Mexico: monasteries - 01

Former Augustinian
monastery
Cuitzeo, Mexico

Although these ancient Catholic structures in Mexico are for obvious reasons often called “fortress monasteries,” some architectural historians claim that their design was more influenced by examples in Spanish architecture than by any particular need to construct ecclesiastical edifices in a defensive style because of the occasional possibility of hostile arrows of the Mexican tribes.

The Spanish priest-designers and their Hispanic architects modelled their work on the churches they knew and remembered from the centuries-long campaign to drive the Moors from Spain.

(Even so, one early church in Mexico, the Augustinian monastery at Yuriria, did safely rebuff the arrows of a Chichimec attack.)

Every early convento (religious community residence and public church) conformed to a standard plan -- a rectangular blocky church with the residential wing enclosing a garden and a walled atrium, i.e., a courtyard extending like a welcome away from the monastery out to the community.

The fortress-like walls and towers echo Moorish decorative traditions and military methods. However, even if for the Spanish priests the castle-like top-knots to their churches represented the safety or strength of a fortress -- although perhaps only in its church-militant imagery -- it cannot have meant that to the native Mexican tribes, who had fought their battles in very different manner.

Whatever the real intent of the church priest-designers, the castle churches are readily recognizable, and are sure evidence of the very earliest church architecture in Mexico. They certainly gave the native Mexicans a conviction that the Spanish newcomers intended their Church to be permanently present there.

Ancient Augustinian monasteries

The earliest Augustinian places on the North American continent were in Mexico over 450 years ago.

This Augnet page introduces a few of such places in Mexico.

Christian holy spaces in Mexico were created soon after the conquest by Indians working under the direction of friars - Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian.

A very small number of friars converted millions of Indians in a short time, primarily in the thirty five years between 1525 and 1560.

As late as 1536, fifteen years after the capture of the great city of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlán, there were only about sixty members of these religious Orders in New Spain (Mexico).

In the year 1559, which was near the completion of the campaign of making the Christian religion universal in Mexico, there were still under eight hundred of them there.

As the 16th century progressed, monasteries and missions great and small arose in every Mexican town and village.

They were highly visible centres of the new Catholic religion and Spanish rule.

Today, over four hundred years later, many of these venerable buildings still stand. Within their walls are exquisite altars decorated with gold, religious sculptures and folk art.

In many cases, there were spectacular early religious murals, painted by Indian artists under the direction of members of the Order of Saint Augustine from Spain.

They have come to light in recent years, aften having been hidden for centuries beneath later layers of lime or paint.

With historical developments in Mexico during the past centuries, none of these national treasures are any longer in Augustinian possession.

There are now, however, newer Augustinian houses in some of the towns and cities in question.

There are two Augustinian Provinces in Mexico.

(Continued on the next page.)
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Mexico: monasteries - 01