UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN
The Relaciones Geográficas Map of Cholula
Recognizing the Sacred Meaning of the Great Pyramid to the Map and the City
Britiany Daugherty
AHIS 898
Space, Time, and Transformation
in Early Colonial Mexico
April 28, 2014
Friar Motolinía described the city of Cholula, a major population center in the PueblaTlaxcala Valley central Mexico, at the time of the Spanish arrival in 1519, as a ‘great sanctuary,
like another Rome.’1 The Nahua regarded it as the ‘holy city’ of the Mexica due to the fact that
it contained an innumerable amount of temples, at least three or four hundred (some described as
many as days of the year), but the number varies depending on the source, and the definite
number, it seems, never recorded.2 Cholula’s 1581 map, one of the seventy-one Relaciones
Geográficas maps illustrated by indigenous and Spanish artists, accompanied the text written by
the Spanish civil servant in Cholula, Gabriel Rojas (Fig. 1).3 The record, intended to detail the
history and geography of the newly acquired territory, fulfilled a request in 1577 by King Philip
II of Spain.4 On the surface, it appears as simple grid organized Spanish colonial map under the
influence of the Christian God.5 However, within the details of the map the ancient inspirations
of Cholula’s Great Pyramid or Tlachihualtepetl (“man-made water-mountain”) challenge the
dominant Christian translation.6
In the Relaciones map, the artist illustrates the assimilation of the city’s pre-Hispanic
history and the colonial Spanish influence, or what Barbara Mundy terms a ‘double
1
Fray Toribio de Benavente Motolinía,
History of the Indians of New Spain, translated by Francis
Borgia Steck, (Washington: Acad. of American Franciscan History, 1951), 72.
2
Sarah Aston Butler, Historic Churches in Mexico: With some of their Legends, (New York, Cincinnati: Abingdon
Press, 1915), 29.
3
Serge Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” In The Mestizo Mind: The Intellectual Dynamics of
Colonization and Globalization, 137-141, (New York: Routledge, 2002), 137.
4
Diantha Steinhilper, “Mapping Identity: Defining Community in the Culhuacán Map of the Relaciones
Ge gráf c .” P r
5
Barbara E. Mundy,
74 (2009): 11-32, 11.
e
g f e
ge
r gr
e
f
e e c
e
Page
1
Ge gráf c , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 127.
6
Geoffrey McCafferty, "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico," Ancient Mesoamerica. 7, no. 1
(1996): 1-17.
consciousness’ painting the map with the local audience in mind but also with the expectations
of the colonizers.7 While not centrally located on the map, the artist displayed the Great Pyramid
prominently as central to the history of the city within the details. Originally this research
focused on the significance of the church supplanting the indigenous temple that should have
been at the summit, however, the prominence of the Great Pyramid, allows it to stand alone,
regarded as a temple of worship and pilgrimage, physical temple or not. Illustrations of the
Great Pyramid in the Relaciones map, and others, do not include a temple or church at the
summit, but instead depict iconography of the importance of the Tlachihualtepetl. The inclusion
of several churches on the map illustrates colonial influences, but associates them with the
indigenous history by inserting the rounded hill behind each. The San Gabriel Convento also
links to the Great Pyramid, but through the sizeable arched portal de peregrinos. In this
research, I argue that the pyramid alone was, and is, at the heart of pilgrimage and worship in the
sacred city of Cholula, a fact that the Relaciones map’s creator recognized and sought to convey
in the details of the illustration of Cholula in both indigenous and colonial details.
The Relaciones Map in Detail
Gabriel Rojas commissioned an unknown indigenous artist to paint the map of Cholula to
accompany his written account of the city.8 The artist painted the map in a palette of earthy
browns, greens, greys, and reds on a beige-colored, European watermarked paper.9 The general
7
It is noted that Mundy derives the term from the African American scholar W.E.B. Dubois, see os
Rabasa, Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History, (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 153.
8
Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar and Clara Bargellini, Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521-
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1821, (Denver: Frederick and Jan Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art, Denver Art Museum,
2004), 113.
