Monastery Icons Adds Earliest Guadalupe Story

Monastery Icons has added pages devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe to its website. Included is one of the earliest accounts of the apparition of Our Lady to Juan Diego by Antonio Valeriano.

Don Antonio Valeriano wrote one of the most important accounts of the appearance of Our Lady to Juan Diego in Mexico. He was a descendant of the royal house of Tacuba that stemmed from the Emperor Moctezuma II,and was a figure of great importance in the middle of the XVIth. century.

Born about 1520, he received education and enlightenment from the Franciscan friars in the College of the Holy Cross at Tlaltelolco.

He later became Governor of the Indians in Mexico city for thirty six years. He was remarkable for his understanding of men’s minds, thanks to which he became famous as an arbitrator between the two races. He had the aristocratic spirit of the high-class, intelligent Indian.

He had a profound knowledge of Latin and of spiritual and ecclesiastical matters. He inherited from his ancestors numerous hieroglyphs and documents on the Guadalupe tradition, referring to the appearances of the Most Holy Virgin in Tepeyac. Having known and had dealings with Juan Diego, Juan Bernardino, and Bishop Zumirraga as well, he was the first to write down the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Read his account of Our Lady’s appearance here.