Category: Saintly Stories Nuns Never Told Me

Postcard from Guadalajara, Mexico: La Zaponita worked miracles; others prophesized doom

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A vintage postal stamp commemorating the centenary of Guadalajara, Mexico, featuring an illustration of the Templo de Zapopan, dated 1542 and 1942.

Above: Detail of an outdoor sculpture by Javier Marin (1962-) on a plaza in Zapopan.

When the sculpture opens its eyes, it already has a soul.”

Sculptor Javier Marin

Arriving barefoot in what was then a village outside of Guadalajara, Spanish-born Fray Antonio de Segovia (1485-1570) bore a doll-size figure of the Virgin Mary around his neck. This effigy was believed to protect him on his journeys thoughout the Tonallan Kingdom as he sought to convert the Native Americans under the rule of Queen Cihualpilli Tzapotzinco. The queen herself was among his converts, and Fray Antonio established an abbey and presented the converts of this village with the statuette he had worn for ten years.

The statue was made by Purépecha Indians in Pátzcuaro using traditional methods. First, a skeleton was constructed out of sugar canes and cornstalks. Then, a special paste or dough called tatzingueni was applied to flesh out the figure. This tatzingueni was made of corn stalk pulp and the juice of a local orchid which gave the paste a latex quality and would prevent the finished product from rotting or spoiling.”

“The Virgin of Zapopan,” Robert Bitto, Mexico Unexplained

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Postcard From Madrid, Spain: Bewitched and bedeviled

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Vintage Spanish stamp depicting a witch flying with children, inscribed with 'Quinta Sevilla Goya' and 'Correos Aéreos España'.

Above: Detail of “Allegoric Capricio,” Eugenio Lucas Velazquez (1817-1870), 1852, Lazaro Galdiano Museum.

Vispera de Todos los Santos. The hallowed eve preceding two holy days in the Catholic Church: All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Or, for the superstitious, La Noche de Brujas, when the witches fly.

Today, it appears Spain has succumbed to the highly contagious American-style celebration of Halloween. With all its horror-film-like bloody mess.

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Postcard from Catania, Sicily: Ambling about Acireale

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A colorful vintage postcard featuring Mount Etna, with vineyards in the foreground and a bright blue sky.

Above: A version of a negroni created in honor of Mount Etna at Moro Acireale superimposed over a view of the simmering volcano in the distance.

Ambling sounded appealing, and, with a tenth of the population of bustling Catania, nearby Acireale beckoned. The predominant style of its architecture is Late Sicilian Baroque, sometimes referred to as “Earthquake Baroque.”

Then came an earthquake so horrible and ghastly that the soil undulated like the waves of a stormy sea, and the mountains danced as if drunk, and the city collapsed in one miserable moment….”

Account from an eyewitness to the 1693 Val di Noto Earthquake, The Genesis of Noto: An Eighteenth-Century Sicilian City, Stephen Tobriner, University of California Press, 1982

At the start of the new year in 1693, Mother Nature cursed most of southeastern Sicily with a triple whammy: Etna erupted; an earthquake believed to have measured well above 7 on the Richter Scale struck; and a tsunami hit. One way or another, more than 60,000 perished in the disaster.

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