9
Pierce, Gomar and Bargellini, Painting a New World, 1521-1821, 115.
layout shows a well-planned colonial city in a grid-like structure, with organized squares of
detail that represent an urban city. Wide, straight blank spaces separate the square blocks both
horizontally and vertically, giving organization to the map. Residential buildings and church
structures sit within the respective blocks. Thirteen equal-sized blocks of residential buildings,
each made of squares in varying colors along the outside edge compose the bulk of the map.
While the town appears as twenty-four small blocks, the blocks should be understood as “superblocks” that represent several blocks to accommodate the 40,000 homes of around 100,000 in
population within eleven or twelve square kilometers.10 The large, imposing Franciscan San
Gabriel Convento commands the center of the city, its courtyard facing a hexagonal fountain in
an open center space.
The map also depicts six churches, numbered counter-clockwise and individually varying
in architecture, each in front of a large round hill. Text written in script below each provides
specific identification as follows: 1) Sanct Miguel tecpan Cabezera, 2) Santiago Cabezera, 3)
Sanct Joan Cabezera, 4) Sancta Maria Cabezera, 5) Sanct Pablo Cabezera, and 6) Sanct Andres
Cabezera. Crosses set on top of each building confirm their identification as churches. A central
block, two rows of super-blocks in size, interrupts the second and third row. This central block
consists of a church structure, the San Gabriel Convento, surrounded by a brick wall that creates
a courtyard space, and marked by the text “Ciudad S. Gabriel de Chollola.” On the right side of
the San Gabriel Convento, the artist illustrated an arcade of several arches, the portal de
peregrinos running perpendicular to the main church.
10
George Kubler, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972).
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D.E. Dumond, "Demographic Aspects of the Classic Period in Puebla-Tlaxcala," Southwestern Journal of
Anthropology 28, no. 2 (Summer, 1972): 101-130, 116, 121.
Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 127.
Scholarship by Barbara Mundy describes the Cholula map amongst the sixty-nine
Relaciones Geográficas maps in her study The Mapping of New Spain. Mundy touches on the
mixed styles of the map to display the indigenous ancestries of the city underneath the seemingly
straightforward colonial settlement, grid-style map construction.11 Her scholarship of the map
focuses on the ‘super-blocks,’ especially those that contain the churches and what those blocks
meant to reproduce on the map. She posits that the six churches represent Cholula’s preHispanic calpolli system, the barrios in modern Cholula. Where Mundy does not discuss the
importance of the hill glyph on the map, Serge Gruzinski’s Cholula: a Tale of Two Cities
discusses the hill as distinguished from other hills as “a mountain so renowned and so famous.”12
As the largest man-made pyramid and “an impressive site of collective memory,” many scholars
have emphasized that the importance of the Great Pyramid lays not only in the hill glyph at the
top but also in the inclusion of a representation of the hill behind each of the six churches.13
While scholars have discussed the Great Pyramid in detail on the map, and the
significance of the hills behind the churches that tie to the Tlachihualtepetl, one finds a lack of
research into the relationship between the giant San Gabriel Convento in the center of the map
and the Great Pyramid just a block away. Scholarship discusses the presence of Christian
crosses and churches at the summit of the Great Pyramid, and yet the visual depiction on the
Relaciones map of the Pyramid excludes any Christian insignia. The architecture of the San
Gabriel Convento, built with an arcade at a right angle to the façade, and unlike any other
Convento built in other cities, inserts another oddity into the Cholula map. This portal de
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peregrinos or Pilgrim’s Arcade associates San Gabriel with the Great Pyramid’s importance in
11
Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 126-29.
12
Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 137.
13
Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 137-138.
the city in a significant way. Visual evidence presented here will illustrate the Great Pyramid as
a site of worship for thousands of pilgrims, the reason for building San Gabriel’s extensive
Pilgrim’s Arcade, as well as the massive size of the Convento.
History of the Great Pyramid
The Great Pyramid has remained essential to the city’s history and identity, from the time
of its building through modern-times. The Relaciones map then shows not only the geography,
but also the history, essential for the purpose of the creation of the maps and text in the first
place. Originally, the Great Pyramid began in the Late Formative period, erected as a platform
for the temple of the city’s primary god, Quetzalcoatl, and after four major construction stages
the people abandoned the Pyramid in favor of another Quetzalcoatl temple built in the center of
the city.14 Apparently meant to have a temple structure at the summit, the illustrations of the
Pyramid in the Relaciones map do not contain any symbols of a religious center, symbols neither
of the Feathered Serpent nor of crosses or churches. Instead, the illustration contains a hill glyph
that depicts the Pyramid as an overgrown hill with reeds, often with a water source or stream
flowing from the base, and a frog or trumpet (in the case of the Relaciones) atop the summit.
