Walking the Stations of the Cross, the Christian faithful re-create
the Passion, following the sorrowful path of Jesus Christ from
condemnation to crucifixion. While this devotion, now so popular in
the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations, first
emerged in Jerusalem and began spreading through Western Europe in
the fourteenth century, it did not assume its current form, and
earn the Church's formal recognition, until almost three centuries
later. It was at this time, in the last decades of the seventeenth
century, that a Franciscan friar in colonial Mexico translated a
devotional guide to the Stations of the Cross into the native
Nahuatl. This little handbook, Fray Agustin de Vetancurt's Via
crucis en mexicano, proved immensely popular, going through two
editions, but survives today only in a copy made by a native scribe
from Central Mexico. Reproduced here in Nahuatl and English,
Vetancurt's handbook offers unique insight into the history, the
practice, and the meaning of the Stations of the Cross in the New
World and the Old. With the Via crucis en mexicano as a starting
point, John F. Schwaller explores the history of the development
and spread of the Stations of the Cross, placing the devotion in
the context of the Catholic Reformation and the Baroque, the two
trends that exalted this type of religious expression. He describes
how the devotion, exported to New Spain in the sixteenth century,
was embraced by Spanish and natives alike. For the native
Americans, Schwaller suggests, the Via crucis resonated because of
its performative aspects, reminiscent of rituals and observances
from before the arrival of the Spanish. And for missionaries, the
devotion offered a means of deepening the faith of the newly
converted. In Schwaller's deft analysis-which extends from the
origins of the devotion, to the processions and public rituals of
the Mexica (Aztecs), to the text and illustrations of the Vetancurt
manuscript-the Via crucis en mexicano opens a window on the
practice and significance of the Stations of the Cross-and of
private devotions generally-in Mexico, Hispanic America, and around
the world.
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