Saint Juan Diego's tilma

The Nican mopohua is the account of the apparition on 12 December 1531 on Peteyac Hill. Written in an Aztec dialect from the Mexico City region, very probably shortly after the events, it also relates the discovery of the image of the Virgin Mary on Juan Diego's cloak (called a tilma). When the Indian opened it to present the Bishop of Mexico City with the flowers he had picked from a dry field in the middle of winter, at the request of the Virgin, and which were intended to serve as proof of the authenticity of the apparition to the Bishop, the Virgin represented on the cloth was revealed to the two protagonists and the other people present. More than the blooming roses, which had already convinced him of the truth of Juan Diego's claims, it is easy to see how this image amazed the bishop. Today, we can still contemplate the image, just as the Bishop of Mexico did almost five hundred years ago. The fact that the image has survived to the present day, and the remarkable discoveries that its detailed analysis has made possible, explain and confirm for us the supernatural nature of the apparition, and show the"beautiful and noble lady" who created it.

Detail of the tilma of Guadalupe / © CC0/wikimedia

Reasons to believe:

The cloth woven from ayate (agave fibre), which, because of its fragility, does not usually last more than around twenty years, was four hundred and sixty years old when it was examined in 1979 by two American scientists, Philip Serna Callahan and Jody Brant Smith. The tilma is now almost five hundred years old and has not been altered.

The image has been analysed. Richard Kuhn, a German chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1938, analysed fragments of the tilma 's fabric containing elements of the image, and found that the analysed fibres contained neither a primer (which is essential when painting on an uneven surface to prevent the colour from coming off and falling out) nor any pigment of plant, animal, mineral or synthetic origin.This suggests that the image was not painted by a human hand.

What's more, the colours in the image have not faded. Yet the image was exposed for one hundred and sixty years to the light of many devotional candles, before it was placed high up. Time, the ultraviolet radiation from the candles, the hands and objects that pilgrims have placed against it, dust and the damp wall should have discoloured and altered the pigments.

In 1979, two American scientists, Philip Serna Callahan and Jody Brant Smith, used infrared techniques to uncover the layers of paint hidden beneath the visible paint in a painting. They found that, apart from a few very rare subsequent additions of paint (following the stain produced by the acid), neither the type of pigments making up the image, nor the permanence of their luminosity, nor the brilliance of the colours could be explained. There is no preliminary drawing, no underlying preparation, no retouching: the colour is uniform and brilliant.

An enlarged photograph taken in 1929 by the photographer Alfonso Marcué González revealed the reflection of a bearded man in the Virgin's eyes. This discovery did not come to light until 1951, when a draughtsman, José Carlos Salinas, made the same observation in a photograph taken at natural size by another photographer, Jesus Castano. Several ophthalmologists then studied the phenomenon. First and foremost, it should be pointed out that, in the image of the tilma, the Virgin's eyes are 7 to 8 mm long: the coarse fabric of the cloak probably makes it impossible to assume that they were made by human hands. In 1956, Dr Javier Torroella Bueno was the first ophthalmologist to establish that the reflections observed, placed in different locations for different eyes, conformed to the laws of optics as applied to the human eye. This process became known in photography in the twentieth century, but painters were not aware of it until then. One of Dr Torroella Bueno's peers, Jaime Palacios, made a similar statement in 1957.

Javier Torroella Bueno has also shown that the Virgin's eyes exhibit triple reflection, which can only be observed in living eyes and was discovered in the 19th century. Another ophthalmologist, Rafael Torija Lavoignet, reached the same conclusions after studying the image from 1956 to 1958. He pointed out that the location of the reflections in the eyes was so precise, albeit highly complex, that it could not possibly be attributed to chance. He was also surprised to discover that, despite being represented on a flat, opaque surface, the Virgin's eyes react to the light of the ophthalmoscope as if they were alive: the iris acquires brilliance and depth. The doctor and surgeon Jorge Kuri also testified to this latest discovery in 1975.