This hill glyph represents the altapetl, or water-mountain, a ‘metaphoric term for kingdom,’
symbolically more significant to the identity of the city than a temple, cross or church.15 The
indigenous artist’s decision to depict the Great Pyramid in this manner marks the city as a Tollan
(“among the reeds”) and makes the Pyramid itself a symbol of worship.
14
Geoffrey McCafferty, "Mountain of Heaven, Mountain of Earth: The Great Pyramid of Cholula as Sacred
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Landscape," In Landscape and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by Rex Koontz, Kathryn Reese-Taylor and
Annabeth Headrick, (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2001), 283.
15
McCafferty, "Mountain of Heaven, Mountain of Earth,” 285.
The artist depicts the Great Pyramid on the church-dominated map as representing the
indigenous presence in the city, as well as the history and symbolism of the mountain. The large
hill, covered in reeds and muted red brick, defies the grid structure. The base of the Pyramid, so
far-reaching that a single grid block cannot contain it, spills out and concludes in the two blocks
to the right and left. The script, “TollanCholula” directly underneath, combining tolin (“reed”)
and –tlan (“among”), further distinguishes the glyph and firmly ties the city to the pyramid.16
The term “tlachihualtepetl” appears above the hill, separated by an elongated trumpet, the
combination of tlachiualli (“artificial”) and tepetl (“mountain”).17 This not only includes the
indigenous symbolism but also the expression of the name of the city in both indigenous and
colonial terms; both a native or Spanish reader could identify the city. At the base, black spiral
motifs flow past the hill and into the block to the right. The spiraling represents a traditional
symbol of the flowing source, or water, symbolizing one of the components necessary to
comprise the altepetl hill glyph. Even on this gridded map, the Great Pyramid stands alone,
imposing a defiance of space that pushes houses and churches away, a realistic representation of
the Pyramid’s sacred space that has not been disturbed (fig. 2).
Scholars, like Eleanor Wake, admit that the sequence of events for converting a new
territory begins with destroying the temples upon entering the town, replacing it with a wooden
cross, and finally replacing that with a church.18 This approach attempted to combine the
sanctity of the sacred indigenous site with a new Christian foundation.19 While looking at the
16
Rabasa, Without History, 151.
17
Rabasa, Without History,151.
18
Eleanor Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico, (Norman: University of
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Oklahoma Press, 2010), 103.
19
Joseph Baird and Hugo Rudinger, The Churches of Mexico, 1530-1810. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1962), 86.
Cholula map I questioned when the date of the building of the church at the summit and why its
exclusion on the map. While trying to research the church I found considerable confusion about
the dates of erecting crosses and building churches. The church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de
los Remedios, not erected not until at least 1594, explains its exclusion on the map. While the
dates of the map and church explain its absence, it does not explain why the artist omitted a
cross, since research suggests an erected cross at the summit before the painting of the map.20
The omitting of religious insignia by the artist likely confirms that the indigenous people already
considered the Great Pyramid as sacred, and that likely Cholula was already a widely held
pilgrimage site because of the worship of the Great Pyramid.
Of the authors that have described Cholula at the time of the Conquest and the postConquest Christian conversion period, some dispute the presence of a temple and the date of the
church on top. Study of the Relaciones maps did not begin until the late nineteenth century when
scholars began considering the indigenous involvement in the Spanish conquest. Early historian
of Mesoamerican sites Sarah Aston Butler (1915) states that a great temple dedicated to many
gods that stood on the summit of the pyramid at the arrival of Cortéz, and that he either built or
influenced the building of the church dedicated to the Virgin de los Remedios today.21 Difficult
to infer from her description is whether this church represents the one that stands today or a
smaller, earlier chapel built in the interim. Her very early scholarship concluding that Cortéz
built a church at the summit is less plausible given further scholarship of Cholula.
Archeologist Geoffrey McCafferty argues that at the time of the Spanish arrival the
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pyramid had long been abandoned in favor of another religious complex in the center of the city
20
Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexio, 103.
