114
In 1579, almost a half century after the featherwork Mass
of Saint Gregory was created in Mexico City, carrying
something of the aspirations that its patron, don Diego
de Alvarado Huanitzin, had for the city in its text and
imagery, another representation related to Mexico City
was being published in Europe by Franciscan writer Diego
Valadés. 1 In the often-reproduced full-page engraving from
Valadés’s Rhetorica christiana (figure 6.1), we witness a vast
enclosed courtyard meant to represent metaphorically the
evangelizing project of the Franciscans, one of the three
religious orders charged by the Spanish Crown with the
conversion of New Spain’s indigenous peoples. At center
is a large architectural maquette representing the flawless
primitive church, first founded in Rome, being carried into
this “inovo indiarum orbe” (new world of the Indies) and
borne aloft by Franciscan friars. Around them, within the
vast enclosed courtyard, identified as “forum” by the top
inscription, we see seven scenes of Franciscans teaching
tightly packed groups of indigenous people and ministering
to them during life’s great passages: at bottom right, friars
administer the sacraments of baptism and marriage; at top
center, a burial is being held. Three more scenes of sacra-
mental practices take place in the arcaded spaces at bottom,
as we see confessions, communion, and extreme unction
of the dying. The rigid symmetry of the composition, with
temple at center, small domed buildings at the corners, and
linear borders of trees set parallel to the perimeter walls,
makes clear the order of this world and its inhabitants,
as well as the spiritual authority of the Franciscans, who
dominate their native charges.
This representation of space found its counterpart
within the lived space of the Monastery of San Francisco,
the great complex that the friars founded in 1525, soon after
their arrival in Mexico City. San Francisco, like Valadés’s
ideal, had an enormous expanse of courtyard, its enclos-
ing walls measuring some 200 yards by 150 yards. For all
its activity, Valadés’s print shows us very little permanent
architecture—just the domed corner structures, the wall,
and the great seven-naved arcade, where the majority of
sacramental activities are concentrated, that runs along the
bottom of the sheet (it has been turned outward toward
the viewer to allow one to see the activities within). In
its early days, San Francisco also had very few structures
except for the great chapel of San José de los Naturales that
lay within it, which the Franciscan chronicler Gerónimo
de Mendieta described as “a chapel with seven naves, and
seven corresponding altars, oriented to the east. The main
altar, set at the top of steps, is in the center, with three
altars on each side.” 2 Within these naves, as in the image,
the Mass was held and the sacraments dispensed to the
enormous indigenous population of the city.
San Francisco was the nerve center of the Franciscan
enterprise in the New World, not only home to many
extraordinary religious men, but also a conceptual space
that was symbolic of the larger Franciscan mission, whose
contours are expressed in the Valadés image. The walled
precinct underscored the perceived necessity of the separa-
tion of this Indo-Christian space from the rest of the world,
and we see it inhabited in the print only by Franciscans and
indigenous men and women. But of course, San Francisco