The invention of digital technology led to yet more discoveries. José Aste Tönsmann, an engineer with a degree from Cornell University in the United States, was able to digitise the Virgin's eyes on the image, using the equipment he used for his work at IBM. His research was carried out in two stages: from 1979 to 1982, then from 1987 to 1997. He was able to enlarge the details by up to 2,000 times. In the process, he discovered thirteen tiny images. The story of the Nican mopohua tells us that, during the meeting with the Bishop of Mexico, on the day that Juan Diego brought him the flowers he had picked, other people were present. The reflection of their silhouettes remains visible in the image, in the eyes of the Virgin, probably because it was at the moment when Juan Diego presented the flowers to the bishop, and thus unfurled his tilma,that the image was printed. Using digital simulation techniques, José Aste Tönsmann was able to identify where the Virgin was standing at that moment in relation to the other figures. Finally, in 2010, mathematician Fernando Oleja Llanes demonstrated the exact correlation, from one eye to the next, of the positions and dimensions of the figures' silhouettes.

Summary:

Juan told his bishop that a woman who had appeared to him as the Mother of God had sent him to ask for a church to be built. The bishop listened but remained sceptical. At the Virgin Mary's instigation, it was the armful of flowers picked in the cold of winter in a field where thorns and thistles were struggling to grow among the rocks, and above all the image of Our Lady inscribed on the fabric of the tilma, that ended up convincing the bishop. Mary's request was granted: the bishop built the chapel she had asked for.

What does this image look like? It shows a young girl of great beauty, with a pale face, smiling and benevolent. Her hands are clasped in prayer; her head, slightly tilted and bent to the right, is covered with a blue-green veil covered with golden stars that falls to her feet. Her dress, cinched at the waist by a narrow belt tied with black fabric, is white and decorated with floral and gold arabesques. She is standing on a crescent moon supported by an angel, and is completely enveloped in a nimbus and sun rays that seem to escape from her body. Contrary to certain critics who claimed that this representation was merely a substitute for images of traditional Aztec divinities, and therefore probably the fruit of the imagination of ingenious men wishing to use this means to more easily lead the indigenous populations to Christianity, the image of "the noble beautiful lady", as Juan Diego called her, cannot to be found in any Aztec sculpture, painting or manuscript. What's more, it is a specifically Christian image, since it shows the Virgin pregnant with the Son of God. Indeed, it was under the title of "Mother of God" that she presented herself to Juan Diego. However, this representation does not belong to any of the iconographic schools of Christianity. The features it presents are therefore original and, from this point of view, new.

The fabric of the tilma is woven from ayate (agave fibre). A study carried out by Isaac Ochoterena in 1946 at the Institute of Biology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) specified that the variety of agave used was "agave popotule". Because of its fragility, agave cloth does not usually last more than around twenty years. But it was 460 years old when two American scientists, Philip Serna Callahan and Jody Brant Smith, examined it in 1979. It is now almost five hundred years old and has not been altered. There is no varnish to protect the image, which is neither faded nor cracked.

We have already described a number of scientific facts discovered during in-depth examinations of the tilma image. There is another significant fact to mention: the arrangement of the stars on the Virgin's mantle. It was a priest familiar with Nahuatl culture, Mario Rojas Sánchez, who intuited the reason for the asymmetrical arrangement of the sixty-four stars. The indigenous Indians of Central America only painted or drew true events. In Aztec culture, representations had to correspond to realities. Father Rojas therefore asked an astronomer, Juan Homero Hernández Illescas, to check whether the position of the stars on the mantle corresponded to an observable phenomenon in the sky. If his intuition proved to be correct, the constellations that could be seen on the day the image was printed on the tilma, in the presence of the bishop and others, on 12 December 1531, would be reproduced on the cloak. On that day, at 10.40 in the morning, the winter solstice occurred - with a ten-day difference due to the Julian calendar still in use. For the Aztecs, the winter solstice was of great significance: it marked the return to life of the sun, whose brilliance was prolonged and increased. A comparison of the image of the tilma with the maps of the sky from the Greenwich observatory corroborated Father Rojas' idea, but in two particular ways: the constellations appear concavely distorted, in the same way that the planisphere is distorted when projected onto a two-dimensional plane. What's more, the constellations appear inverted in the image, as if the observer were looking at them not from the earth but from the universe. Would this not be how God sees them from above? Is not the astral sky then a sign of the divine sky, and the new sun that accompanies the winter solstice a sign of the sun of justice, the eternal light that is Jesus Christ?