21
Butler, Historic Churches in Mexico, 29.
and overgrown, it appeared at first to the conquistadors as a natural hill, rather than a pyramid
built of stone and earth, brick and clay.22 Fray Toribio de Benavente, better known as Motolinía,
one of the twelve Franciscan friars to arrive in the newly conquered territory of Mexico in 1524,
wrote his History of the Indians of New Spain to account their missionary efforts in the New
World.23 Motolinía describes the enormity of Cholula’s Great Pyramid, indicating that it’s
unfinished state, but that a ‘small old temple’ sat on the top when the friars arrived.24
Motolinía’s description suggests a small edifice atop the massive pyramid, likely in ruins, and
nothing resembling an actual, functioning temple structure that existed now in the center of the
city, unlike Bulter’s suggestion that a great temple stood atop the Pyramid. The texts that refer
to the Great Pyramid misinterpret the presence of a temple at the time of conquest, the building
of the church in place of that temple, and the involvement of Cortéz in both destroying the
temple and building the church.
More than likely the misunderstanding comes from the language used to describe the
Pyramid and any remnants that may have existed on the summit. Motolinía and author Jose
Rabasa refer to the Great Pyramid as a temple itself, using the word to describe the man-made
mountain rather than a stone or wood structure, further suggesting the sacredness.25 Other
sources indicate that the summit held not a temple, but simply a small shrine dedicated to a rain
deity.26 Due to the abandonment of the Pyramid construction with the arrival of the Tolteca-
22
Geoffrey McCafferty, "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico," 3.
23
Wake, Framing the Sacred, 3.
24
Motolinía,
25
Rabasa, Without History, 151.
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Motolinía,
26
r
r
f
f
e
e
f e
f e
, 89.
, 88.
Susan Toby Evans and David L Webster, Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia,
(New York: Garland Pub., 2001), 141.
Chichimeca around 1200 C.E., who, upon conquering the Olmeca-Xicallanca people, moved the
religious center to a new Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl in the center of the city, a small shrine is more
plausible than a great temple.27 Regarding Motolinía’s small old temple, he states that the
Franciscan friars tore it down and erected a cross; however, after struck by lightning twice they
excavated the top of the Pyramid and found idols and offerings. This indicates that they erected
a cross originally, long after Cortéz visited Cholula. In 1535, Motolinía also states that they
placed a blessed bell up there following the excavation to put the devil to rest.28 The building of
the first chapel began in 1594, but it is not the golden church seen today, due to earthquake
damage and rebuilding in the nineteenth century, the current church was rebuilt in 1864 (fig. 3).29
The Relaciones map does not indicate a cross or bell on the hill glyph at the summit even though
the bell would have been present at the time of the map in 1581.
Three illustrations within the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca also do not indicate religious
insignia, even though painted in 1550, these early Colonial depictions show the Great Pyramid as
a natural hill covered with grass. The Tollan-Cholula illustration depicts the hill with a frog
perched on top and seven flower symbols, with the swirling water symbol to the left with reeds
that denote a Tollan city (fig. 4). The structure below identifies not a temple, but a palace for the
Olmeca-Xicallanca high priests.30 Another illustration that shows Tollan rulers has the same
imagery, the frog and flowers with the priest’s palace shown to the left (fig. 5). A map of
Cholula from this same text depicts the Great Pyramid hill glyph off to the side while the
27
Geoffrey McCafferty, "Ethic Conflict in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico." In Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare, edited
by Kathryn M. Brown and Travis W. Stanton, 219-244, (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2003) 231.
f
e
f e
Motolinía,
29
Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico, 103.
9
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28
, 88.
Baird and Rudinger, The Churches of Mexico, 86.
30
McCafferty, "Reinterpreting the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico,” 3.
Quetzalcoatl temple sits central to the map (fig. 6). This Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca map
includes the Pyramid with the water source below but does not indicate any indigenous religious
insignia; the central Quetzalcoatl temple instead symbolizes the city.
