doors at its bottom.
Nuestra Señora de la Soledad is adorned with a halo and a beautiful gown. The cult of Our Lady of Solitude originated in Spain and is a special form of devotion practiced in Spanish-speaking countries. "Solitude" refers to the solitary grief of Mary on Holy Saturday, when her son Jesus still lay in his tomb.
The dome's ceiling is octagonal. It covers the area directly above the place where the main nave passes through the transept to form the latin cross, an architectural arrangement found in many Catholic churches. Four arches support the dome and in their corners are four triangular paintings.
In one of the triangular paintings, Mary stands over the body of Jesus. Above her is the Spanish text Hazme sentir, oh madre, tu dolor (Make me feel, o mother, your pain). As a photographer of architecture, I was particularly attracted by the convergence of all these straight and curved lines.
Chapel of the Virgen de Guadalupe. This is one of two chapels that are located at either end of the transept. A painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe hangs above the altar. On either side are two white-clad figures, Jesus on the right and an unknown saint holding a cross on the left. On the altar below the Virgin is a photo of Pope John Paul II, who served from 1978 to 2005 and is much-beloved in Mexico.
A series of glass chandeliers hangs from the ceiling of the nave. The ceiling itself resembles the ribs of an upturned boat, hence the term nave, which means "ship or vessel" in Spanish. The ribs are another example of the Gothic style. The view here is toward the entrance of the Santuario. The balcony with the railing above the entrance is the choir loft. In many colonial-era Catholic churches, the choir sits above and behind the congregation.
The choir loft's organ was installed in 1844 and has 28 registers. I was brought up in a Protestant church where the choir sat in the apse area, behind and to one side of the pastor's pulpit. When I began photographing Mexico's colonial-era churches, the location of choir lofts seemed odd to me. Looking into it, I found out that this practice was not ancient, but came into use in the Baroque era (1600-1750).
A beautifully-carved pulpit hangs on the nave's side wall. The wooden canopy overhead is called a sounding board and serves to amplify the speaker's voice. In Catholic churches, pulpits are reserved for clergy when they deliver sermons. While preaching has always been important in Catholicism, it got a real boost during the Middle Ages. The Franciscan and Dominican Orders grew rapidly through preaching to large crowds.
Edificio de la Torre
View of the Edificio de la Torre through the Sanctuario's main gate. The Edificio de la Torre (De la Torre building) stands directly across the street from the front of the church. The name of the building is sometimes translated as the Tower Building, but this is an error. It was named after an 18th century philanthropist.
Exterior features
Delays caused by the war probably contributed to the length of time it took to complete the initial phase. Various improvements were added later. The north (right) steeple was completed in 1860 and the atrium was added in 1877. The south steeple was finally finished in 1885, using the north steeple as its model.
While critics admired the gate, some felt it was too grand for the small atrium into which it opens. Early colonial atriums were usually large, open-air spaces in front of a church, enclosed by a fence or low wall. They were used for evangelizing indigenous people in groups too large to fit inside churches. By 1877, when this atrium was built, nearly everyone was already Catholic. So, the atrium here appears somewhat vestigial.
*El Estado de Zacatecas, Instituto Zacatecano de Cultura Ramon Lopez Velarde, Gobierno del Estado, 1998-2004.
Villanueva used as his model a famous Spanish pilgrimage site, the Catedral de Santiago Compostela which draws visitors from around the world. Over the centuries, the Santuario has incorporated several architectural styles, including Baroque, Neo-Classic, Mudejar (Arabic), and Gothic.
The site on which the Santuario was built had previously been occupied by a hospital and chapel for indigenous people. Such hospitals were a typical feature of early colonial religious architecture. Although epidemics ravaged indigenous communities from the earliest days of the Conquest, the hospitals' primary focus was more about evangelization than healthcare.
Such hospitals were usually organized and run by one of the religious orders, often the Franciscans. As the Age of Evangelism faded into history, the hospitals took on important economic and political roles. However, corruption crept in and, by the late 18th century, many of them were closed. This may have been among the reasons why the hospital was torn down and replaced by the the Santuario .
The apse contains the altar and statue of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad. The apse of a church is located at the opposite end of the nave from the main entrance. It is usually semi-circular and is the main focal point of the church. Nuestra Señora is in the center of the back wall, with statues of her parents St. Joachim and St. Anne to her left and right. A simple statue of Jesus on the cross is at the very top of the structure. It seems almost an afterthought.