It is clear from these investigations that neither the origin nor the permanence, nor the perfection of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe can be explained naturally. This is precisely the definition of a miracle. We can therefore consider that the image left on the tilma authenticates the message, in substance, of "the noble and beautiful lady", whom Juan Diego reported to have said: "I am the Mother of God and you are my children. Pray to me and I will protect you and keep you in Jesus Christ, who is God and loves you."

Fr. Vincent-Marie Thomas holds a doctorate in philosophy.

Beyond reasons to believe:

The golden ratio, a measure of geometric perfection, was discovered by Euclid in the third century BC. In a rectangle of length L and width l, it is defined by the following formula: L/l = (L+l)/L. Thus, the golden ratio is obtained when the quotient of the length by the width equals the quotient of the sum of the two by the length. The remarkably harmonious geometric proportions found in nature correspond to the golden ratio. This proportion is also known as the "divine proportion" because it cannot be explained rationally and seems to have been created by the hand of God. Imitating nature according to its classical definition, art models its creations on this proportion. An astronomer whose name we have already mentioned, Juan Homero Hernández Illescas, noted that the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is perfectly balanced because it is composed according to the golden proportion. Doesn't this property also suggest its divine origin?

Going further:

Guadalupe Mysteries: Deciphering the Code by Grzegorz Gorny and Janusz Rosikon, Ignatius Press, June 28, 2016

More information:

Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, La Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego en las informaciones jurídicas de 1666, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez, 2002, 552 p., here p. 487-508.
Jean Mathiot and Jean-Pierre Rousselle, Guadalupe: La Dame du Ciel. Deux prodiges : le Récit - l'Image, Pierre Téqui, 2005, 132 p., here p. 129-151.
Fernando Oleja Llanes, Música en la imagen de Guadalupe, México, Instituto Superior de Estudios Guadalupanos (ISEG), 2010.
Miguel Sánchez, Imagen de la Virgen Maria Madre de Dios de Guadalupe, milagrosamente aparecida en la ciudad de Mexico, Mexico City, Viuda de B. Calderon, 1648, 192 p.
Fidel González Fernández, Guadalupe: pulso y corazón de un pueblo: El Acontecimiento Guadalupano, cimiento de la fe y de la cultura americana, Encuentro, April 2005, 552 p., here in Chapter VI: "La tilma de Juan Diego", pp. 143-185.
Fidel González Fernández, Eduardo Chávez Sánchez and José Luis Guerrero Rosado, El encuentro de la Virgen de Guadalupe y Juan Diego, Libreria De Porrua Hermanos Y, 2001, 608 p.
Juan Homero Hernández Illescas, La Virgen de Guadalupe y la proporción dorada, Centro de Estudos Guadalupanos, 1999, 92 p.
Mario Rojas Sanchez and Juan Homero Hernández Illescas, Las estrellas del manto de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Francisco Mendez Oteo ed, 1970.
Torcuato Luca de Tena Brunet, " Une peinture scientifiquement inexplicable: l'image de la Vierge de Guadalupe ", L'homme nouveau, 16 May 1982.
José Aste Tönsmann, Mensaje de sus Ojos, México, Instituto Superior de Estudios Guadalupanos (ISEG), 2011. François Brune presents the conclusions of this book in Le dernier miracle de la Vierge du Mexique, JMG éditions, coll. "Mutation", 2021, 202 p.
" Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Americas honoured at the Vatican ", Vatican News, 11 December 2018 (read online).
The Instituto Superior de Estudios Guadalupanos (ISEG) has a website.