Compared to these 1550 Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca examples, the Relaciones map
artist has altered the iconography of the hill glyph slightly in not including the frog and flower
symbolism that identify the life that lives on the grassy hill. Instead, an elongated trumpet is
depicted at the top of the hill. This alludes to the several conch shells found in the excavation of
the summit and link the colonial Castilian trumpet to the indigenous past as the word trumpet
literally translates to ‘copper conch.’31 In addition, the artist has placed significance on the
indication of the man-made mountain in the bricked front of the hill rather than the natural grassy
hill depicted in the traditional hill glyph of Tlachihualtepetl. This conveys the prominence of the
pyramid’s construction as stone and earth, brick and clay and as a pre-Hispanic marvel, which
supports its status as a temple of worship.
The confusion, and history, of a church atop the Great Pyramid also informs the San
Gabriel Convento’s association with the Pyramid. In the early years of the conversion period,
the friars built San Gabriel in 1529, on the ruins of the existing Quetzalcoatl temple, while they
erected only a cross on the Great Pyramid. Due to this, it seems that the friars focused on the
construction of San Gabriel in the early years of monastic conversion rather than erecting a
church on the Pyramid summit. I argue that the emphasis on San Gabriel indicates that the
Pyramid symbolized a site of veneration without the physical structure at the summit, and
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brought in pilgrims even if not the central religious center. Scholars have indicated San
Gabriel’s construction on the site of the Quetzalcoatl temple in order to appropriate that religious
31
Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 138.
site, however, the ultimate purpose may have been to welcome in those numerous pilgrims and
convert them.32
The Hills and Churches and the Great Pyramid
The Relaciones map also represents Cholula’s history, the Great Pyramid presented as a
divider of ethnic lines as the center of the Olmeca-Xicallanca culture, while the site of San
Gabriel represents the Tolteca-Chichimeca center, a factor of little discussion. The incoming of
the Tolteca-Chichimeca ethnically divided the city at the edge of the Great Pyramid, the artist of
the map also illustrated this division with a fine line that defies the grid structure and divides the
map from top to bottom, between the third and fourth column, or between the San Gabriel
Convento column and the TollanCholula column. Author Setha Low’s study suggests that
hierarchy and social status often centered nearby the plaza or ceremonial site, making it likely
that the Olmeca-Xicallanca houses of importance centered nearby the Pyramid, possibly those
depicted as separated by the stream in the center block of the Relaciones map.33 By moving the
Quetzalcoatl temple to another location, that became the center of the city for the ToltecaChichimeca and represents the city’s layout in the Relaciones map. Even though not centrally
located, the Great Pyramid is more influential to the map than it may seem at first glance. The
Tolteca-Chichimeca drove the remaining Olmeca-Xicallanca people to the edge of the city with
their Pyramid, a memory and social division that the map artist depicted with a simple line that
disregards the colonial grid system. This ethnic division exists in the modern-day city by the
32
Geoffrey McCafferty, "Ethic Conflict in Postclassic Cholula, Mexico," In Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare, edited
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by Kathryn M. Brown and Travis W. Stanton, 219-244, (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2003).
33
Setha M. Low, "Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish-American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the
Caribbean," American Anthropologist: Journal of the American Anthropological Association 97, (1995): 748-762,
752.
division of the municipios of San Pedro, Cholula (with the Great Pyramid) and San Andrés,
Cholula (with the San Gabriel Convento). The 1581 map artist oriented the map with East at the
top of the page, a consideration that has been taking into account when orienting the modern day
map to show the municipio divisions of the city (fig. 7).34
Of the twenty-four superblocks, six represent churches set against the background of a
rounded hill, these also relate to the Great Pyramid, and to the history of Cholula. These
represent not churches but instead cabezeras (the Spanish term “town heads”), or the local
administrative seat that divide the city-state. The text in Spanish labels these, but they actually
represent the pre-Hispanic capolli system, and represent parishes of the city today.35 The two
elaborate churches, larger in size and with towers, on the left and right of the Great Pyramid
represent the two neighborhoods, San Miguel and San Andres. The other four churches, more
modest than these, indicate the two of more significance because the pre-Hispanic nobility lived
in San Miguel (those houses in-between the church and the Pyramid), and that the San Andres
neighborhood became so populated that the Franciscans built a second monastery in 1557.36
A further inclusion of the Great Pyramid in the map is evident in the geography of
Cholula that indicates the other hills on the map as related to the Pyramid. While Mundy and
Eleanor Wake state that the churches still stand in the same modern-day parishes, Cholula’s
geography is physically more flat than hilly, confirmed by the Relaciones text that accompanied
the map, that mentioned only two other moderate mounds in the landscape.37 Knowing that the
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hills do not geographically represent the space indicates that instead they are symbolic of the
34
Pierce, Gomar and Bargellini, Painting a New World, 114.