The Apse and Altar
The veneration of Mary was especially intense in Medieval Spain and the conquistadors brought that with them to the New World. Nuestra Señora de la Soledad is the patroness of grieving mothers and those who are lonely. During colonial times she became the patroness of Jerez, as well as other Mexican states and towns.
Various legends are associated with this statue. One involves its arrival at Jerez in 1569, shortly after the city's founding. Two travelers with a heavily loaded burro stopped in town for the night. In the morning, the men and burro had vanished, but the cargo remained. When it was opened, Nuestra Señora's bust and hands were discovered. In the 19th century, Nuestra Señora was credited with stopping a local cholera epidemic. Still later, she is said to have ended a drought.
When General Trinidad Garcia de la Cadena visited Jerez in 1872, he credited Nuestra Señora with assisting in the struggles against the U.S. invasion (1846-48) and the French Occupation (1862-67). During the Revolution (1910-17), General Panfilo Natera was surrounded and ran out of ammunition. A legend says that Nuestra Señora took his horse's reins and led him to safety. For these exploits she has been dubbed La Generala (the Lady General).
The Transept
The Virgen de Guadalupe is the Patron Saint of Mexico. She first appeared to a newly-converted Aztec man in 1531. He claimed to have encountered her in the ruins of a temple to Tonantzin, the Aztec earth goddess. His account of the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe was considered very controversial at the time.
The reasons for controversy included the following: that she first appeared to an indigenous person rather than a Spaniard; that she spoke perfect Nahuatl (the Aztec language); and that she was dark-skinned, like an indigenous woman. All this made her wildly popular among the poorer classes, but some in the Church (particularly the Franciscans) initially declared her a fake and a way for native people to continue to worship the old gods.
The Ceiling and Choir Loft
In previous centuries, choirs had been exclusively men and boys. During the Baroque period, operatic music performed by choirs that included women became popular. However, mixed choirs created a problem because women were not allowed in the sanctuary during liturgical services. The solution was to remove the choir to the organ loft, an area above and behind the sanctuary.
This situation lasted until the 1903-1914 reign of staunchly conservative Pope Pius X. He wanted to restore "sacred music", particularly Gregorian chants. Accordingly, he abolished mixed choirs and restored the all-male version. This allowed the choir back into the sanctuary area. However the loft with the organ is still called the choir loft.
The Pulpit and Confessional
The use of pulpits dates back to the raised areas of pre-Christian Jewish synagogues and to Greek and Roman speaking platforms. For the first 1400 years of Christianity, churches had no seating and everyone simply stood during services. Fixing the pulpit on the side wall in a raised position enabled the speaker's voice to be heard more evenly than would be the case for one located in the apse. However, once front-facing seating became the norm, side-wall pulpits declined in use.
The arched doors of this confessional are intricately carved. A cross with various symbols relating to the crucifixion is framed by two angels peeking through foliage. Unlike stand-alone confessionals, this one is set into the wall, conserving space and decorating the wall at the same time. Like pews, confessional boxes arrived fairly late in Church history.
It wasn't until the early 13th century that Pope Innocent III required that all Catholics must confess at least annually. Mandatory confessions were viewed as a way to exert control over the faithful and to fight heresy. It was even later, in 1576, that Cardinal Charles Boromeo invented the first confessional box. Its design was aimed at thwarting physical contact between the confessor and the penitent.
Pantaleón de la Torre y Salcedo (1744-1799) was born, lived, and finally died in Jerez. He was a wealthy man who sponsored education and cultural projects. In 1795, near the end of his life, he donated the land on this site and set aside funds for the construction of a girls' school, which operated for 70 years.
View of the southwest corner of Edificio de la Torre. The building is so striking in its design that it has become an iconic image of Jerez. After 70 years the girls' school was demolished and replaced by the present building. Construction lasted from 1894 to 1896. The work was done by master stonemason Dámaso Muñetón, the same man who built the north steeple of the Santuario.
Muñetón's work incorporates Gothic and Mudejar styles. The finely-carved cantera stone walls were completed in 1895. The Edificio's windows were crafted using lead and rivets rather than solder and still contain the original handmade glass. The work on them was finished in 1896.
A local vaquero pauses for my photograph. Until recently, Edificio de la Torre functioned as the Jerez Institute of Culture and housed a public library. During our visit, the building was closed for renovation. Soon, it will open as an art gallery.
This completes Part 4 of my Jerez series. I hope you enjoyed it and, if so, that you will leave any thoughts or questions in the Comments section below, or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments, please leave your email address so that I may respond in a timely manner.
Hasta luego, Jim
Cool pictures !
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