Patron Saints and Printed Prayers: Mexico City Novenas in an Age of War and Revolution, 1808–21

Mexico City entered a period of political and social turmoil in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808. As its inhabitants wrestled with ideas of popular sovereignty they faced periods of drought, famine, and epidemic disease. While historians have used a wide range of primary sources to understand the final years of Spanish rule in New Spain, little attention has been given to popular religious texts such as novenas. Thousands of these pocket-sized prayer booklets were printed across Spanish America from 1665 until the Mexican Declaration of Independence in 1821. These portable texts are dedicated to Jesus Christ, the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, angels, and a wide range of saints with reputations for healing, divine protection, and other prodigious wonders like warding off drought and earthquakes. At least 456 editions of novenas were printed in Spanish American cities with printing presses between 1808 and 1821, and Mexico City printers were responsible for most of this production with at least 310 editions. In this paper, I focus on thirty-eight of these editions that were printed for the thirteen patron saints (San Hipólito, San José, Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Felipe de Jesús, to name a few) of the viceregal capital elected by the cabildo and the four advocations of the Virgin Mary (Remedios, Bala, Guadalupe, Piedad) that became known as the four bastions of Mexico City. I argue that printing patterns of novenas in Mexico City offers a more complex picture of the links between religious practices and the war for independence, one that moves beyond the well-studied conflicts between the Virgin of Remedies (gachupina) and the Virgin of Guadalupe (criolla) as symbols of royalist and patriotic factions.