35
Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 127.
36
Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 140.
37
Gruzinski, “Cholula, A Tale of Two Cities,” 137.
place sign tepetl, associated with the Tlachihualtepetl that the artist has marked in text at the top
of the map.38 However, small houses terraced on the side of each of the six hills differentiate
them from the Great Pyramid. Therefore, they do not represent the actual Pyramid because it
does not have houses built up, obvious in the illustration of houses on the map clearly separate
from the space around the Pyramid. Also obvious by looking at modern-day Cholula where
extensive space surrounding the Pyramid shows no houses encroaching on the sacred site (fig 2).
San Gabriel Convento and the Great Pyramid
Within the existing literature regarding the Relaciones map scholars have discussed the
meaning of the churches to the pre-Hispanic city plan, and the Pyramid’s significance as
depicted behind each church, however a lack of emphasis exists in the association of the San
Gabriel Convento with the Pyramid. Dana Leibsohn’s argument, that the Spanish built their
architectural structures as a representation of ‘colonial control and oppression’ on top of
ceremonial plazas, supports the building of San Gabriel in the center of the city, on the ruins of
the Tolteca-Chichimeca Quetzalcoatl temple that would have been central at the time of
conquest.39 Even when the Franciscan friars realized that the Great Pyramid was not a mountain
but a sacred pyramid, they only erected a wood cross at the summit in the beginning while they
built the enormous Convento in the early years of the colonial period (1529) on top of the
Postclassic ceremonial site. Motolinía’s account, that the attempt to erect the cross still in 1534,
and the first church not until 1594, keeps with Leibsohn’s study that they first replace the main
religious center. The importance of the Great Pyramid as a pilgrimage site at the time of
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38
Wake, Framing the Sacred, 260.
Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain, 127.
39
Leibsohn, Dana. "Primers for Memory: Cartographic Histories and Nahua Identity." Writing without Words:
Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994.
conquest, and how the Pyramid has influenced the building of San Gabriel, and thus how the
map artist has depicted the Convento has not been accounted among scholarship thus far.
The size and architectural features of San Gabriel point to the popularity and population
of the sacred city. The friars came to New Spain instructed to convert the population by any
means necessary. Taking this into account, and the fact that pilgrims would have already been
visiting the Great Pyramid as a sacred site, they used the popularity of the site to convert those
incoming indigenous to Christianity. Visual clues in San Gabriel planning and architecture
indicate its association to the Great Pyramid, both physically and representationally on the
Relaciones map. One visual clue on the map lies in the crosses atop the towers of the chapel on
the left side of the façade, where the crosses defy the gridded block. The two crosses are so tall
that they project out of the central block in the same way that the Great Pyramid’s base does to
the right and left.
The odd architectural features of San Gabriel indicate an influence in the building of the
Convento to accommodate the pilgrims of the Pyramid. When compared to San Gabriel today, it
appears that the Relaciones map artist has captured near perfectly the architecture of the
Convento building, including the east running portal de peregrinos, on the right side, depicted by
a long arcade of arches (fig. 8). John McAndrew states that the portería or portal de peregrinos,
stood on the façade with the monastery behind in sixteenth century Mexican architecture, and
may be three arches wide, up to six in grander establishments.40 The oddity of a seventeenarched portería, with three on the façade and then fourteen at a right angle to the building,
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indicates that the architects understood a large population of pilgrims would be taking rest there.
The construction of San Gabriel, with the portal adjacent to the façade represents a different
40
McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, 164.
construction than most every other Convento built in the sixteenth century, which generally
followed a prototypical plan for building Conventos in this century (fig. 9).41 In relation to the
sixteenth century architecture, McAndrew states that only a few other monastery churches have a
portico at a right angle to the façade like at San Gabriel (Cuilapan, Tochimilco, and San
Francisco at Puebla).42
A further oddity in the architecture, which also relates to the portal, is in the standard
placement of the four posas at the corners of the atrium. In addition to the extensive Pilgrim’s
Arcade to the right of the façade, San Gabriel’s architectural plan shows the absence of one of
the four prototypical posas, or smaller chapels at which priests paused during an outdoor
procession, in order to accommodate the portal (fig. 10).43 The prototypical sixteenth century
convent plan had a posa in each corner of the atrio, or open atrium, allowing for a counterclockwise procession (fig. 11).44 San Gabriel, however, only has three posas with a small altar
for devout individuals, the southeastern posa having been removed for the placement of the
extensive Pilgrim’s Arcade, signifying its importance. The sizeable atrium also has two large
entradas, indicated in the architecture on the map and in the physical architecture, showing that
the number of pilgrims to the convent necessitated two entrances to allow for a dense flow of
people.
In conclusion, the influence of the Great Pyramid to the Cholula Relaciones Geográficas
map appears illustrated in almost aspect of the Colonial style grid. Scholars have already
41
Baird and Rudinger, The Churches of Mexico, 49.
42
John McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico: Atrios, Posas, Open Chapels, and Other
Page
15
Studies, Cambridge, (Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 616.
43
44
McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, 281.
Samuel Edgerton and orge P rez de Lara, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in
Colonial Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 41.
discussed several aspects of Cholula’s Relaciones map, including the importance of the blocks,
the churches and the TollanCholula hill glyph. However, the influence of the Tlachihualtepetl as
integrated into almost every aspect of the map, and its great influence to the history presented in
the map is lacking. Visually, the map shows the history of Cholula in the black line that
separates the map at the Great Pyramid and the San Gabriel Convento. This symbolizes the
Tolteca-Chichimec’s conquering of the Olmeca-Xicallanca people, the moving of the
Quetzalcoatl temple and the municipio division of San Pedro, Cholula and San Andrés, Cholula
still present today. The map also illustrates the importance of the Great Pyramid to the San
Gabriel Convento in the form of the extensive Pilgrim’s Arcade, an oddity amongst sixteenth
century Mesoamerican Conventos, built at a right angle to the façade. The size of the Convento
itself and the Pilgrim’s Arcade indicate that the Franciscan friars assumed the importance of the
Pyramid as a site of worship and built the Convento in such a size to accommodate the vast
number of pilgrims. In the process of accommodation, they also used the ancient site of
veneration as a means to convert the indigenous to Christianity, ultimately their goal in New
Spain. The absence of depiction of any religious insignia on top of the Tlachihualtepetl in the
Relaciones map indicates that Pyramid itself as a site of worship and the map artist sought to
Page
16
convey the history of the Pyramid to the sacred city of Cholula.
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Figure 1. Cholula, Tlaxcala, 1581, 31x44 cm, from Relaciones Geográficas, courtesy of Benson
Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin).
20
Page
Figure 2. Modern-day Cholula, showing the Great Pyramid and the space around it that is sacred
and has not been imposed on.
21
Page
Figure 3. Drawing showing colonial church capping pyramid, 1834, from ARTstor.
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22
Figure 4. Tollan-Cholula, 1550, from Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, courtesy of Benson Latin
American Collection (University of Texas at Austin).
Figure 5. Tollan-Cholula and Olmeca-Xicalanca Rulers, 1550, from Historia ToltecaChichimeca, courtesy of Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin).
23
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Figure 6. Map of Tollan-Cholula and Tolteca-Chichimeca rulers, 1550, from Historia ToltecaChichimeca, courtesy of Benson Latin American Collection (University of Texas at Austin).
24
Page
Figure 7. Modern-day Cholula map, showing the division of San Andrés and San Pedro
compared to the Relaciones map division.
25
Page
Figure 8. Modern-day San Gabriel Monastery compared to the Convento de San Gabriel
Relaciones map architecture and portal de peregrinos.
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26
Figure 9. Façade elevation of a sixteenth century monastic church from Baird, The Churches of
Mexico, 1530-1810, 1962.
Figure 10. Plan for the Franciscan San Gabriel Convento, with key elements indicated that
correspond to the prototypical convento plan: g. portería, l. posas, o. entrada.
Figure 11. Diagram of a prototypical 16th century Mexican convento, with key elements
indicated:
g. portería
l. posas,
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o. entrada,
From Edgerton and P rez de Lara, Theaters of Conversion, 2001.